1.—“_Misread by man_ ...”
“You say ‘We marry our girls when they reach puberty,’ and you take as
indication of that stage one only, and that the least certain, of the
many changes which go to make up maturity. It is the least certain
because the most variable, and dependent more upon climate and
conditions of life than upon any true physical development. No one would
deny that a strong country girl of thirteen was more mature physically
than a girl of eleven brought up in the close, unwholesome atmosphere of
a crowded city, yet you say the latter has attained to puberty, and that
the former has not. Into such discrepancies has this physiological error
led you. Without going into the domain of physiology for proof of
assertion, let me draw your attention to the very practical proof of its
truth, which you have in the fact well-known to you all, that girls
married at this so-called period of puberty do not, as a rule, bear
children till some years later, _i.e._, till they really approach
maturity. I allow that you share this error with all but modern
physiologists. Even if marriage is delayed till fourteen, where
conception takes place immediately, sterility follows after; but where
the girl is strong and healthy there is a lapse of three or four years
before child-bearing begins, a proof that puberty had not been reached
till then, although menstruation had been all the time existent. Of
course there are exceptional cases, but does not the consensus of
experience point to these as general truths?”—Mrs. Pechey Phipson, M.D.
(Address to Hindoos).
_Id._ “... _sign of his misdeed_.”
See Note XXVI., 6.
4.—“... _victim to his adult rage_.”
Of this, as existent to the present age, abundant direct and collateral
evidence is given by a _brochure_ entitled “A Practical View of the Age
of Consent Act, for the benefit of the Mahomedan community in general,
by the Committee of the Mahomedan Literary Society of Calcutta,”
published by that Society, in June, 1891, as “an accurate exposition of
the object and scope of the new law, in the clearest possible language,
for the benefit of the Mahomedans, particularly the ignorant classes,
and circulated widely in the vernacular languages for that purpose.”