ABSTRACT
So that nearly six thousand persons, who, under ordinary circum-- stances, would have entered into the marriage state in 1862, had their hopes blighted, and their prospects of mutual happiness destroyed; or were at best obliged to console themselves with the " hope deferred which maketh the heart sick." Many of them, instead of occupying their own neat cottages, probably became dependent upon the charitable dole of relief committees, or even upon the grudging allowances of the poor-law guardians; and the year 1863, instead of making up for this deficiency, added nearly two thousand more to the list of the disappointed and despairing young people, who ought to have begun life on their own accounts; to have enjoyed the rights of citizenship, and to have borne their share of its responsibilities. Nor was hope restored with the spring of 1864, for the marriages were still five hundred below the corre-- sponding quarter of 1861. Again, a thousand loving hearts were kept asunder by the grim spectre, want; and pining and despairing solitude ruled, where sweet communion should have been. These phases of trouble do not appear upon the surface, and cannot be estimated in pounds sterling; but the fainting, dragging misery, the separations for ever, and the broken hearts arising out of years of disappointment, are not less real, because they refuse to submit to tabulation; and, however blunt and rude the expressions of the sufferers, the feeling would not be much less keen amongst the thousands of cotton operatives, whose prospects in life were thus blighted, than it would have been in the same number of a more highly educated class. Of course, some allowance is to be made for the decrease of population by emigration and migration; but, assuming these causes to have removed thirty thousand persons from the cotton districts, the proportion would be about one in sixty-six of the population; whilst the decrease of marriages was one in thirteen and a quarter in 1862, and one in twenty-nine in 1863, as compared with 1861; and instead of these being made up in 1864, there was a further decrease in the first two quarters as compared with 1861, of five hundred and thirty-five, or one in fifteen; and the decrease on the whole year was one thousand six hundred and sixty-five, making the total decrease on the three years, five thousand four hundred and seventy-nine. That the affliction was nobly borne, is evidenced by another fact, which speaks volumes in favour of the sufferers The returns of illegi-
timate births show clearly that these abstainers from marriage were in the main prudent, moral, and well-conducted people. Men of strong animal passions would probably abstain from the respon-- sibilities of married life under circumstances of great penury, but they would not in consequence restrain themselves from the indulgence of sexual passion; and girls, whose daily life is passed in the semi-tropical temperature of a cotton mill, with its tendency to early puberty, would, unless kept in good training, be likely to give way to temptation; but the following tables, contributed specially by the registrar-general, will show that, although the abstinence from marriage was so extensive, yet sexual immorality was but very slightly increased.
