will have to face an amazingly complicated public opinion. In
fact, he will have to leave opinion as far as possible out of the
question, and deal with human nature instead. For even if there
could be any real public opinion in a society like ours, which is
a mere mob of classes, each with its own habits and prejudices, it
would be at best a jumble of superstitions and interests, taboos
and hypocrisies, which could not be reconciled in any coherent
enactment. It would probably proclaim passionately that it does
not matter in the least what sort of children we have, or how few
or how many, provided the children are legitimate. Also that it
does not matter in the least what sort of adults we have, provided
they are married. No statesman worth the name can possibly act on
these views. He is bound to prefer one healthy illegitimate child
to ten rickety legitimate ones, and one energetic and capable
unmarried couple to a dozen inferior apathetic husbands and wives.
If it could be proved that illicit unions produce three children
each and marriages only one and a half, he would be bound to
encourage illicit unions and discourage and even penalize
marriage. The common notion that the existing forms of marriage
are not political contrivances, but sacred ethical obligations to
which everything, even the very existence of the human race, must
be sacrificed if necessary (and this is what the vulgar morality
we mostly profess on the subject comes to) is one on which no sane
Government could act for a moment; and yet it influences, or is
believed to influence, so many votes, that no Government will
touch the marriage question if it can possibly help it, even when
there is a demand for the extension of marriage, as in the case of
the recent long-delayed Act legalizing marriage with a deceased
wife's sister. When a reform in the other direction is needed (for
example, an extension of divorce), not even the existence of the