The mortality of foundlings is still further investigated for all parts of the Austrian dominions. This, as it would interest a small portion only of our readers, we shall pass over, and merely notice such facts as are of general interest.

It has been stated that the mortality of foundlings in Vienna has increased of late years; this is the case also in many other parts of the Austrian dominions, while in about an equal number of districts it has fallen off. The cause of this difference is not stated.

In illustration of the danger attending the exposure of the new-born infant to cold, some interesting facts are stated on the authority of Trevisan. Of 100 children born in Italy during the winter, 66 died during the first month, and only 19 survived their first year; while, on the other hand, of 100 children born during the summer, 83,-of 100 born during the spring, 48,-and of 100 born during the autumn, 58 survived the first year.

Dr. Melzer's work abounds in statistical details, which want of space prevents us from noticing at greater length; we must, therefore, hasten to the concluding chapter of the work, in which the real value of the foundling-hospital system is tested by argument and fact. We have already touched upon this subject, but its importance demands a further notice.

The foundling system is differently ordered in Roman Catholic and Protestant countries. Though the object in both is the same-the preservation of the life of the innocent and helpless child, and the support of public morality,-they aim at accomplishing the object in opposite ways. The Roman Catholic system establishes lying-in and foundling hospitals, forbids any inquiry into the paternity of the foundlings, and loads the state with a heavy expense. The reception of the foundling is either by the tours, in which the concealment of the birth is the leading object-this is the Italian system; or the child is received à bureau ouvert-this is the French system. These are the two chief varieties of the Roman Catholic system. The Protestant system, on the other hand, pronounces lying-in and foundling hospitals to be an evil, and rejects them altogether; disapproves concealment, makes the mothers answerable for the care of her child, and fines the father in the cost of its support. Where this system prevails illegitimate children are even more numerous than in Roman Catholic countries;* but children are very rarely abandoned. In a financial point of view, of course, this system has a great advantage over that of Roman Catholic countries.

It is impossible that these two systems can be equally valuable; the one must be better than the other; nevertheless, though different in their principles, they show a certain reciprocity in their operation. In the ultimate results of each system we must seek for the proofs of its utility. We must weigh the profit of each system against the moral and pecuniary results, to determine which has the advantage over its rival; but in actual practice we do not find such a relation between the principle and its results as we might have anticipated. To exhibit the real state of the case is the

The proportion of illegitimate to legitimate births in England is 1 in 12; in France, 1 in 13; in Saxony, 1 in 7; in Wurtemberg, 1 in 7-8; in Hesse, 1 in 5-6, in Prussia and Sweden, 1 in 13. (Springer's Austrian Statistics.)

object of political economy; but, in the mean time, let us compare the argument for and against each of these rival systems.

The supporters of the Roman Catholic system shall have the first word. According to them foundling hospitals were among the first-fruits of the divine principle of the love of one's neighbour. Religion, not powerful enough to banish vice, and fearing to stain herself with the blood of the innocent, threw over it the veil of compassion, and led back the unfortunate offender to the bosom of society, out of which the hand of her parents had thrust her. Grief, shame, privation, and despair of being able to preserve the life of her offspring, offer a strong temptation to desertion, child murder, and abortion. To force the father to marry the woman he has betrayed, would be a doubtful good, to oblige him to support his child, is a certain difficulty; but in the asylums which are open to the mother, and in which she finds every needful assistance, she is safely and secretly delivered of her burden, and returns in peace to the world; she escapes the shame and reproval which otherwise await her, conceals her first offence, and can resolve against its repetition. The foundling hospital completes what the lying-in institution had begun; it relieves her from a heavy burden, and prevents her from sinking to a lower point of degradation. The child, whom the mother has consigned to the care of the foundling hospital, is not merely supported, but educated. How many mothers, a prey to shame and destitution, and sorely tempted to the commission of crime, has this system saved from destruction! how many children has it rescued from death* and from the fatal influence of bad example, and preserved to the state as moral and industrious citizens !

If we now turn to the Protestants, they admit the good intentions which led to the establishment of lying-in and foundling hospitals; but they look to their results, and inquire how far the sanguine expectations of their founders have been sealed by experience. These institutions were established to afford the poor destitute mother and child the assistance they so much require; but, however fine in theory, experience says little in their favour. Where such institutions exist, we are constantly meeting with the most melancholy results of such experiments,―men separated from their parents, strangers in their land, and brought up by hireling nurses and attendants. What might once have been a necessity, has long ceased to be such. The public opinion has come to pass a milder sentence on unchastity. By the tenderness which the law has shown to the shame of the mother, shame is at length banished, and with it all fear of consequences. If her poverty be assigned as a reason for our interference, the question arises, is the state bound to undertake the support of all the poor without exception? By doing this, it would step into the place of individual charity; it would give to poverty that which diligence and virtue ought to give it; and, by so doing, would encourage a mean spirit of dependence. The poor ought, it is true, to be supported, but the support offered by the lying-in and foundling hospitals is useless, at the same time that wisdom requires and offers better means. Among the poorer classes there are many married couples who look with envy

• In Carinthia, which has no foundling hospital, 23-57 per cent. of children died under one year of age; in Krain, which has such an institution, only 20-36 perished.

on the illegitimate child and on her offspring, and on the liberal assistance and support which they have received in the lying-in and foundling hospitals. The child is supported at the public expense, and the mother admitted as wet-nurse into some rich or distinguished family. The conviction that, on the whole, the condition of the unmarried female is more tolerable than her own, that her own children can have no better care than that which the foundlings receive, is not far removed from the wish to turn those public institutions to her own use. This wish soon ripens into act, where the institution gives facilities for it. Hence the multitude of legitimate children who are taken out of the tours, and which increases as the fact becomes notorious. The mother has taken her legitimate child to the tour, the next step is to offer herself, after a few days, at the institution as wet-nurse; when she has the chance of receiving back her own child, and being paid for its support. To what abuses such a system may lead it is unnecessary to point out; the abuses of the system extend until large numbers of females, in a condition to support their own children, avail themselves of these public institutions. To return to the case of the single woman,-the support of her child, which, in the absence of these institutions, must have devolved upon her, might perhaps have saved her from a repetition of her fault; but the relief from these cares tempt her back to her former mode of life, and encourages her in her vicious course; and yet we hear of the moral uses of the foundling hospital, and of its favorable influence on public morals. It is asserted that lying-in and foundling hospitals tend to preserve the lives of children, and to prevent the exposure and murder of the new-born child. Experience, however, has shown how unfounded this statement is; it has proved that there are more exposures and infanticides in countries which have lying-in and foundling hospitals, than in those which are without them; and the same difference is found to obtain in the same countries before and after the establishment of their hospitals. Thus, in Krain, before the opening of the foundling hospital, the annual exposures amounted to 345 per cent. ; after the opening of the institution 4 per cent. That criminal abortions and infanticides are not diminished by foundling hospitals, is also proved by tables to which we are obliged to refer the reader; neither is the assertion that foundling hospitals preserve the lives of children better founded. Facts are opposed to it; but for these also we must refer to our author.

The result of the careful inquiry into which Dr. Melzer has entered, seems to be unfavorable to the pretensions of what he designates as the Catholic system; and we are not the less inclined to accept the conclusion at which he arrives from its being couched in the language of the review to which we have referred. Foundling hospitals are mischievous, "because they have no influence on those evils which they were instituted to prevent; because the relief they proffer can be obtained only by a deliberate sacrifice of the best feelings of our nature; because they are liable to abuses, which it is almost impossible to prevent; and because, while they entail a great expense upon the country, they preserve the lives of but a very small proportion of their inmates.”*

We know not whether the writer of these judicious conclusions would

No. XXVI, April, 1842, p. 293.

be disposed to go to the length to which we have indicated our disposition to advance in the matter of public charities; but we are so far disposed to generalize that we would extend our condemnation to all public establishments, which are not in the nature of prevention. If any species of public charity ought to be supported by the government, assuredly hospitals and dispensaries are such charities, and yet these have been largely provided by the benevolence of individuals; and though, not by any means free from some of the abuses of foundling hospitals, there can be little doubt that they are much more free from objection, than if they were public institutions supported by the public purse. The real position in life and wants of their inmates is much better known to the subscribers, and those who have the privilege of recommendation, than it could be to government officers; and thus a part, at least, of the abuses to which all charities are liable is guarded against.

We cannot conclude this notice of Dr. Melzer's admirable work, without again reverting to his censure of our countryman Malthus; and we cannot help regarding the conclusion at which he has arrived, respecting the evils of foundling hospitals, as applicable mutatis mutandis to all systems of poorlaws, against which our distinguished countryman so earnestly protested.

A short and simple proverb, PREVENTION BETTER THAN CURE, is at the root of all these questions. "Donnez plus de moralité aux classes ouvrières et il y aura beaucoup moins d'enfants trouvés," (the concluding quotation of Dr. Melzer's work,) admits of extension in many directions. For instance, we would say to ENGLAND:-Give more intellectual and moral training, and you will have fewer criminals; commit less waste, and you will have fewer paupers; prevent disease and preserve health, and you will need fewer hospitals and workhouses; make the employers of labour responsible for life and limb, and you will have fewer accidents; look to the construction of ships and the education of masters, and you will have fewer shipwrecks; and so on through the length and breadth of your legislation. If this simple proverb will not suffice for your guidance, add this other homely saying, WASTE NOT, WANT NOT. If you will not take measures for preventing the refuse of our towns from flowing into the sea, then you must import manure, or corn and meat, or both. There is no other alternative. If you will not consent to that free competition of nation with nation, which, by stimulating all to exertion, makes all men prosperous, then must you take the consequences of your so-called protection,-sloth, ignorance, poverty, revenue laws, preventive service, law-made crimes, and all the waste of time and money which these entail. By your discountenance of foundling hospitals, you show that you are not ignorant of the true principles of political and Christian economy. We carnestly commend the poor-laws to your best attention. You are the richest nation in Europe-you have the largest proportion of paupers. Can this be explained on any other supposition than that they are law-made paupers? Try the system of prevention: it cannot fail more egregiously than the system of cure has done. The present system has the condemnation of the past: its rival has all the promises of the future.

ART. VI.

Observations and Essays on the Statistics of Insanity; including an Inquiry into the Causes influencing the Results of Treatment in Establishments for the Insane: to which are added, the Statistics of the Retreat, near York. By JOHN THURNAM, Licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians of London, Resident Medical Superintendent of the Retreat, near York.-London, 1845. 8vo, pp. 308.

IN the year 1841, a report, by Dr. Thurnam, including a series of statistical tables, exhibiting the practice of the Retreat, the asylum for the insane of the Society of Friends, for a period of 44 years, from its first establishment in 1796 to 1840, was printed for distribution by the directors of the institution. Of this valuable report a brief notice was inserted in our Journal at the period. The work now before us contains an enlarged and revised edition of the "Statistics of the Retreat," preceded by an elaborate investigation of the present state of the statistics of insanity, deduced from reports and other data furnished by hospitals for the insane in this country, on the Continent, and in America. This portion of the work, we are informed by the author, had its origin at the time he was engaged in drawing up the "Statistics of the Retreat," in the desire to compare the results afforded by the practice of that institution with those obtained in other asylums and hospitals for the insane.

The subjects treated of by Dr. Thurnam are arranged under three heads, the discussion of which is preceded by a concise exposition of the value of statistics as applied to the elucidation of insanity.

I. On the Statistics of Insanity in general. This may be regarded as constituting the body of the work, and is distributed in three chapters, which are devoted-1st, to the methods of deducing and exhibiting the results of treatment in institutions for the insane; 2d, to the various circumstances capable of influencing these results; and 3d, to the statistics of the principal asylums of this and other countries.

II. Essays on the liability to insanity in the two sexes, at different periods of life, and in the Society of Friends.

III. The Statistics of the Retreat, preceded by a sketch of its history and an exposition of its system of management, and of the methods of treatment pursued. To these are added, in an appendix, the history and statistics of the York Lunatic Asylum, and contributions to the statistics of the Society of Friends.

I. ON THE STATISTICS OF INSANITY IN GENERAL.

1. In order accurately to exhibit the results of the practice of different establishments for the treatment of insanity, it is necessary that the terms employed should be clearly defined; that the registers should be correctly kept; that the mode of calculating the proportion of recoveries and deaths should be uniform; and that the data for calculation should be deduced from observations extending over a sufficient period of time. To the first requisites it is not necessary further to allude: in reference to the calculation of the proportion of recoveries and deaths, various methods have,