According to the census of 1831 the proportion of illegitimate to legitimate births was, in the year 1830, as 1 to 20 in England, and the proportion in Wales was as 1 to 13. But the more accurate returns obtained under 6 & 7 Wm. IV. c. 86, for the registration of births, mar riages, and deaths, show the proportion of illegitimate births to be greater than one in twenty. Out of 248,554 registered births in England, 15,839 were illegitimate, or one in sixteen. (Fifth Report of Regis trar-General, p. 10.) We may probably assume that the illegitimate births in England and Wales are somewhat higher than one in sixteen, and the number such births in the year ending 30th June. 1841, would therefore be abo 33,000, and as the females aged from I to 45 were about 3,500,000, the proporth of those who gave birth to an illegil mate child in that year was about of in 109. The Commissioners for takig the census of Ireland in 1841, do n give any statement respecting illegitima births, but it is believed that they a fewer than perhaps in any other countr In Paris in 1842, out of 28,218 bird 10,286, or one in 2-7, were illegitimal of whom 4621 were born at the hospital and 5665 at home ; and of the illegil mate children 8231 out of 10,286 were n recognised by either parent. The nur ber of illegitimate children born France in 1841 was 70,938, and children born in wedlock there we 906,091. The proportion of illegitima births was therefore as 1 to 12'929, nearly 10 in 130. (Annuaire du Buret des 1844.) In 1834 the nun her of illegitimate births in Prussia w 40,656 out of 555,282 births, or 1 in 134 From 1820 to 1834 the proportion w 1 in 14'4. (Trans. of London &at. & vol. i. part 1.) In 1837 the number illegitimate children born in Prussia w 39,501, and as the number of femal from 16 to 45 was 2,983,146, 1 in eve 75 of this number had in that year giv, birth to an illegitimate child. (I.atiN Notes of a Traveller in Prussia, &c., 167.) The same writer, in his Jour]] of a Residence in Norway,' states, p. 15 that the proportion of legitimate to Mei timate children in that country is abo 1 in 5; and he gives an instance of country parish where the proportion fro 1826 to 1830 was 1 in 3•2. Mr. Lail states in his Tour in Sweden,' that in 18. there were born in Stockholm 2714 chil ren, and of this number 1577 were legi mate and 1137 were illegitimate, the pm portion being 1 illegitimate to 1 legi mate, that is, for every 15 legitimate the were 10 illegitimate. In the town pop lation of Sweden, exclusive of Stockhol (and the towns are generally of very sin size, without commerce or manufacture the proportion was about 1 illegitimg to 4 legitimate births.
The following statements are taken from Turnbull's Austria, vol. ii. p. 200, not as illustrations of national morals, in which light the author considers them fallacious, but "as bearing on certain great questions of public good." In Vienna, in 1834, the proportion of ille gitimate to legitimate birt.hs was as 10 to 12 ; at Gratz as 10 to 6 ; at Milan as 10 to 28 ; at Venice as 10 to 28. In Lower Austria, in the same year, the proportion of illegitimate births was I in 4; in Upper Austria 1 in 5 ; in Styria 1 in 3 ; in the Tyrol 1 in 17 ; in Bohemia 1 in 16 ; in Moravia and Silesia 1 in 7 in Gallicia 1 in 12 ; in Dalmatia 1 in 2 ; in Lombardy 1 in 25; in the Venetian Provinces 1 in 3; in Transylvania 1 in 36 ; in the whole Empire, exclusive of Hungary, 1 in 9.
The repute in which spurious children have been held has varied in different ages and countries. In some they have
been subjected to a degree of opprobrium which was inconsistent with justice ; in others the distinction between base and legitimate birth appears to have been but faintly recognised, and the child of unlicensed love has avowed his origin with an indifference which argued neither a sense of shame nor a feeling of infe riority. When the Conqueror com menced his missive to the Earl of Bre tagne by the words, " I, William, sur named the Bastard," he can have felt no desire to conceal the obliquity of his de scent, and little fear that his title would be defeated by it. Accordingly, history presents us with many instances in which the succession not only to property, but to kingdoms, has been successfully claimed by the spurious issue of the an cestor. It is, however, very improbable that in any state of society where the institution of marriage has prevailed, children born in concubinage and in law ful wedlock should ever have been re garded by the law with exactly equal favour. (See Ducange, Glossary, tit. " Bastardus.") Those who may be curious to learn what fanciful writers have urged in proof of the superior mental and physical en dowments of illegitimate issue, may refer to Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, vol.
ii. p. 16 (ed. 1821) ; Pasquier, Recherches, chap. " De quelques memorables bi tar6 ;'• and Pontus Heuterus, De Liberd Hominis Nativitate. See also Shak spere's Lear, act i. scene 2 ; and the ob servations of Dr. Elliotson in his edition of Blumenbach's Physiology, in notes to chap. 90.
In Scotland the law of Bastardy dif fers considerably from the English, chiefly in consequence of its having adopted mach of the Roman and pontifical doc trines of marriage and legitimacy.
Thus, in England, in the case of a divorce in the spiritual court, " a vinculo matrimonii," the issue born during the coverture are bastards. But agreeably to the judgment of the canons, Decret. Greg.,' lib. iv. tit. 17, c. 14, the Scottish writers, proceeding on the bona fides of the parties, incline to a different opinion, in favorem prolix; and it will be recol lected that when Secretary Lethington proposed to Mary Queen of Scots a divorce from Darnley, James Earl of Bothwell, to quiet her fears for her son, " allegit the exampill of himself, that he ceissit not to slimed to his father's heritage, without any difficultie, albeit thair was divorce betwixt him and his mother." The point has not, however, received a judicial de termination, and cannot therefore be re garded as settled, though of the tendency of the law there can be little doubt. Even in the case of a marriage between a party divorced for adultery and the adulterer, which by stat. 1600, c. 20, following the civil law, is declared "null and unlawful in itself, and the succession to be gotten of sik unlawful conjunctions minable to succeid as heires to their said parents ;" the issue are not accounted bastards, " though," as Stair adds, b. iii. tit. 3, § 42, " they may be debarred from succession." Of course, the issue of every legal mar riage are lawful, and therefore the child ren not only of marriages regularly solem nized, but also of every union acknow ledged by the law as a marriage, are alike legitimate. The same may be said of children legitimated by the sub sequent intermarriage of their parents ; but the situation of these is, as we shall immediately see, somewhat anoma ims.