A deputation of the Ilarveian Society waited on Monday on
Mr. Walpole, to call his attention to the increase of infanticide. The society propose nearly twenty preventive measures, the princi- pal of which are—that infanticide should no longer be murder in the first degree, but in the second ; that the proof now required that the child has been fully born should be dispensed with ; that the parish should be able to tax the father for the child's sup- port in 5s. a week, instead of 2s. 6d. ; that nurses should be registered ; and that the workhouse should receive illegitimate children, subject to a tax on the mother. Of these suggestions the first and second are clearly required, but the Houses will hesitate over the third, which scarcely punishing a well-to-do seducer, fines a labouring man in more than half his income for years. Opening the workhouses would save the children, but it would also increase immorality.
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