CHILD ADOPTION.
AGOOD deal has been done of late to encourage the practice of adoption, which Dr. Henry Chapin, of New York, describes succinctly as " putting the homeless child in the childless home." There is abundant evidence to show that, with proper safeguards, adoption usually benefits both the children and the people who take them. Most of us have a profound distrust of the institution, whether publicly or privately managed, for young children. Poor Law schools have improved since the days of Oliver Twist, but it is nearly impossible for the most kindly and competent matron or warden to give each one of a troop of children the individual attention that the boy or girl would receive in ordinary home-life. Young children, it is generally agreed, should remain with their parents or, where that is impossible, should have foster- parents to care for them. Many of our readers probably assume that there is no difficulty in the way provided that the homeless child and the childless home are brought into touch by societies and other agencies. They are doubtless unaware that the English law makes no provision for adoption. In nearly all civilized States, including most of the English- speaking countries, the law, as in ancient Rome, recog- nizes the practice of adoption and defines the rights and duties both of the foster-parents and of the child. Our own law does neither. The foster-parents have no security. The Departmental Committeelton Child Adoption, which reported last year to the Home Secretary, stated that unworthy parents, who had allowed their children to be adopted, would often seek to claim them again and some- times tried to levy blackmail on the foster-parents. It was no uncommon thing, the Committee was told, when a child was old enough to work and earn wages for the parents who had habitually neglected it and left it to be brought up by a relative or a stranger to claim it back simply in order to take the child's earnings. The fear lest such things should happen, involving a scandal and perhaps costly litigation, unquestionably deters many worthy people from adopting children who are not orphans.
On the other hand, the adopted child under our law has no rights. It is dependent solely on the generosity of its foster-parents and can at any moment be disowned by them and thrown helpless on the world. We remember a case in point. A very rich and childless couple adopted an infant girl and brought her up as their daughter, giving her all the luxuries that wealth can command. She had her own maid, her governess, a pony to ride, and all the frocks that a girl could want. But when she had reached the age of fourteen, her adopted mother gave birth to a son. Strangely enough, the joy of the parents over their first-born manifested itself in a sudden hatred of the girl, as if, on behalf of their son, they envied her the fourteen years' happiness which should have been his. Their hatred became so acute that they sent her back to the workhouse from which she had been taken as an infant. Greater cruelty than this we can scarcely imagine, and yet there was no redress. The poor child had no legal claim on the foster-parents who had raised her up and cast her down, as the Caliph in the Arabian Nights used to promote and degrade his Vizier. It will be said that such people are exceptional. Doubtless they are, but it is clear that such a case ought to be made impossible. It must be remembered, too, that the adopted child may suffer through having no legal claim on the foster-parents, even when they are worthy people. Suppose that the foster-parents are well-to-do and that both die intestate when the child is of tender years. In that case the child will not receive a penny from its foster-parents' estate and will be left dependent on the charity of friends. For both parties, foster-parent and adopted child, the failure of the law to give any protection whatever may and often does have the most deplorable consequences.
The obvious remedy which commended itself to the Departmental Committee is to give legal recognition to child adoption, provided that it is done openly, with the sanction of the County Court Judge. Justinian in his Institutes, so long ago as the year 534, summarized the current Roman procedure for legalizing adoptions. In Australia, in New Zealand, in some of the provinces of Canada, in all the United States, there are laws of adoption which work well, just as there are in European countries. It is high time that we had a similar law in England. A private Member introduced a short Bill this session, the governing clause of which provided that " the parents or guardians of any child may transfer to any other person their rights and duties in respect of the child," with the approval of the High Court or the County Court. Probably the Bill would need considerable amendment, but its main principle is sound and some such measure ought to become law in the near future. Provision would, of course, be made for ensuring that the foster-parents were respectable people and that the parents or guardians voluntarily gave up all claim on the child. But if the sanction of the court were made necessary, the details could be safely left to the discretion of the judge. Everyone knows that the jurisdiction of the Court of Chancery over its wards has been exercised with the greatest care and skill from time immemorial.
There is another legal reform, intimately associated with adoption, that ought to be made in the interests of the children, as the Departmental Committee pointed out. It is, of course, the legitimation of children by the subse- quent marriage of their parents. In most foreign countries, in nearly every one of the United States, and also in Scotland, illegitimate children become legitimate if and when their parents marry. Even when the strange form of experimental marriage known as " handfasting " pre- vailed in the Highlands the issue of the union was recog- nized as legitimate though the wife, like the patient Griselda, might be sent back to her parents. England almost alone persists in rejecting this humane rule of law. The Christian Church, which strove from early times to uphold the sanctity of marriage, always maintained that marriage legitimized the children that had been born to the wedded pair. But the Church failed to impose its rule on mediaeval England. When the question was raised at the Council of Merton in 1236, the barons replied, Nolumus leges Angliae mutari (" We do not wish the laws of England to be changed "), and their stubborn refusal was upheld through the ages by the secular courts, always jealous of their ecclesiastical rivals. However, the anti- quity of the English lawyers' prejudice against a principle that is common to the Roman and to the Canen Law and has been embodied in the law of nearly all modern States, is no argument. There is every reason why the children born out of wedlock should have the same rights as their brothers and sisters who are born after their parents' marriage. It is nothing less than a disgrace that the illegitimate child of parents who are subsequently married should have no legal claim whatever upon them, save perhaps for bare subsistence. We are glad to see that the Home Secretary has introduced a Legitimation Bill which will remove this old and grievous anomaly and do justice to the child. It would be well if at an early date the whole of our laws relating to children were overhauled and strengthened. But the two questions of adoption and legitimation might well be settled at once.
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