are is taken to
legitimate children by marriage. It was found by a committee
appointed to inquire into the marriage laws of Jamaica, that
three out of every five births are illegitimate, that is to say
that legal illegitimacy has ceased to be immoral, having become
the recognized custom of the majority of the inhabitants. There
is no social feeling against illegitimacy. The men approve of the
decay of legal marriage, because they say the women work better
in the house when they are not married; the women approve of it,
because they say that men are more faithful when not bound by
legal marriage. This has been well brought out by W.P.
Livingstone in his interesting book, _Black Jamaica_ (1899). The
people recognize, he tells us (p. 210), that "faithful living
together constitutes marriage;" they say that they are "married
but not parsoned." One reason against legal marriage is that they
are disinclined to incur the expense of the official sanction.
(In Venezuela, it may be added, where also the majority of births
take place outside official marriage, the chief reason is stated
to be, not moral laxity, but the same disinclination to pay the
expenses of legal weddings.) Frequently in later life, sometimes
when they have grown up sons and daughters, couples go through
the official ceremony. (In Abyssinia, also, it is stated by
Hugues Le Roux, where the people are Christian and marriage is
indissoluble and the ceremony expensive, it is not usual for
married couples to make their unions legal until old age is
coming on, _Sexual-Probleme_, April, 1908, p. 217.) It is
significant that this condition of things in Jamaica, as
elsewhere, is associated with the superiority of women. "The
women of the peasant class," remarks Livingstone (p. 212), "are
still practically independent of the men, and are frequently
their superiors, both in physical and mental capacity." They
refuse to bind themselves to a man who may turn out to be good
for nothing, a burden instead of a help and protection. So long
as the unions are free they are likely to be permanent. If made
legal, the risk is that they will become intolerable, and cease
by one of the parties leaving the other. "The necessity for
mutual kindness and forbearance establishes a condition that is
the best guarantee of permanency" (p. 214). I