Marriage laws and statutory experiments in eugenics in the United States / by R. Newton Crane.

  • Crane, R. Newton (Robert Newton), 1848-
Date:
[1910]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Marriage laws and statutory experiments in eugenics in the United States / by R. Newton Crane. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    MARRIAGE LAWS AND STATUTORY EXPERI¬ MENTS IN EUGENICS IN THE UNITED STATES By R. Newton Crane, M.A. There is no epoch in American History of greater interest or of greater importance to the student and the sociologist than that which followed the landing of the Pilgrims upon the continent of North America. In England and in the Netherlands and in Switzerland, they had lived in protest against the constituted authority of their native land in matters of faith and dogma. They claimed the i fullest freedom of action where religious and social observances were concerned, and at the same time they denied to their opponents a like liberty. Controversies which at first centred about forms and ceremonies and vestments, were modified by disputes over the personal character of the sovereign and became identified with the political parties in the state. Laws were good or were bad according to the interpretation they put upon them. But, however intolerant we, in this age, may be of their intolerance, we cannot fail to recognise that they evinced a purity and consistency of conduct in morals which exalted their lives and exercised a wholesome influence upon their domestic relations. These pilgrims, all Englishmen, self-exiled for their form of religion, disciplined by misfortune and by their sufferings for conscience sake, cultivated by extensive observation of the laws of at least three countries, equal in rank as in rights, and bound by no code but that of religion and their idea of the public will, must have rejoiced, when they sailed from Plymouth, at the prospect of an opportunity to put into practice their exalted ideals with respect to liberty and their theories of what laws a state should have and how its government should be constituted