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io. PRESENT CONDITION. 449
The report of moral conditions is unsatisfactory. Be
sides the old sins of bad language, drunkenness and
unchastity, there are reports of dishonesty and untruthful-
ness. A bad relation between farmers and labourers is
said to be common. Labour contracts are broken, and the
farmers families sorely put to it to do their own work with
out proper hands. In forty parishes the vice of bad
language is decreasing, and the example of North America
is quoted as showing how public opinion may be used to
check it (p. 75).
Temperance societies are doing good work in many
places, but in some parishes they are rather conspicuous
for the amusements which they foster, and the temptations
to neglect
"
keeping the Sabbath "
which they create, and
the political and Socialistic agitations with which they are
connected. 46
In about ninety parishes intemperance has
diminished; in some in a high degree. In others, how
ever, it has increased. In 200 parishes from which
statistics are given more than twelve per cent, of the total
births are illegitimate. In three cases the proportion rises
to from thirty to thirty-three per cent. In one place half
the girls of twenty years of age have illegitimate children.
Marriages also, in which the rite has been anticipated, are
naturally extremely frequent, so that this may be con
sidered in many places a social custom (p. 76).
Other Diocesan Addresses.
I
might illustrate many of the foregoing points from a
similar address of the Bishop of Kalmar 47
at his clerical
synod of September, 1909, held just before our visit to
Upsala. But the statistics are not given with much ful
ness. I gather, however, from its tone that the condition
of Church life is more encouraging than in the diocese of
Upsala. Thus the practice of bringing children to be
46
Bishop Ullman also notices this, p. 4.
47
Tal och Foredrag af Bishopen, Doktor H. W. Tottie,
Kalmar, 1910.
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