public poor relief. In the cities this percentage was almost three times higher and in a large city like Stockholm, the percentage had risen to at least sixty percent. The committee preferred the introduction of a comprehensive package of social security means including a law reform to permit the illegitimate child to inherit from its mother and thus become less dependent on poor relief.38 The question of illegitimacy was once and for all connected to the public purse, a strong argument for a reform according to the principle that the self-interest of those who have can always be relied on. The first legislative step was taken in when illegitimacy was declared no absolute impediment to receiving maternal inheritance.39 Poverty was only one social factor that changed the law. Another was the breaking up of state Church privileges after the establishing of a strong and politically influential Free Church movement during the second half of the nineteenth century. Baptists especially vigorously rejected the wedding monopoly of the state Church and instead preferred free cohabitation to the humiliation of requesting a state Church priest to perform the wedding ceremony. The undesired outcome was obviously that Baptist children became illegitimate. The intolerable situation was cured in the s by authorising the Free Churches to license and solemnise their own weddings.40 For the first time authority based on secular rationality played a significant role for the value systems, although survival values continued to prevail. However, the star on the map representing illegitimacy took a great step from the firm grip of traditional authority to a position where we today perhaps would find Orthodox Europe. 134 38 Underdånigt Betänkande om Fattigvården i Riket utom Stockholms Stad, jemte dermed sammmanhang egande ämnen. Stockholm 1839. - Underdånigt Betänkande med dertill hörande handlingar angående fattigvården i Stockholms stad. På kongl maj:ts nådigste befallning till trycket befordrade. Stockholm 1839. 39 Inger (1997), 204-07. 40 G. Hafström, Den svenska familjerättens historia,44-46. (Lund 1972: Studentlitteratur.). - Inger (1997), 194-96.
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