their cattle; degrading women to the level of a domestic animal, ministering either to the comfort, convenience, or wants, of its sordid master. The practical inconveniences and evils resulting from this view of marriage are various and serious-How little pains will be taken to avoid with prudence, or to bear with christian meekness and submission, the trials of married life, when a mutual release from its duties and obligations can terminate them altogether! Is not this a bounty offered to vice, immorality, and domestic disunion? Let us also contemplate how seriously such a state of things must operate on the well being and comforts of the innocent children. Deprived of a Father's support, or a Mother's care; abandoned, in all probability, to the care of servants; destitute of education; children would then be left to the mercy of the world; to the supplies of accident; to the charity of the street; to the bleak and desolate waste; to the frozen hospital; to the inclemencies of the sky; to pine with hunger; to chill with nakedness; to linger with disease; and to droop with unkindness. Unrestrained by moral or religious considerations, it is to be presumed that they would follow, with too true a zeal, the vicious course pursued by their guilty parents. The limits of virtue and vice would become undistinguished; and the respectability, stability, and honour of character which married life confers on individuals, would be henceforth sought in vain. The guilt of the parents would thus find its consummation and its punishment in the profligacy, dishonour, and misery of their degraded and wretched offspring. When men, however, know that the situation in which they are placed is interminable except by death, they make up their minds to bear it with unrepining patience; or, they make those concessions, or adopt that line of conduct, which abate its discomfort. The very effort so to act is virtue and happiness-seriously to set about a remedy for present evil, is half its cure. Many families are now living in harmony and comfort, produced by the very knowledge that in themselves alone was to be found the healing ointment, and soothing cordial, for those wounds and heart burnings which else, by indulgence, had grown oppressively painful, and, ultimately, incurable. Let Marriage, how ́ever, be considered as only a civil contract, and such efforts to bear with patience, or to avoid with anxious care, or to conciliate with solicitude, will no longer be made. Society will fall into disunion, disorder, and crime; the evil and malignant passions of our depraved nature will riot in uncontroled licentiousness; and this world exhibit only one mass of misery and wretchedness. Whilst infidelity degrades, superstition unduly exalts Marriage into a Sacrament. This is not a theological treatise, and we shall, therefore, forbear any controversial arguments on this point. Our view of the subject is, in conformity to the old adage, ment. "In medio tutissimus ibis." Avoiding the difficulties and inconveniences which attach to these two extremes, we take a middle course, and define marriage to be a civil contract, under religious sanctions, and of divine appointThe former part of our definition leaves the parties themselves at liberty to choose, to judge, and to deliberate as to their future connection; it leaves to their own discretion the time, the circumstances, and the propriety of their unionBut when once that union has taken place, no earthly power possesses the right to suspend, or to dissolve it, on grounds of mere convenience, caprice, or pleasure. Until a writing be signed and sealed we may alter its provisions or stipulations; we may relax or tighten its conditions, so as to suit the views and interests of the contracting parties; but when once it is perfected and signed it must remain, ever after, unrepealed, and its conditions unaltered. Marriage is not a contract between two parties only: there are others intimately concerned in its stability and sacredness. Society, and the fruits of the union, are parties deeply implicated in its perpetuity and validity, and their interests are of solemn and important weight. The DESIGN of marriage may be inferred, from the circumstances of its institution, to be the perpetuity, and the happiness of the human race. It may be scarcely necessary to say that we exclude polygamy from our ideas of marriage. In savage Nations, where the passions and propensities of man meet unrestricted indulgence, such a state of life, indeed, exists. Where, also, the religion of the Crescent prevails, it offers the indulgence of the crowded Harem to the sensual appetites of its degraded votaries; for unlike christianity the religion of Mahomet conciliates the support and the affections of its disciples, by an unopposed geatifi cation of their unhallowed desires, and by the prospects and promises of unbounded sensual pleasures. We are aware that some good, but, in our view, misguided men have vindicated the system which the better sense of mankind has stigmatized and condemned:* notwithstanding, we are well convinced that by whatever plausible and, apparently, well intentioned arguments Polygamy may be attempted to be vindicated, it is a state inimical to the virtue, and destructive of the happiness, and interests of men. The very nature of marriage points out the propriety and necessity of its restriction. Wherever Polygamy has prevailed, the higher and holier purposes of the marriage relation have been overlooked. The sexes have been degraded into the mere propagators of their species; and the moral and benevolent intentions *See "Thelyphthora, or, Treatise on Female Ruin," by the late amiable Spencer Madan. It is almost inconceivable how the mind becomes prejudiced and perverted, by its blind attachment to favourite theories. Warburton's "Credibility" shows how even a strong mind, well cultivated, and stored with the soundest and deepest learning, can maintain and vindicate the most absurd and paradoxical opinions in support of its favourite maxims. Upon the question of Population it might, at first sight, appear as if the restriction of marriage would operate unfavourably on its increase but experience proves the supposition unfounded: and so : |