associate together, at an age when, if they be properly trained, their mutual wish to please will only be inspired to them by pure, refined motives.

To fortify, in youths, the resolution to be guided, after marriage, in their conduct towards a wife, by firm, rational principles, they should be early taught to reign, steadily, over their passions, And are they taught such a virtuous self-control? Unhappily, no. They quickly, on the contrary, learn to believe that unmarried men are not bound to yield a rigorous obedience to the precepts of virtue, and that it will be time enough for them when they marry, to begin to practise a rigorous self-government.

Nor are these the only measures taken, of which the practical result is, to make husbands the sport of every passion which can agitate their breast.

The same laws which were enacted at a time when the opinions of society engaged husbands to govern their families respectably, according to the notions then prevailing, these laws which almost entirely, on a woman's marriage, annihilated her civil rights, to give her into her chief's power, are still in force, though little in harmony with the spirit of the present times.*

Of these, and many other laws, the relics of ancient times, which press hardly on women, the indulgent spirit of the present day, endeavours to mitigate the severity, by inducing parents and relations to bequeath to females a much larger share of their property, than it was formerly the custom to leave them. The consequence is, that a much greater number of pecuniary prizes, than there did formerly, offer themselves now to tempt young men to seek to render their worldly affairs prosperous, by means of a wealthy marriage. These prizes, too, will lie absolutely at their disposal, if they succeed in wheedling the women who can confer them, to become theirs without such a rigorous settlement as is not very usual. And they may hope to persuade them to do so, since not only affection, but a sentiment of delicacy and magnanimity, tells

They are often greatly eluded by the settlement, on a wife, of her own fortune. But it is, I believe, sufficiently evident to every observer of the morals of mankind, that such settlements do not promote the happy consolidation of the conjugal bond.

a woman that she ought not to withhold the absolute disposal of her fortune from the husband on whom she willingly be stows her person.

To become candidates for the prizes which they may win in matrimony, young men are strongly excited, by their expensive habits, and their dislike to bend their minds to the employments of a laborious profession, as well as by the idea that even were they, diligently, to apply to one, they could but very slowly, if at all, rise to affluence and distinction, by their wearisome toil. Whereas, could they win a rich wife, they would exult, in a triumph over competitors, and, without laying any restraint on their tastes, would secure the means of revelling, for the rest of their lives, in idleness and luxury. These considerations render the temptation to embark in what is called fortune-hunting, too strong to be resisted by young men prone to vanity, as the Irish commonly are,-—and easily elated by the thought of appearing irresistible to the fair. Accordingly, the most of those youths, who are proud of their external figure, and who burn with a strong desire, though their means be very limited, of shining in genteel circles, resolve to repair the unkindness of fortune, by finding a rich wife. In acting up to such a resolution, they almost always, as I believe, totally degrade their character, and cause. it to become unmanly, frivolous and contemptible.

Nature ordains that there shall, generally, be a certain moral correspondence between the line of conduct chosen by mankind and the hopes that they seek to realize.

As there is, therefore, nothing becoming a man in the hope of growing rich by taking a wife, he that forms such a hope, does not seek to accomplish his project by manly behaviour. There are wealthy women who would be most easily allured to engage in a marriage that made no addition to their fortune, by youths diligently occupied in application to liberal studies, or to the duties of an honorable profession. But men whose design is to enrich themselves by marriage, do not exhibit a conduct adapted to please rational women. As their project is unworthy a manly character, so is the conduct by which they try to fulfil it. They study nothing but their attire and outward appearances, taking care that their figure,

their language, their address, shall all be such that frivolous women, devoted to the study of the ordinances of fashion, must allow them to be most accomplished, charming creatures.

Men cannot determine to seek to make their fortune by marriage, without wounding the true dignity of their character; for every unsophisticated, manly mind, knows well that it becomes individuals of the stronger sex, to enjoy the thought of elevating a woman, by marrying her, to a more prósperous condition, rather than to wish to be indebted to a wife for riches and honours.

I do not mean to say that a rational, noble minded man, who chances to inspire a fond passion to a single woman possessed of far more wealth than, in the ordinary course of things, he would have any pretensions to, is not, in honour, at liberty to profit by his good fortune.

Provided the friends whom she is bound to consult, are satisfied that he should.

That his behaviour to them has been fair and open.

That he can like her; and that he is conscious of being precisely the character which she conceives him to be, and which has such attractions for her, that an union with him appears to her more desirable than the acquisition of riches.

But of thus much I am certain, that he will not seek such an opportunity to rise to opulence; and that, when it occurs, his pride, even while he takes advantage of it, will be enough humiliated at the thought of the obligation which he is going to contract towards a wife, to cause the pain that it will thence receive, in some measure, to counterbalance the pleasure that it will derive from the flattering idea, that a woman who could easily bestow herself more advantageously in the eye of the world, finds in him such peculiar merit, that she gladly determines to devote, to him, her whole existence.

But if the idea of a marriage in which the husband, rather than the wife, is placed in the world in a more flourishing situation, is revolting to a becoming manly pride, what shall we say to those men who court women much their superiors in fortune, not with any intention of making them happy, but simply because marriage will give them an opportunity of legally robbing them of all their fortune? I hope most of my readers

will agree with me in thinking, that in such men one trace does not remain, either of the honorable feelings which naturally distinguish a manly character, or of the principles of justice that mark a person of integrity. If they happen to be too prudent to expose themselves to legal penalties, it is not speaking too severely of them to affirm, that nothing but the fear of being condemned to merited punishment by a public tribunal, restrains them from the commission of the blackest crimes.

And yet to the danger of becoming, by degrees, such degenerate, hard-hearted monsters, do the youths expose themselves who once embark in the trade of fortune hunting. For in doing so, they forsake the standard of manly dignity erected by nature in their bosoms; placing themselves on a slope that hides it from them, and that leads, rapidly, to a low gulf of depravity, circumstances, readily, tempt them to hasten downward, till they reach the bottom and become immersed, for ever, in the most opprobrious vices.

To the misfortune of encountering, in marriage, one of these miserable fortune hunters, are women who have any property now greatly exposed. Even should they be so wise as to escape their snares and make what is called a fairly propor tioned match, they still run a great risk of uniting their destiny to that of a spendthrift-for many causes now combine to render men extravagant-who will plunge them in misery.

From the above observations I conclude that, the conse. quence of women being treated with much more indulgence than formerly-owing to that indulgence being extended to them in a thoughtless, irregular manner, and to the laws which preside over their general situation, rudely clashing with it— is, that many more of them are now unhappy in marriage, than there were at the time that the general opinion sanctioned husbands in the exercise of a stern authority.

The tyranny which is regulated by principle has bounds, particularly when it is a wife that is the object of it, for a husband is not, naturally, inclined, from principle, to be the tyrant of his wife.*

The above assertion requires some qualification :

An Irishman, naturally, takes such pleasure in female society, that when his principles lead him to assume to his wife a magisterial tone, that pre

Closely identifying with his own, his wife's honour, he treats her with high respect, setting to every one else the example of the consideration with which he expects them to behave to her. "Tis when men allow themselves to be drifted about by their passions, till they forget all principle, that they are tempted to despise and ill treat a wife, as though she were the vilest of women, merely for belonging to them. Whether many men are excited by their passions, at present, shamefully to forget a wife's dignity, I have had no opportunity to learn; but thus much the many facts which have come to my knowledge, concerning domestic life, warrant me in concluding, that the husbands who, from principle, exert an imperious authority over their wives, are now very rare indeed,† while many are they who make them unhappy, by yielding to passions, to restrain which they do not exert any principle what

ever.

It may be observed that I bear too hardly upon husbands; that prodigality, which is the great shoal on which conjugal happiness is now apt to split, is a fault as prevalent among wives as among husbands; that even the fortune hunter, when he has succeeded in obtaining a rich wife, is often more than she the victim of the marriage uniting them, since he has become bound by it to a partner whose arrogance he cannot repress, and whose tastes for expenditure, far outrunning even the income which she has bestowed on him, are a never ceasing cause of anxiety to him, and involve him, at last, in greater difficulties than those from which she had, for a time, extricated him.

If this charge against wives be true, and I do not seek to disprove it, it is a further reason for convincing me that the

vents her conversing with him with sufficient freedom, he feels a void in his breast, which he supplies by inebriating himself along with jovial companions. The habit which he thus contracts, is very prejudicial to his amability as a husband. He is, besides, too liable to display a harsh, unkind temper to the females of his family, owing to his being exasperated at not having in their society much satisfaction: though the coldness with which they behave to him arises from the austere reserve of his own demeanour towards them.

The few who do make their authority too much felt by a wife, seem to have inferred, that the chief of a family does well in obliging it to submit to his strict and absolute sway, from having observed that many families had been ruined, on account of not having been guided by a firm, decisive head.