The insufficiency of the redress which the law of the land affords, for those injuries which chiefly affect a man in his sensibility and reputation, tempts many to redress themselves. Prosecutions for such offences, by the trifling damages that are recovered, serve only to make the sufferer more ridiculous.-This ought to be remedied.

For the army, where the point of honour is cultivated with exquisite attention and refinement, I would establish a Court of Honour, with a power Murder is forbidden; and wherever human life of awarding those submissions and acknowledgis deliberately taken away, otherwise than by pub-ments, which it is generally the purpose of a lic authority, there is murder. The value and se- challenge to obtain; and it might grow into a curity of human life make this rule necessary; for fashion, with persons of rank of all professions, to I do not see what other idea or definition of mur- refer their quarrels to this tribunal. der can be admitted, which will not let in so much private violence, as to render society a scene of peril and bloodshed.

reproved the litigiousness of his Corinthian con-1 others, the prosecution of which, being of equal

On the one hand, therefore, Christianity ex- The character of an informer is in this country cludes all vindictive motives, and all frivolous undeservedly odious. But where any public adcauses, of prosecution; so that where the injury vantage is likely to be attained by information, or is small, where no good purpose of public example other activity in promoting the execution of the is answered, where forbearance is not likely to laws, a good man will despise a prejudice founded invite a repetition of the injury, or where the ex-in no just reason, or will acquit himself of the pense of an action becomes a punishment too se- imputation of interested designs by giving away vere for the offence; there the Christian is with- his share of the penalty. holden by the authority of his religion from going to law.

EXAMPLES of ingratitude check and discourage voluntary beneficence: and in this, the mischief of ingratitude consists. Nor is the mischief small; for after all is done that can be done, towards proAs to the rest, the duty of the contending par-viding for the public happiness, by prescribing ties may be expressed in the following directions: Not by appeals to prolong a suit against your own conviction.

It may be observed, however, that gratitude can never oblige a man to do what is wrong, and what by consequence he is previously obliged not to do. It is no ingratitude to refuse to do, what There are many offences, such as nuisances, we cannot reconcile to any apprehensions of our neglect of public roads, forestalling, engrossing, duty; but it is ingratitude and hypocrisy together, smuggling, sabbath-breaking, profaneness, drunk- to pretend this reason, when it is not the real one: enness, prostitution, the keeping of lewd or dis-and the frequency of such pretences has brought orderly houses, the writing, publishing, or expos- this apology for non-compliance with the will of a ing to sale, lascivious books or pictures, with some benefactor into unmerited disgrace.

It has long been accounted a violation of delica- | servant may be a very bad servant, and yet seldom cy and generosity to upbraid men with the favours or never design to act in opposition to his masthey have received: but it argues a total destitu- ter's interest or will: and his master may justly tion of both these qualities, as well as of moral punish such servant for a thoughtlessness and probity, to take advantage of that ascendency neglect nearly as prejudicial as deliberate disobewhich the conferring of benefits justly creates, todience. I accuse you not, he may say, of any draw or drive those whom we have obliged into mean or dishonest compliances.

to the production of gratuitous mischief. When OF RELATIVE DUTIES WHICH RESULT FROM we have an end or interest of our own to serve, if we attempt to compass it by falsehood, it is fraud; if by a publication of the truth, it is not without some additional circumstance of breach of promise, betraying of confidence, or the like, to be deemed criminal.

1. The private comfort of individuals, especially of the female sex. It may be true, that all are not The guilt here consists in the want of that re-interested in this reason; nevertheless, it is a reagard to the consequences of our conduct, which a son to all for abstaining from any conduct which just affection for human happiness, and concern tends in its general consequence to obstruct marfor our duty would not have failed to have pro- riage: for whatever promotes the happiness of the duced in us. And it is no answer to this crimina- majority, is binding upon the whole. tion to say, that we entertained no evil design. A | 2. The production of the greatest number of

nealthy children, their better education, and the 3. Fornication* produces habits of ungovernable making of due provision for their settlement in life. 3. The peace of human society, in cutting off a principal source of contention, by assigning one or more women to one man, and protecting his exclusive right by sanctions of morality and law. 4. The better government of society, by distributing the community into separate families, and appointing over each the authority of a master of a family, which has more actual influence than all civil authority put together.

5. The same end, in the additional security which the state receives for the good behaviour of its citizens, from the solicitude they feel for the welfare of their children, and from their being confined to permanent habitations.

6. The encouragement of industry. Some ancient nations appear to have been more sensible of the importance of marriage institutions than we are. The Spartans obliged their citizens to marry by penalties, and the Romans encouraged theirs by the jus trium liberorum. A man who had no child, was entitled by the Roman law only to one half of any legacy that should be left him, that is, at the most, could only receive one half of the testator's fortune.

CHAPTER II.
Fornication.

THE first and great mischief, and by consequence the guilt, of promiscuous concubinage, consists in its tendency to diminish marriages, and thereby to defeat the several beneficial purposes enumerated in the preceding chapter.

Promiscuous concubinage discourages marriage, by abating the chief temptation to it. The male part of the species will not undertake the encumbrance, expense, and restraint of married life, if they can gratify their passions at a cheaper price; and they will undertake any thing, rather than not gratify them.

lewdness, which introduces the more aggravated crimes of seduction, adultery, violation, &c. Likewise, however it be accounted for, the criminal commerce of the sexes corrupts and depraves the mind and moral character more than any single species of vice whatsoever. That ready percep tion of guilt, that prompt and decisive resolution against it, which constitutes a virtuous character, is seldom found in persons addicted to these indulgences. They prepare an easy admission for every sin that seeks it; are, in low life, usually the first stage in men's progress to the most desperate villanies; and, in high life, to that lamented dissoluteness of principle, which manifests itself in a profligacy of public conduct, and a contempt of the obligations of religion and of moral probity. Add to this, that habits of libertinism incapacitate and indispose the mind for all intellectual, moral, and religious pleasures; which is a great loss to any man's happiness.

4. Fornication perpetuates a disease, which may be accounted one of the sorest maladies of human nature; and the effects of which are said to visit the constitution of even distant generations.

The passion being natural, proves that it was intended to be gratified: but under what restrictions, or whether without any, must be collected from different considerations.

The Christian Scriptures condemn fornication absolutely and peremptorily. "Out of the heart," says our Saviour, "proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornication, thefts, false witness, blasphemies; these are the things which defile a man.' These are Christ's own words: and one word from him upon the subject, is final. It may be observed with what society fornication is classed; with murders, thefts, false witness, blasphemies. I do not mean that these crimes are all equal, because they are all mentioned together; but it proves that they are all crimes. The apostles are more full upon this topic. One well-known passage in the Epistle to the Hebrews, may stand in the place of all others; because, admitting the authority by which the apostles of Christ spake and wrote, it is decisive: " Marriage and the bed undefiled is honourable amongst all men: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge;" which was a great deal to say, at a time when it was not agreed, even amongst philosophers themselves, that fornication was a crime.

The reader will learn to comprehend the magnitude of this mischief, by attending to the importance and variety of the uses to which marriage is subservient; and by recollecting withal, that the malignity and moral quality of each crime is not to be estimated by the particular effect of one offence, or of one person's offending, but by the general tendency and consequence of crimes of the same nature. The libertine may not be The Scriptures give no sanction to those ausconscious that these irregularities hinder his own terities, which have been since imposed upon the marriage, from which he is deterred, he may al-world under the name of Christ's religion; as the lege, by different considerations; much less does he perceive how his indulgences can hinder other men from marrying; but what will he say would be the consequence, if the same licentiousness were universal? or what should hinder its becoming universal, if it be innocent or allowable in him?

2. Fornication supposes prostitution; and prostitution brings and leaves the victims of it to almost certain misery. It is no small quantity of misery in the aggregate, which, between want, disease, and insult, is suffered by those outcasts of human society, who infest populous cities; the whole of which is a general consequence of fornication, and to the increase and continuance of which, every act and instance of fornication contributes.

celibacy of the clergy, the praise of perpetual virginity, the prohibitio concubitus cum gravida uxore; but with a just knowledge of, and regard to, the condition and interest of the human species, have provided, in the marriage of one man with one woman, an adequate gratification for the propensities of their nature, and have restricted them to that gratification.

The avowed toleration, and in some countries the licensing, taxing, and regulating of public brothels, has appeared to the people an authorising of fornication; and has contributed, with other

* Of this passion it has been truly said, that "irregularity has no limits; that one excess draws on another; that the most easy, therefore, as well as the most excellent way of being virtuous, is to be so entirely." Ogden, Serm. xvi.

causes, so far to vitiate the public opinion, that there is no practice of which the immorality is so little thought of or acknowledged, although there are few in which it can more plainly be made out. The legislators who have patronised receptacles of prostitution, ought to have foreseen this effect, as well as considered, that whatever facilitates fornication, diminishes marriages. And, as to the usual apology for this relaxed discipline, the dinger of greater enormities, if access to prostitutes were too strictly watched and prohibited, it will be time enough to look to that, when the laws and the magistrates have done their utmost. The greatest vigilance of both will do no more, than oppose some bounds and some difficulties to this intercourse. And, after all, these pretended fears are without foundation in experience. The men are in all respects the most virtuous, in countries where the women are most chaste.

There is a species of cohabitation, distinguishable, no doubt, from vagrant concubinage, and which, by reason of its resemblance to marriage, may be thought to participate of the sanctity and innocence of that estate; I mean the case of kept mistresses, under the favourable circumstance of mutual fidelity. This case I have heard defended by some such apology as the following:

"That the marriage-rite being different in different countries, and in the same country amongst different sects, and with some scarce any thing; and, moreover, not being prescribed or even mentioned in Scripture, can be accounted for only as of a form and ceremony of human invention: that, consequently, if a man and woman betroth and confine themselves to each other, their intercourse must be the same, as to all moral purposes, as if they were legally married; for the addition or omission of that which is a mere form and ceremony, can make no difference in the sight of God, or in the actual nature of right and wrong."

To all which it may be replied,

1. If the situation of the parties be the same thing as marriage, why do they not marry?

2. If the man choose to have it in his power to dismiss the woman at his pleasure, or to retain her in a state of humiliation and dependence inconsistent with the rights which marriage would confer upon her, it is not the same thing.

It is not at any rate the same thing to the children.

Again, as to the marriage-rite being a mere form, and that also variable, the same may be said of signing and sealing of bonds, wills, deeds of conveyance, and the like, which yet make a great difference in the rights and obligations of the parties concerned in them.

has annexed these rights and obligations to certain forms, so that they cannot be secured or undertaken by any other means, which is the case here (for, whatever the parties may promise to each other, nothing but the marriage ceremony can make their promise irrevocable,) it becomes in the same degree immoral, that men and women should cohabit without the interposition of these forins.

If fornication be criminal, all those incentives which lead to it are accessaries to the crime; as lascivious conversation, whether expressed in obscene, or disguised under modest phrases; also wanton songs, pictures, books; the writing, publishing, and circulating of which, whether out of frolic, or for some pitiful profit, is productive of so extensive a mischief from so mean a temptation, that few crimes, within the reach of private wickedness, have more to answer for, or less to plead in their excuse.

Indecent conversation, and by parity of reason all the rest, are forbidden by Saint Paul, Eph. iv. 29. "Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth;" and again, Col. iii. 8. Put off filthy communication out of your mouth."

The invitation, or voluntary admission, of impure thoughts, or the suffering them to get possession of the imagination, falls within the same description, and is condemned by Christ, Matt. v. 28. "Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her, hath committed adultery with her already in his heart." Christ, by thus enjoining a regulation of the thoughts, strikes at the root of the evil.

CHAPTER III.
Seduction.

THE seducer practises the same stratagems to draw a woman's person into his power, that a swindler does to get possession of your goods, or money; yet the law of honour, which abhors deceit, applauds the address of a successful intrigue; so much is this capricious rule guided by names, and with such facility does it accommodate itself to the pleasures and conveniency of higher life!

Seduction is seldom accomplished without fraud; and the fraud is by so much more criminal than other frauds, as the injury effected by it is greater, continues longer, and less admits reparation.

This injury is threefold: to the woman, to her family, and to the public.

I. The injury to the woman is made up of the pain she suffers from shame, or the loss she sustains And with respect to the rite not being appoint-in her reputation and prospects of marriage, and ed in Scripture-the Scriptures forbid fornica- of the depravation of her moral principle. tion, that is, cohabitation without marriage, leaving it to the law of each country to pronounce what is, or what makes, a marriage; in like manner as they forbid thefts, that is, the taking away of another's property, leaving it to the municipal law to fix what makes the thing property, or whose it is; which also, as well as marriage, depend upon arbitrary and mutable forms.

Laying aside the injunctions of Scripture, the plain account of the question seems to be this: It is immoral, because it is pernicious, that men and women should cohabit, without undertaking certain irrevocable obligations, and mutually conferring certain civil rights; if, therefore, the law,

1. This pain must be extreme, if we may judge of it from those barbarous endeavours to conceal their disgrace, to which women, under such cir cumstances, sometimes have recourse; comparing also this barbarity with their passionate fondness for their offspring in other cases. Nothing but an agony of mind the most insupportable can induce a woman to forget her nature, and the pity which even a stranger would show to a helpless and imploring infant. It is true, that all are not urged to this extremity; but if any are, it affords an indication of how much all suffer from the same cause. What shall we say to the authors of such mischief?

7*