According to the various conditions of life, both sexes alternately
felt the disgrace and injury; an inconstant spouse transferred her
wealth to a new family, abandoning a numerous, perhaps a spurious
progeny to the paternal authority and care of her late husband; a
beautiful virgin might be dismissed to the world, old, indigent, and
friendless; but the reluctance of the Romans, when they were pressed to
marriage by Augustus, sufficiently marks that the prevailing
institutions were least favorable to the males. A specious theory is
confuted by this free and perfect experiment, which demonstrates that
the liberty of divorce does not contribute to happiness and virtue. The
facility of separation would destroy all mutual confidence, and inflame
every trifling dispute; the minute difference between a husband and a
stranger, which might so easily be removed, might still more easily be
forgotten; and the matron, who in five years can submit to the embraces
of eight husbands, must cease to reverence the chastity of her own
person.
Insufficient remedies followed with distant and tardy steps the rapid
progress of the evil.
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