imposed on us. By this means alone can we regain our right of fovereignty; and, fating our appetite, re-establish the authority of reason in our minds, and, of confequence, our own authority in our families. Man, like a weak fovereign, being unable to support himself against the wiles and intrigues of his fubjects, must play one faction against another, and become abfolute by the mutual jealousy of the females. To divide and to govern is an universal maxim; and by neglecting it, the EUROPEANS undergo a more grievous and a more ignominious flavery than the TURKS OF PERSIANS, who are subjected indeed to a fovereign, that lies at a distance from them, but in their domeftic affairs rule with an uncontroulable fway.

On the other hand, it may be urged with better reafon, that this fovereignty of the male is a real ufurpation, and deftroys that nearness of rank, not to say equality, which nature has established between the fexes. We are, by nature, their lovers, their friends, their patrons: Would we willingly change fuch endearing appellations, for the barbarous title of master and tyrant?

In what capacity fhall we gain by this inhuman proceeding? As lovers, or as husbands? The lover, is totally annihilated; and courtship, the most agreeable fcene in life, can no longer have place, where women have not the free difpofal of themselves, but are bought and fold, like the meaneft animal. The husband is as little a gainer, having found the admirable fecret of extinguishing every part of love, except its jealousy. There is no rose without its thorn; but he must be a foolish wretch indeed, that throws away the rose and preferves only the thorn.

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But the ASIATIC manners are as deftructive to friendfhip as to love. Jealoufy excludes men from all intimacies and familiarities with each other. No one dares bring his friend to his house or table, left he bring a lover to his numerous wives. Hence all over the east, each family is as feparate from another, as if they were fo many diftinct kingdoms. No wonder then, that SOLOMON, living like an eaftern prince, with his feven hundred wives, and three hundred concubines, without one friend, could write fo pathetically concerning the vanity of the world. Had he tried the fecret of one wife or mistress, a few friends, and a great many companions, he might have found life fomewhat more agreeable. Destroy love and friendship; what remains in the world worth accepting?

The bad education of children, especially children of condition, is another unavoidable confequence of these eaftern inftitutions. Thofe, who pafs the early part of life among flaves, are only qualified to be, themselves, flåves and tyrants; and in every future intercourfe, either with their inferiors or fuperiors, are apt to forget the natural equality of mankind. What attention, too, can it be fuppofed a parent, whofe feraglio affords him fifty fons, will give to inftilling principles of morality or science into a progeny, with whom he himself is fcarcely acquainted, and whom he loves with fo divided an affection? Barbarifm, therefore, appears, from reafon as well as experience, to be the infeparable attendant of polygamy.

To render polygamy more odious, I need not recount the frightful effects of jealoufy, and the constraint in which it holds the fair-fex all over the east. In those countries men are not allowed to have any commerce with VOL. I.

the

the females, not even physicians, when sickness may be fupposed to have extinguished all wanton paffions in the bosoms of the fair, and, at the fame time, has rendered them unfit

objects of defire. TOURNEFORT tells us, that, when he was brought into the grand fignior's feraglio as a physician, he was not a little surprized, in looking along a gallery, to fee a great number of naked arms, ftanding out from the fides of the room. He could not imagine what this could mean; till he was told, that those arms belonged to bodies, which he muft cure, without knowing any more about them, than what he could learn from the arms. He was not allowed to ask a question of the patient, or even of her attendants, left he might find it neceffary to enquire concerning circumftances, which the delicacy of the feraglio allows not to be revealed. Hence phyficians in the eaft pretend to know all diseases from the pulse; as our quacks in EUROPE undertake to cure a perfon merely from seeing his water. I suppose, had Monfieur TOURNEFORT been of this latter kind, he would not, in CONSTANTINOPLE, have been allowed by the jealous TURKS to be furnished with materials requifite for exercifing his art.

In another country, where polygamy is alfo allowed, they render their wives cripples, and make their feet of no use to them, in order to confine them to their own houses. But it will, perhaps, appear ftrange, that, in a EUROPEAN Country, jealousy can yet be carried to fuch a height, that it is indecent fo much as to suppose that a woman of rank can have feet or legs. Witness the following story, which we have from very good authority. When the mother of the late king of SPAIN was

+ Memoirs de la cour d'ESPAGNE par Màdame d'AvNOY,

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on her road towards MADRID, fhe paffed through a little town in SPAIN, famous for its manufactory of gloves and ftockings. The magiftrates of the place thought they could not better exprefs their joy for the reception of their new queen, than by presenting her with a sample of those commodities, for which alone their town was remarkable. The major-domo, who conducted the princefs, received the gloves very graciously: But when the stockings were presented, he flung them away with great indignation, and feverely reprimanded the magistrates for this egregious piece of indecency. Know, fays he, that a queen of SPAIN has no legs. The young queen, who, at that time, understood the language but imperfectly, and had often been frightened with ftories of SPANISH jealousy, imagined that they were to cut off her legs. Upon which she fell a crying, and begged them to conduct her back to GERMANY; for that she never could endure the operation: And it was with fome difficulty they could appease her. PHILIP IV. is faid never in his life to have laughed heartily, but at the recital of this story.

Having rejected polygamy, and matched one man with one woman, let us now confider what duration we fhall affign to their union, and whether we fhall admit of those voluntary divorces, which were cuftomary among the GREEKS and ROMANS. Those who would defend this practice may employ the following reafons.

How often does difguft and averfion arife after marriage, from the moft trivial accidents, or from an incompatibility of humour; where time, inftead of curing the wounds, proceeding from mutual injuries, fefters them every day the more, by new quarrels and reproaches? Let us separate hearts, which were not made to affociate together. Each of them may, perhaps, find

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find another for which it is better fitted. At least, nothing can be more cruel than to preferve, by violence, an union, which, at firft, was made by mutual love, and is now, in effect, diffolved by mutual hatred.

But the liberty of divorces is not only a cure to hatred and domestic quarrels: It is also an admirable prefervative against them, and the only fecret for keeping alive that love, which firft united the married couple. The heart of man delights in liberty: The very image of constraint is grievous to it: When you would confine it by violence, to what would otherwife have been its choice, the inclination immediately changes, and defire is turned into averfion. If the public interest will not allow us to enjoy in polygamy that variety, which is fo agreeable in love; at least, deprive us not of that liberty, which is fo effentially requifite. In vain tell me, that I had my choice of the perfon, with whom I would conjoin myself. I had my choice, it is true, of my prifon; but this is but a fmall comfort, fince it must ftill be a prifon.

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Such are the arguments which may be urged in favour of divorces: But there feem to be these three unanswerable objections against them. First, What must become of the children, upon the feparation of the parents? Muft they be committed to the care of a stepmother; and inftead of the fond attention and concern of a parent, feel all the indifference or hatred of a ftranger or an enemy? These inconveniencies are fufficiently felt, where nature has made the divorce by the doom inevitable to all mortals: And fhall we feek to multiply thofe inconveniencies, by multiplying divorces, and putting it in the power of parents, upon every caprice, to render their posterity miferable.