must be equally surprised and wounded, to see how many otherwise respectable writers in the peculiarly enlightened kingdom of Great Britain have, in a greater or less degree, lent their names to foster the wretched calumnies and falsehoods heaped so undeservedly upon this subject.

That there are unhappy marriages, and that the number of them is considerable, I am not disposed to question. There are many persons whose passions are too violent or whose temper is too sordid, to permit them to be happy in any situation. Persons marry at times whose dispositions are wholly incompatible with each other. There are vicious persons, who will neither be happy themselves, nor suffer others to be happy. All these, it is readily conceded, will find little happiness in the marriage-state.

The propensities, inwrought into our nature as a law, and the declarations of Scripture, teach us alike, and irresistibly, that this union is to be formed only on the ground of affection, regulated by prudence. On this plan, and on this only, can marriage be reasonably expected to be happy. We are not therefore to wonder, that persons who marry for the purposes of allying themselves to families of distinction, acquiring or repairing fortunes, obtaining rank, or gratifying in any manner ambition, avarice, or sensuality, should afterwards find themselves unhappy. These persons do not intentionally marry either husbands or wives. They marry distinction, fortunes, titles, villas, luxury, and grandeur. The objects to which they intentionally unite themselves they acquire. It cannot be wondered at that they do not gain those which they never sought; nor that they do not find the blessings of marriage following plans and actions which, unless incidentally, have no relation to marriage. These persons, it is true, find the objects to which they are really wedded, incumbered by beings who stand in the places of hushands and wives. Still, they cannot form even a pretence for complaining; since, with their eyes open, they voluntarily subject themselves, for the sake of such gratifications, to all the evils arising out of the incumbrance. The person who wishes to obtain the blessings designed by this or any other institution of God, must intentionally conform to the nature and spirit of the institution itself, and to all the precepts concerning it by which he has manifested his own pleasure.

I have lived in very many families, and those often in plain as well as polished life. With very many more, extensively diversified in character and circumstances, I have been intimately acquainted. By the evidence arising from these facts I am convinced, that the great body of married persons are rendered more happy by this union, and are as happy as their character and their circumstances could permit us to expect. Poverty cannot, whether in the married or single state, enjoy the pleasures of wealth; avarice, those of generosity; ambition, those of moderation; ignorance, those of knowledge; vulgarity, those of refinement; passion, those of gentleness; nor vice, in whatever form, those of virtue. The evils here specified marriage, it is true, cannot remove. Nor are they removeable by celibacy; and, where these evils exist, neither celibacy, nor marriage, can confer the contrary blessings. 'Grapes, here, will not grow upon thorns, nor figs upon thistles.' Nothing but folly can lead us to expect that this institution will change the whole nature of those who enter into it; and, like a magical spell, confer knowledge, virtue, and loveliness upon beings who have neither.

2. Another end of this institution is the preservation and comfort of children.

The experience of all ages and countries, so far as it has extended to this subject, has uniformly shown, that the offspring of illicit concubinage suffer innumerable evils to which those born in wedlock are not subjected. In a prodigious multitude of instances they perish before, or immediately after, they are born. In a vast multitude of others, they die in the early periods of childhood. They suffer from hunger, cold, nakedness, negligence, the want of nursing, watching, medicine, and every other comfort of life. The peculiar affection of married parents, and the peculiar efforts to which it gives birth, have ever been indispensable to the preservation of children from these evils, the establishment of their health, and the continuance of their lives. Children need ten thousand supplies, cares, and tendernesses, which nothing but this affection will ever furnish; and without which they either die suddenly, or waste away with a lingering dissolution.

This work, of raising up children from infancy to manhood, is the most laborious of all our worldly concerns; and requires more efforts of both body and mind, more toil, care, patience,

and perseverance than any other. To most men, indeed, it is a great part of all which ordinarily they find to do in their secular business.

For this great work, God, with wisdom which can never be sufficiently admired, has made effectual provision by the parental tenderness, always existing and flourishing in married parents with so few exceptions as to demand no attention here; but always withered, and commonly destroyed, by promiscuous concubinage. This tenderness neither time nor toil, neither care nor anxiety, neither trouble nor disappointment, neither filial ingratitude nor filial profligacy, can overcome, exhaust, or discourage. Other affections become cold, wearied, and disheartened; and are often converted into negligence, or hatred. But this, like the celestial fire in the Jewish temple, burns by night and by day; and is, through this world, an everlasting flame, which cannot be extinguished. Without it, what would become of children in poverty, in their rebellion, and in their profligacy? Who would watch over them; who relieve, supply, endure, and forgive?

In promiscuous concubinage children would 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, and to the inclemencies of the sky, to pine with hunger, to chill with nakedness, to shrivel with unkindness, to consume with premature disease, to die an untimely death, and, denied a grave, now the privilege even of beggars, to feed the beasts of the field, and the fowls of heaven.

3. This institution is the source of all the natural relations of mankind.

By these I mean the relations of husband and wife (which in a subordinate sense may be called natural,) those of parents and children, of brothers and sisters, together with many others, which are of considerable, although of inferior importance. These relations are immensely more interesting and useful to the world than any, nay, than all others. They connect mankind by bonds far more intimate, delightful, and enduring; resist incomparably more the irregular, evil, and stormy passions of man; soften his rugged nature, overthrow his violent purposes, and spread through the world a degree of peace and moderation which without them would be impossible.

4. This institution is the source of all the gentle and useful natural affections.

These are conjugal tenderness, parental love, filial piety, and brotherly and sisterly attachment; far the most amiable, endearing, permanent, and useful, native affections of man. No other affections have originally any softness, sweetness, or loveliness; but all owe to these every thing which is of this nature. All our native amiableness is awakened by the presence of those whom we love; and we originally love those only who form the domestic circle within which we were born; those from whom we early received the offices of tenderness. Here natural affection first springs; here also it grows and flourishes; and from its stem, deeply rooted here, sends abroad its boughs and branches, its blossoms and fruits. The mind here strengthened and refined, begins to wander abroad into the neighbourhood, to find new objects for attachment in other families. Relations, less near, easily slide into affection, and are inrolled by it in the list of those whom it loves. To these succeed, in their turns, a train of friends, neighbours, and countrymen; until the sphere swells beyond the limits of its comprehension. What would this world be without these affections, and without the conduct to which they give birth? Nothing good would ever be begun, much less be carried on, and conducted to a prosperous conclusion. But these affections commence, are cherished, and confirmed in families only; and without them would either never exist at all, or be mere abortions.

5. This institution is the source of all industry and

economy.

Industry is the source, and economy the preservation of all the comfortable subsistence of man. But industry, as is proverbially observed, is not natural to the human race. On the contrary, it is the result of education and habit only. Accordingly, the savages of all countries, being uneducated to industrious exertion, are lazy in the extreme, and are roused to toil only by the calls of hunger. This habit cannot even be begun, as the education whence it is derived cannot exist to any considerable extent, but in families; nor by any other persons, except parents; nor at any other period, beside childhood. Without families, indeed, industry would not exist; and without industry the world would be a desert.

Economy is not less necessary to human comfort than industry, and is still more unnatural to man. It demands the attention of every day to those things which we are to preserve; and this attention is more irksome than labour itself. Fewer persons overcome their reluctance to it. Savages are always squanderers. Exposed as they perpetually are to want and famine, and frequently and distressingly as they suffer from these evils, such is their reluctance to this employment, that they go on from age to age, wasting, suffering, and perishing.

Early, watchful, and long-continued education will alone establish a habit either of industry, or economy. The attention, the authority, and the example of parents are all equally and indispensably necessary to the creation of this habit; and without them all, it cannot in any extensive manner exist. Savages, indeed, have families; and are married parents. It may, therefore, be asked, why their children are not educated to these habits? The answer I have already given. Neither the attention, authority, nor example of savage parents are at all exerted for this end, so far as their male children are concerned; and very imperfectly with respect to those of the other sex. Of these, however, both the industry and economy fully answer to the degree of education which they receive, and to the opportunities which they enjoy of exercising them. My position is, that, without a domestic education, these things would never exist: not that that education, be it what it may, or that a mere domestic existence, will give them birth. Besides, savage parents neither understand nor perform the great body of duties created by this institution. Yet even they, in these, as well as in other important particulars, derive real and considerable advantages from the domestic state.

Without industry and economy, what would become of mankind? Their enjoyments, their improvements, their virtues, and their hopes, would all vanish at once: nay, their very subsistence would disappear. The earth within a few years would be emptied of ninety-nine hundredths of its inhabitants. Europe would be changed into a Lapland waste; and these States into a Patagonian forest.

6. This institution is the source of all education in useful knowledge, and to civility and sweetness of manners.