not only the
happiness, but the virtue of almost the whole human race is concerned:
I mean marriage; the restraints on which, in almost every country, not
only tend to encourage celibacy, and a destructive libertinism the
consequence of it, to give fresh strength to domestic tyranny, and
subject the generous affections of uncorrupted youth to the guidance of
those in whom every motive to action but avarice is dead; to condemn
the blameless victims of duty to a life of indifference, of disgust,
and possibly of guilt; but, by opposing the very spirit of our
constitution, throwing property into a few hands, and favoring that
excessive inequality, which renders one part of the species wretched,
without adding to the happiness of the other; to destroy at once the
domestic felicity of individuals, contradict the will of the Supreme
Being, as clearly wrote in the book of nature, and sap the very
foundations of the most perfect form of government on earth.

A pretty long-winded period this: Bell would call it true
Ciceronian, and quote

"--Rivers for a period of a mile."

But to proceed. The only equality to which parents in general
attend, is that of fortune; whereas a resemblance in age, in temper, in
personal attractions, in birth, in education, understanding, and
sentiment, are the only foundations of that lively taste, that tender
friendship, without which no union deserves the sacred name of
marriage.

Timid, compliant youth may be forced into the arms of age and
disease; a lord may invite a citizen's daughter he despises to his bed,
to repair a shattered fortune; and she may accept him, allured by the
rays of a coronet: but such conjunctions are only a more shameful
species of prostitution.

Men who marry from interested motives are inexcusable; but the very
modesty of women makes against their happiness in this point, by giving
them a kind of bashful fear of objecting to such persons as their
parents recommend as proper objects of their tenderness.

I am prevented by company from saying all I intended.

Adieu! Your faithful
Ed. Rivers.

LETTER 210.

To Colonel Rivers.

Temple-house, Nov. 1.

You wrong me excessively, my dear Rivers, in accusing me of a
natural levity in love and friendship.

As to the latter, my frequent changes, which I freely acknowledge,
have not been owing to any inconstancy, but to precipitation and want
of caution in contracting them.

My general fault