tion
in the one or answer in the other. No letters being first brought to
him, he never sees any but those that shall seem fit for his knowledge.
If by accident they fall first into his own hand, being used to trust
somebody to read them to him; he reads extempore what he thinks fit, and
often makes such a one ask him pardon who abuses and rails at him in his
letter. In short, he sees nothing, but by an image prepared and designed
beforehand and the most satisfactory they can invent, not to rouse and
awaken his ill humour and choler. I have seen, under various aspects,
enough of these modes of domestic government, long-enduring, constant, to
the like effect.

Women are evermore addicted to cross their husbands: they lay hold with
both hands on all occasions to contradict and oppose them; the first
excuse serves for a plenary justification. I have seen one who robbed
her husband wholesale, that, as she told her confessor, she might
distribute the more liberal alms. Let who will trust to that religious
dispensation. No management of affairs seems to them of sufficient
dignity, if proceeding from the husband's assent; they must usurp it
either by insolence or cunning, and always injuriously, or else it has
not the grace and authority they desire. When, as in the case I am
speaking of, 'tis against a poor old man and for the children, then they
make use of this title to serve their passion with glory; and, as for a
common service, easily cabal, and combine against his government and
dominion. If they be males grown up in full and flourishing health, they
presently corrupt, either by force or favour, steward, receivers, and all
the rout. Such as have neither wife nor son do not so easily fall into
this misfortune; but withal more cruelly and unworthily. Cato the elder
in his time said: So many servants, so many enemies; consider, then,
whether according to the vast difference between the purity of the age he
lived in and the corruption of this of ours, he does not seem to shew us
that wife, son, and servant, are so many enemies to us? 'Tis well for
old age that it is always accompanied by want of observation, ignorance,
and a proneness to being deceived. For should we see how we are used and
would not acquiesce, what would become of us? especially in such an age
as this, where the very judges who are to determine our controversies are
usually partisans to the young, and interested in the cause. In case the
disco