averse? And what is the risk (if such there be)
of exchanging a life of bodily ease for a life of labour? What are
these, and numerous other ills (if they happen) superadded? Nay, what is
death itself, compared with the baseness, the infamy, the never-ceasing
shame and reproach of living under the same roof with a prostituted
woman, and calling her your _wife_? But, there are _children_, and what
are to become of these? To be taken away from the prostitute, to be
sure; and this is a duty which you owe to them: the sooner they forget
her the better, and the farther they are from her, the sooner that will
be. There is no excuse for continuing to live with an adultress; no
inconvenience, no loss, no suffering, ought to deter a man from
delivering himself from such a state of filthy infamy; and to suffer his
children to remain in such a state, is a crime that hardly admits of
adequate description; a jail is paradise compared with such a life, and
he who can endure this latter, from the fear of encountering hardship,
is a wretch too despicable to go by the name of man.

206. But, now, all this supposes, that the husband has _well and truly
acted his part_! It supposes, not only that he has been faithful; but,
that he has not, in any way, been the cause of temptation to the wife to
be unfaithful. If he have been cold and neglectful; if he have led a
life of irregularity; if he have proved to her that _home_ was not his
delight; if he have made his house the place of resort for loose
companions; if he have given rise to a taste for visiting, junketting,
parties of pleasure and gaiety; if he have introduced the habit of
indulging in what are called '_innocent freedoms_;' if these, or any of
these, _the fault is his_, he must take the consequences, and he has _no
right_ to inflict punishment on the offender, the offence being in fact
of his own creating. The laws of God, as well as the laws of man, have
given him all power in this respect: it is for him to use that power for
the honour of his wife as well as for that of himself: if he neglect to
use it, all the consequences ought to fall on him; and, as far as my
observation has gone, in nineteen out of twenty cases of infidelity in
wives, the crimes have been _fairly ascribable to the husbands_. Folly
or misconduct in the husband, cannot, indeed, justify or even palliate
infidelity in the wife, whose very nature ought to make her recoil at
the thought of the offence; but it may,