the hardy Waldenses, or of
the decent and thriving colonists of Frederick's-oord.

* * * * *

The Marriage compact is the most important feature of the domestic state
on which the observer can fix his attention. If he be a thinker, he will
not be surprised at finding much imperfection in the marriage state
wherever he goes. By no arrangements yet attempted have purity of
morals, constancy of affection, and domestic peace been secured to any
extensive degree in society. Almost every variety of method is still in
use, in one part of the world or another. The primitive custom of
brothers marrying sisters still subsists in some Eastern regions.
Polygamy is very common there, as every one knows. In countries which
are too far advanced for this, every restraint of law, all sanction of
opinion, has been tried to render the natural method,--the restriction
of one husband to one wife,--successful, and therefore universal and
permanent. Law and opinion have, however, never availed to anything like
complete success. Even in thriving young countries, where no
considerations of want, and few of ambition, can interfere with domestic
peace,--where the numbers are equal, where love has the promise of a
free and even course, and where religious sentiment is directed full
upon the sanctity of the marriage state,--it is found to be far from
pure. In almost all countries, the corruption of society in this
department is so deep and wide-spreading, as to vitiate both moral
sentiment and practice in an almost hopeless degree. It neutralizes
almost all attempts to ameliorate and elevate the condition of the
race.--There must be something fearfully wrong where the general result
is so unfortunate as this. As in most other cases of social suffering,
the wrong will be found to lie less in the methods ordained and put in
practice, than in the prevalent sentiment of society, out of which all
methods arise.

It is necessary to make mention (however briefly) of the kinds of false
sentiment from which the evil of conjugal unhappiness appears to
spring.--The sentiment by which courage is made the chief ground of
honour in men, and chastity in women, coupled with the inferiority in
which women have ever been sunk, was sure to induce profligacy. As long
as men were brave nothing more was required to make them honourable in
the eyes of society: while the inferior condition of women has ever
exposed those of them who were