to the various conditions of life, both
sexes alternately felt the disgrace and injury: an inconstant spouse
transferred her wealth to a new family, abandoning a numerous, perhaps
a spurious, progeny to the paternal authority and care of her late
husband; a beautiful virgin might be dismissed to the world, old,
indigent, and friendless; but the reluctance of the Romans, when they
were pressed to marriage by Augustus, sufficiently marks, that the
prevailing institutions were least favorable to the males. A specious
theory is confuted by this free and perfect experiment, which
demonstrates, that the liberty of divorce does not contribute to
happiness and virtue. The facility of separation would destroy all
mutual confidence, and inflame every trifling dispute: the minute
difference between a husband and a stranger, which might so easily be
removed, might still more easily be forgotten; and the matron, who in
five years can submit to the embraces of eight husbands, must cease to
reverence the chastity of her own person.

Insufficient remedies followed with distant and tardy steps the rapid
progress of the evil. The ancient worship of the Romans afforded a
peculiar goddess to hear and reconcile the complaints of a married life;
but her epithet of _Viriplaca_, the appeaser of husbands, too clearly
indicates on which side submission and repentance were always expected.
Every act of a citizen was subject to the judgment of the _censors_; the
first who used the privilege of divorce assigned, at their command, the
motives of his conduct; and a senator was expelled for dismissing his
virgin spouse without the knowledge or advice of his friends. Whenever
an action was instituted for the recovery of a marriage portion,
the _prtor_, as the guardian of equity, examined the cause and the
characters, and gently inclined the scale in favor of the guiltless
and injured party. Augustus, who united the powers of both magistrates,
adopted their different modes of repressing or chastising the license
of divorce. The presence of seven Roman witnesses was required for the
validity of this solemn and deliberate act: if any adequate provocation
had been given by the husband, instead of the delay of two years, he was
compelled to refund immediately, or in the space of six months; but
if he could arraign the manners of his wife, her guilt or levity
was expiated by the loss of the sixth or eighth part of her marriage
portion. The Christian princes