st, or to
more sordid appetite, the moment they give it up to you? Does not the
example you furnish, of having succeeded with her, give encouragement
for others to attempt her likewise? For with all her blandishments, can
any man be so credulous, or so vain, as to believe, that the woman he
could persuade, another may not prevail upon?

Adultery is so capital a guilt, that even rakes and libertines, if not
wholly abandoned, and as I may say, invited by a woman's levity, disavow
and condemn it: but here, in a state of KEEPING, a woman is in no danger
of incurring (legally, at least) that guilt; and you yourself have broken
through and overthrown in her all the fences and boundaries of moral
honesty, and the modesty and reserves of her sex: And what tie shall hold
her against inclination, or interest? And what shall deter an attempter?

While a husband has this security from legal sanctions, that if his wife
be detected in a criminal conversation with a man of fortune, (the most
likely by bribes to seduce her,) he may recover very great damages, and
procure a divorce besides: which, to say nothing of the ignominy, is a
consideration that must have some force upon both parties. And a wife
must be vicious indeed, and a reflection upon a man's own choice, who,
for the sake of change, and where there are no qualities to seduce, nor
affluence to corrupt, will run so many hazards to injure her husband in
the tenderest of all points.

But there are difficulties in procuring a divorce--[and so there ought]--
and none, says the rake, in parting with a mistress whenever you suspect
her; or whenever you are weary of her, and have a mind to change her for
another.

But must not the man be a brute indeed, who can cast off a woman whom he
has seduced, [if he take her from the town, that's another thing,]
without some flagrant reason; something that will better justify him to
himself, as well as to her, and to the world, than mere power and
novelty?

But I don't see, if we judge by fact, and by the practice of all we have
been acquainted with of the keeping-class, that we know how to part with
them when we have them.

That we know we can if we will, is all we have for it: and this leads us
to bear many things from a mistress, which we would not from a wife.
But, if we are good-natured and humane: if the woman has art: [and what
woman wants it, who has fallen by art? and to whose precarious situation
art is so necessary?] if