equal number of wives in common, and whatever children were born, were reputed to belong to all of them, and were accordingly provided for by the whole community....

Among the inferior creatures, nature herself, being the fupreme legiflator, prescribes all the laws which ́regulate their marriages, and varies thofe laws according to the different circumstances of the creature. Where fire furnishes, with ease, food and defence to the new-born animal, the present embrace terminates the marriage; and the care of the offspring is com mitted entirely to the female. Where the food is of more dif ficult purchase, the marriage continues for one feason, till the common progeny can provide for itself; and then the union immediately diffolves, and leaves each of the parties free to enter into a new engagement at the ensuing season. But nature having endowed man with reason, has not fo exactly regulated every article of his marriage contract, but has left him to adjust them, by his own prudence, according to his particular circumstances and fituation.. Municipal laws are a supply to the wisdom of each individual; and at the fame time, by reftraining the natural liberty of men, make the private interest submit to the intereft of the public. All regulations, therefore, on this head are equally lawful, and equally conformable to the principles of nature; though they are not all equally convenient, or equally useful to fociety. The laws may allow of polygamy, as among the Eastern nations; or of voluntary divorces, as among the GREEKS and ROMANS; or they may confine one man to one woman; during the whole course of their lives, as among the modern EUROPEANS. It may not be disagreeable to confider the advantages and disadvantages which refult from each of these institutions.

The

The advocates for polygamy may recommend it as the only effectual remedy for the furies and disorders of love, and the only expedient for freeing men from that flavery to the females, which the natural violence of our paffions has imposed on us. By this means alone can we regain our right of fovereignty; and, fating our appetite, re-establish the authority of reafon in our minds, and, by confequence, our own authority in our families. Man, like a weak sovereign, being unable to support himself against the wiles and intrigues of his fubjects, muft play one faction against another, and become abfolute by the mutual jealousies of the females. To divide and to govern is an univerfal maxim; and by neglecting it, the EUROPEANS undergo a more grievous and a more ignominious: flavery than the TURKS OF PERSIANS, who are fubjected indeed to a fovereign, that lies at a distance from them, but in their domeftic affairs rule with an uncontroulable fway. An honeft TURK, who should come from his feraglio, where every one trembles before him, would be furprized to fee SYLVIA in her drawing-room, adored by all the beaus and pretty fellows about town, and he would certainly take her for fome mighty defpotic queen, furrounded by her guard of obfequious flaves and eunuchs.

On the other hand, it may be urged with better reason, that this fovereignty of the male is a real ufurpation, and destroys that nearness of rank, not to fay equality, which nature has eftablished between the fexes. We are, by nature, their lovers, their friends, their patrons: Would we willingly change fuch endearing appellations, for the barbarous titles of mafter and tyrant?

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In

In what capacity shall we gain by this inhuman proceeding? As lovers, or as husbands? The lover, is totally annihilated; and courtship, the most agreeable scene in human life, can no longer have place, where women have not the free difpofal of themselves, but are bought and fold, like the meaneft animals. The busband is as little a gainer, having found the admirable fecret of extinguishing every part of love, except its jealoufy. There is no rose without its thorn; but he must be a foolish wretch indeed, who throws away the rofe and preferves only the thorn.

I would not willingly infift upon it as an advantage in our EUROPEAN customs, what was obferved by MEHEMET EFFENDI the last TURKISH ambaffador in FRANCE. We TURKS, fays he, are great fimpletons in comparison of the Chriftians. We are at the expence and trouble of keeping a feraglio, each in his own house: But you cafe yourselves of this burden, and have your feraglio in your friends houses. The known virtue of our BRITISH ladies frees them fufficiently from this imputation: And the TURK himself, had he travelled among us, must have owned, that our free commerce with the fair fex, more than any other invention, embellishes, enlivens, and polishes fociety.

But the ASIATIC manners are as destructive to friendship as to love. Jealoufy excludes men from all intimacies and: familiarities with each other. No man dares bring his friend to his house or table, left he bring a lover to his numerous wives. Hence all over the east, each family is as feparate from another, as if they were so many distinct kingdoms. No wonder then, that SOLOMON, living like an eastern prince, with his feven

hundred

hundred wives, and three hundred concubines, without one friend, could write fo pathetically concerning the vanity of the world. Had he tried the fecret of one wife or mistress, a few friends, and a great many companions, he might have found life fomewhat more agreeable. Destroy love and friendship; what remains in the world worth accepting?

The bad education of children, especially children of condition, is another unavoidable confequence of these eastern inftitutions. Thofe, who pass all the early part of life among flaves, are only qualified to be, themselves, flaves and tyrants; and in every future intercourse, either with their inferiors or fuperiors, are apt to forget the natural equality of mankind. What attention, too, can it be supposed a parent, whose seraglio affords him fifty fons, will give to the inftilling principles of morality or science into a progeny, with whom he himself is fcarcely acquainted, and whom he loves with fo divided an affection? Barbarism, therefore, appears, from reafon as well as experience, to be the infeparable concomitant of polygamy.

To render polygamy more odious, I need not recount the frightful effects of jealoufy, and the constraint in which it holds the fair-fex all over the eaft. In thofe countries men are not allowed to have any commerce with the females, not even physicians, when sickness may be supposed to have extinguished all wanton paffions in the bofoms of the fair, and, at the same time, has rendered them unfit objects of defire. TOURNEFORT tells us, That when he was brought into the grand fignior's feraglio as a physician, he was not a little surprized, in looking along a gallery, to see a great number of naked arms, ftanding out from the fides of the room. He could not imagine VOL. I.

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what

what this could mean; till he was told, that those arms belonged to bodies, which he muft cure, without knowing any more about them, than what he could learn from the arms. He was not allowed to ask a queftion of the patient, or even of her attendants, left he might find it neceffary to enquire concerning circumftances, which the delicacy of the feraglio allows not to be revealed. Hence the phyficians in the east pretend to know all diseases from the pulfe; as our quacks in EUROPE undertake to cure a perfon merely from seeing his water. I fuppofe, had Monfieur TOURNEFORT been of this latter kind, he would not, in CONSTANTINOPLE, have been allowed by the jealous TURKS to be furnished with materials requifite for exercising his art.

In another country, where polygamy is alfo allowed, they render their wives cripples, and make their feet of no use to them, in order to confine them to their own houses. But it will, perhaps, appear ftrange, that in an EUROPEAN country, where polygamy is not allowed, jealoufy can yet be carried to fuch a height, that 'tis indecent fo much as to suppose, that a woman of rank can have feet or legs. A SPANIARD is jealous of the very thoughts of those who approach his wife; and, if poffible, will prevent his being dishonoured, even by the wantonness of imagination. Witness the following story, which we have from very good authority *. When the mother of the late king of SPAIN was on her road towards MADRID, the paffed through a little town in SPAIN, famous for its manufactory of gloves and stockings. The honeft magiftrates of the place thought they could not better express their joy for the

Memoires de la cour d'ESPAGNE par Màdame d'AUNOY.

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