this capricious rule guided by names, and with such facility does it accommodate itself to the pleasures and conveniency of higher life!

Seduction is seldom accomplished without fraud; and the fraud is by so much more criminal than other frauds, as the injury effected by it is greater, continues longer, and less admits of reparation.

This injury is threefold: to the woman, to her family, and to the public.

I. The injury to the woman is made up, of the misery she suffers from shame, of the loss she sustains in her reputation and prospects of marriage, and of the depravation of her moral principle.

1. This misery must be extreme, if we may judge of it from those barbarous endeavours to conceal their disgrace, to which women, under such circumstances, sometimes have recourse: compare this barbarity with their passionate fondness for their offspring in other cases. Nothing but an agony of mind, the most insupportable, can induce a woman to forget her nature, and the pity which even a stranger would show to a helpless and imploring infant. It is true, that all are not urged to this extremity; but if any are, it affords an indication of how much all suffer from the same cause.

of such mischief?

What shall we say to the authors

2. The loss which a woman sustains by the ruin of her reputation, almost exceeds computation. Every person's happiness depends in part upon the respect and reception they meet with in the world; and it is no inconsiderable mortification, even to the firmest tempers, to be rejected from the society of their equals, or received there with neglect and disdain. But this is not all, nor the worst. By a rule of life, which it is not easy to blame, and which it is impossible to alter, a woman loses with her chastity the chance of marying at all, or in any manner equal to the hopes she had been accustomed to entertain. Now, marriage, whatever it be to a man, is that from which every woman

expects her chief happiness.

And this is still more true, in low life, of which condition the women are, who are most exposed to solicitations of this sort. Add to this, that where a woman's maintenance depends upon her character, (as it does, in a great measure, with those who are to support themselves by service,) little sometimes is left to the forsaken sufferer, but to starve for want of employment, or to have recourse to prostitution for food and raiment.

3. As a woman collects her virtue into this point, the loss of her chastity is generally the destruction of her moral principle: and this consequence is to be apprehended, whether the criminal intercourse be discovered or not.

II. The injury to the family may be understood by the application of that infallible rule, "of doing to others what we "would that others should do unto us."-Let a father or a brother say, for what consideration they would suffer this injury in a daughter or a sister: and whether any, or even a total loss of fortune, would create equal affliction and distress. And when they reflect, upon this, let them distinguish, if they can, between a robbery committed upon their property by fraud or forgery, and the ruin of their happiness by the treachery of a seducer.

III. The public at large lose the benefit of the woman's service in her proper place and destination, as a wife and parent. This, to the whole community, may be little; but it is often more than all the good which the seducer does to the community can recompense. Moreover, prostitution is supplied by seduction; and in proportion to the danger there is of the woman's betaking herself, after her first sacrifice, to a life of public lewdness, the seducer is answerable for the multiplied evils to which his crime gives birth.

Upon the whole, if we pursue the effects of seduction through the complicated misery which it occasions; and if it be right to estimate crimes by the mischief they knowingly produce, it will appear something more than mere invective to assert, that not

one half of the crimes for which men suffer death by the laws of England, are so flagitious as this.*

CHAPTER IV.

ADULTERY.

A NEW sufferer is introduced, the injured husband, who receives a wound in his sensibility and affections, the most painful and incurable that human nature knows. In all other respects, adultery on the part of the man who solicits the chastity of a married woman, includes the crime of seduction, and is attend. ed with the same mischief.

The infidelity of the woman is aggravated by cruelty to her children, who are generally involved in their parent's shame, and always made unhappy by their quarrel.

If it be said that these consequences are chargeable, not so much upon the crime, as the discovery, we answer, first, that the crime could not be discovered unless it were committed, and that the commission is never secure from discovery; and secondly, that if we allow of adulterous connexions, whenever they can hope to escape detection, which is the conclusion to which this argument conducts us, we leave the husband no other security for his wife's chastity, than in her want of opportunity or temptation; which would probably deter most men from marrying, or render marriage a state of jealousy and continual alarm to the husband, which would end in the slavery and confinement of the wife.

*Yet the law has provided no punishment for this offence beyond a pecuniary satisfaction to the injured family; and this can only be come at, by one of the quaintest fictions in the world, by the father's bringing his action against the seducer, for the loss of his daughter's service, during her pregnancy and nurturing.

The vow, by which married persons mutually engage their fidelity, is "witnessed before God," and accompanied with circumstances of solemnity and religion, which approach to the nature of an oath. The married offender therefore incurs a crime little short of perjury, and the seduction of a married woman is little less than subornation of perjury;-and this guilt is independent of the discovery.

All behaviour which is designed, or which knowingly tends, to captivate the affection of a married woman, is a barbarous intrusion upon the peace and virtue of a family, though it fall short of adultery.

The usual and only apology for adultery is the prior transgression of the other party. There are degrees, no doubt, in this, as in other crimes; and so far as the bad effects of adultery are anticipated by the conduct of the husband or wife who offends first, the guilt of the second offender is extenuated. But this can never amount to a justification; unless it could be shown that the obligation of the marriage vow depends upon the condition of reciprocal fidelity; for which construction there appears no foundation, either in expediency, or in the terms of the promise, or in the design of the legislature which prescribed the marriage rite. Moreover, the rule contended for by this plea has a manifest tendency to multiply the offence, but none to reclaim the offender.

The way of considering the offence of one party as a provocation to the other, and the other as only retaliating the injury by repeating the crime, is a childish trifling with words.

"Thou shalt not commit adultery," was an interdict delivered by God himself. By the Jewish law, adultery was capital to both parties in the crime:" Even he that committeth adulte"ry with his neighbour's wife, the adulterer and adulteress shall shurely be put to death."-Levit. xx. 10. Which passages

prove, that the Divine Legislator placed a great difference between adultery and fornication. And with this agree the Christian Scriptures; for, in almost all the catalogues they have left

1

us of crimes and criminals, they enumerate "fornication, adul "tery, whoremongers, adulterers," (Matthew, xv. 19. 1 Cor. vi. 9. Gal. v. 9. Heb. xiii. 4;) by which mention of both, they show that they did not consider them as the same; but that the crime of adultery was, in their apprehension, distinct from and accumulated upon, that of fornication.

The history of the woman taken in adultery, recorded in the eighth chapter of St. John's Gospel, has been thought by some to give countenance to that crime. As Christ told the woman, "Neither do I condemn thee," we must believe, it is said, that he deemed her conduct either not criminal, or not a crime, however, of the heinous nature we represent it to be. A more attentive examination of the case, will, I think, convince us, that nothing can be concluded from it as to Christ's opinion concerning adultery, either one way or the other. The transaction is thus related: "Early in the morning Jesus came again into the Temple, and all the people came unto him: and he sat down "and taught them. And the Scribes and Pharisees brought unto "him a woman taken in adultery; and when they had set her in "the midst, they say unto him, Master, this woman was taken in

adultery, in the very act: now Moses, in the law, command"ed that such should be stoned; but what sayest thou? This

they said tempting him, that they might have to accuse him. "But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not. So when they contin"ued asking him, he lift up himself, and said unto them, He "that is without sin amongst you, let him first cast a stone at her: "and again he stooped down and wrote on the ground: and they "which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went "out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last; "and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst. "When Jesus had lift up himself, and saw none but the woman, "he said unto her, Woman, where are those thine accusers? "hath no man condemned thee? She said unto him, No man, "Lord. And he said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee; go, " and sin no more."