The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy

Part III: Of Relative Duties Which Result from the Constitution of the Sexes, and of the Crimes Opposed to These

BOOK III PA R T I I I OF RELATIVE DUTIES WHICH RESULT FROM THE CONSTITUTION OF THE SEXES The constitution of the sexes is the foundation of marriage. Collateral to the subject of marriage, are fornication, seduction , adultery, incest, polygamy, divorce. Consequential to marriage, is the relation and reciprocal duty of parent and child. We will treat of these subjects in the following order: first, of the public use of marriage institutions; secondly, of the subjects collateral to marriage, in the order in which we have here proposed them; thirdly, of marriage itself; and, lastly, of the relation and reciprocal duties of parents and children. Chapter 1 Of the Public Use of Marriage Institutions The public use of marriage institutions consists in their promoting the following beneficial effects. 1. The private comfort of individuals, especially of the female sex. It may be true, that all are not interested in this reason; nevertheless , it is a reason to all for abstaining from any conduct which tends in its general consequence to obstruct marriage; for whatever promotes the happiness of the majority, is binding upon the whole. 2. The production of the greatest number of healthy children, their better education, and the making of due provision for their settlement in life. 3. The peace of human society, in cutting off a principal source of contention, by assigning one or more women to one man, and protecting his exclusive right by sanctions of morality and law. 4. The better government of society, by distributing the community into separate families, and appointing over each the authority of a master of a family, which has more actual influence than all civil authority put together. 5. The same end, in the additional security which the state receives for the good behaviour of its citizens, from the solicitude they feel for the welfare of their children, and from their being confined to permanent habitations. 6. The encouragement of industry. Some ancient nations appear to have been more sensible of the importance of marriage institutions than we are. The Spartans obliged their citizens to marry by penalties, and the Romans encouraged theirs by the jus trium liberorum. A man who had no child, was entitled by the Roman law only to one half of any legacy that should be left him, that is, at the most, could only receive one half of the testator’s fortune. Chapter 2 Fornication The first and great mischief, and by consequence the guilt, of promiscuous concubinage, consists in its tendency to diminish marriages, and thereby to defeat the several beneficial purposes enumerated in the preceding chapter. 168 relative duties iii Promiscuous concubinage discourages marriage, by abating the chief temptation to it. The male part of the species will not undertake the encumbrance, expense, and restraint of married life, if they can gratify their passions at a cheaper price; and they will undertake any thing, rather than not gratify them. The reader will learn to comprehend the magnitude of this mischief, by attending to the importance and variety of the uses to which marriage is subservient; and by recollecting withal, that the malignity and moral quality of each crime is not to be estimated by the particular effect of one offence, or of one person’s offending, but by the general tendency and consequence of crimes of the same nature. The libertine may not be conscious that these irregularities hinder his own marriage, from which he is deterred, he may allege, by different considerations; much less does he perceive how his indulgences can hinder other men from marrying; but what will he say would be the consequence, if the same licentiousness were universal? or what should hinder its becoming universal, if it be innocent or allowable in him? 2. Fornication supposes prostitution; and prostitution brings and leaves the victims of it to almost certain misery. It is no small quantity of misery in the aggregate, which, between want, disease, and insult, is suffered by those outcasts of human society, who infest populous cities; the whole of which is a general consequence of fornication, and to the increase and continuance of which, every act and instance of fornication contributes. 3. Fornication* produces habits of ungovernable lewdness, which introduce the more aggravated crimes of seduction, adultery , violation, &c. Likewise, however it be accounted for, the criminal commerce of the sexes corrupts and depraves the mind fornication 169 *Of this...