Wedlock

.—This is that happy and enviable state, which but few can enjoy in wicked and unprincipled governments. I know not how or why it is, but upon turning to the page of history for a few years back, I find a great many evils that date their chronology from the year 1760, and this evil, among the myriad, that two-thirds of our youth are in a state of celibacy at the age of twenty-nine. I need not here state to the philosopher, that government must of necessity be the root of this evil. Under a more perfect institution of government, the human male and female would enter upon the happy state of wedlock at sixteen and fourteen. A good king would encourage early marriage; a wicked king willl discourage it, by wars, which impoverish a People, and by the natural prohibition of it, by means of heavy burthens, luxuries, and by curbing the natural noble spirit of the People, by unequal imposts, partial laws, interdictions, and restraints. What is the consequence? It drives the women to prostitution, and the men to the most abandoned and avowed concubinage. This indiscriminate commerce entails on them disease, sordidness, and misery. They are hurried to an early grave, with a total loss of constitution many years previous to their dissolution, with a total loss likewise of virtue and morality.