of fellow-creatures to whom God has not been so
merciful as he has to themselves.

Whether the institution to be defended is slavery, political
absolutism, or the absolutism of the head of a family, we are always
expected to judge of it from its best instances; and we are presented
with pictures of loving exercise of authority on one side, loving
submission to it on the other--superior wisdom ordering all things
for the greatest good of the dependents, and surrounded by their
smiles and benedictions. All this would be very much to the purpose
if any one pretended that there are no such things as good men. Who
doubts that there may be great goodness, and great happiness, and
great affection, under the absolute government of a good man?
Meanwhile, laws and institutions require to be adapted, not to good
men, but to bad. Marriage is not an institution designed for a select
few. Men are not required, as a preliminary to the marriage ceremony,
to prove by testimonials that they are fit to be trusted with the
exercise of absolute power. The tie of affection and obligation to a
wife and children is very strong with those whose general social
feelings are strong, and with many who are little sensible to any
other social ties; but there are all degrees of sensibility and
insensibility to it, as there are all grades of goodness and
wickedness in men, down to those whom no ties will bind, and on whom
society has no action but through its _ultima ratio_, the penalties
of the law. In every grade of this descending scale are men to whom
are committed all the legal powers of a husband. The vilest
malefactor has some wretched woman tied to him, against whom he can
commit any atrocity except killing her, and, if tolerably cautious,
can do that without much danger of the legal penalty. And how many
thousands are there among the lowest classes in every country, who,
without being in a legal sense malefactors in any other respect,
because in every other quarter their aggressions meet with
resistance, indulge the utmost habitual excesses of bodily violence
towards the unhappy wife, who alone, at least of grown persons, can
neither repel nor escape from their brutality; and towards whom the
excess of dependence inspires their mean and savage natures, not with
a generous forbearance, and a point of honour to behave well to one
whose lot in life is trusted entirely to their kindness, but on the
contrary with a notion that the law has deliver