must stand in the way of
God's blessing upon your endeavours here, and which I should rejoice, for
your sake and their own, to see removed. And, sir, I promise myself that
you will fully agree with me in them all, as soon as I name them;
especially because I shall convince you, that every one of them may, with
great ease, and very much to your satisfaction, be remedied. First,
sir," says he, "you have here four Englishmen, who have fetched women
from among the savages, and have taken them as their wives, and have had
many children by them all, and yet are not married to them after any
stated legal manner, as the laws of God and man require. To this, sir, I
know, you will object that there was no clergyman or priest of any kind
to perform the ceremony; nor any pen and ink, or paper, to write down a
contract of marriage, and have it signed between them. And I know also,
sir, what the Spaniard governor has told you, I mean of the agreement
that he obliged them to make when they took those women, viz. that they
should choose them out by consent, and keep separately to them; which, by
the way, is nothing of a marriage, no agreement with the women as wives,
but only an agreement among themselves, to keep them from quarrelling.
But, sir, the essence of the sacrament of matrimony" (so he called it,
being a Roman) "consists not only in the mutual consent of the parties to
take one another as man and wife, but in the formal and legal obligation
that there is in the contract to compel the man and woman, at all times,
to own and acknowledge each other; obliging the man to abstain from all
other women, to engage in no other contract while these subsist; and, on
all occasions, as ability allows, to provide honestly for them and their
children; and to oblige the women to the same or like conditions, on
their side. Now, sir," says he, "these men may, when they please, or
when occasion presents, abandon these women, disown their children, leave
them to perish, and take other women, and marry them while these are
living;" and here he added, with some warmth, "How, sir, is God honoured
in this unlawful liberty? And how shall a blessing succeed your
endeavours in this place, however good in themselves, and however sincere
in your design, while these men, who at present are your subjects, under
your absolute government and dominion, are allowed by you to live in open
adultery?"

I confess I was struck with the thing itself, but much m