be permitted to persons even of tried
virtue, simply because they would afford the opportunity of doing
ill. It is, in fact, to say, that no one is to be trusted; that there
is nothing which keeps man or woman virtuous but want of opportunity.
It is a terrible satire; it is more than a satire; it is a foul
libel, aimed by the vicious against those who are better than
themselves.
Such things did not exist in the days whereof I write, or existed in
a very, very small degree. It is true, from time to time, a woman's
reputation might suffer falsely; but it was in general from her
having approached very near the confines of evil, and the punishment
that ensued, though perhaps even then disproportioned to the fault,
had no tendency whatever to diminish the innocent liberty of others.
We find from all the writers who painted the manners of those
days--Addison, Swift, Steele, and others--that a lady, especially an
unmarried lady, feared no risk to her reputation in going hither or
thither, either perfectly alone, or with any friend with whom she was
known to be intimate. She might venture upon an excursion into the
country, a party of pleasure, nay, a journey itself in many
instances, with any gentleman of honour and reputation, without
either friends or enemies casting an imputation upon her character,
or the world immediately giving her over to him in marriage.
It was left indeed to her own judgment whom she would choose for her
companion, and the most innocent girl might have gone anywhere
unreproved with a man of known honour and virtue, who would have
ruined her own character had she placed herself in the power of a
Rochester or a Bucking ham. These were rational boundaries; but
perhaps the liberty of those days went somewhat beyond even that. In
the early part of the eighteenth century, many of the habits of the
Continent were introduced into England at a time that continental
society was so corrupt as to require licence instead of liberty, and
so far from attending to propriety, to give way to indecency itself.
It became common in the highest circles of society for ladies,
married and single alike, to dispense almost entirely with a female
attendant, and following that most indecent and beastly of all
continental habits, to permit all the offices of a waiting woman to
be performed for them by men. The visits of male acquaintances were
continually received in their bed-rooms, and that, also, before they
had risen in the morning. This, perhaps, was too muc