of both sexes, without the consent of their parents,
ought to have a capacity of contracting the matrimonial, whilst they
have not the capacity of contracting any other engagement. Now it
appears to me very clear that they ought not. It is a great mistake to
think that mere _animal_ propagation is the sole end of matrimony.
Matrimony is instituted not only for the propagation of men, but for
their nutrition, their education, their establishment, and for the
answering of all the purposes of a rational and moral being; and it is
not the duty of the community to consider alone of how many, but how
useful citizens it shall be composed.

It is most certain that men are well qualified for propagation long
before they are sufficiently qualified even by bodily strength, much
less by mental prudence, and by acquired skill in trades and
professions, for the maintenance of a family. Therefore to enable and
authorize any man to introduce citizens into the commonwealth, before a
rational security can be given that he may provide for them and educate
them as citizens ought to be provided for and educated, is totally
incongruous with the whole order of society. Nay, it is fundamentally
unjust; for a man that breeds a family without competent means of
maintenance incumbers other men with his children, and disables them so
far from maintaining their own. The improvident marriage of one man
becomes a tax upon the orderly and regular marriage of all the rest.
Therefore those laws are wisely constituted that give a man the use of
all his faculties at one time, that they may be mutually subservient,
aiding and assisting to each other: that the time of his completing his
bodily strength, the time of mental discretion, the time of his having
learned his trade, and the time at which he has the disposition of his
fortune, should be likewise the time in which he is permitted to
introduce citizens into the state, and to charge the community with
their maintenance. To give a man a family during his apprenticeship,
whilst his very labor belongs to another,--to give him a family, when
you do not give him a fortune to maintain it,--to give him a family
before he can contract any one of those engagements without which no
business can be carried on, would be to burden the state with families
without any security for their maintenance. When parents themselves
marry their children, they become in some sort security to prevent the
ill consequences. You h