ildren, and his wife was reckoned in the number of his
children; the domestic judge might pronounce the death of the offender,
or his mercy might expel her from his bed and house; but the slavery of
the wretched female was hopeless and perpetual, unless he asserted for
his own convenience the manly prerogative of divorce. The warmest
applause has been lavished on the virtue of the Romans, who abstained
from the exercise of this tempting privilege above five hundred years;
but the same fact evinces the unequal terms of a connection in which the
slave was unable to renounce her tyrant, and the tyrant was unwilling to
relinquish his slave.

When the Roman matrons became the equal and voluntary companions of
their lords, a new jurisprudence was introduced, that marriage, like
other partnerships, might be dissolved by the abdication of one of the
associates. In three centuries of prosperity and corruption this
principle was enlarged to frequent practice and pernicious abuse.
Passion, interest, or caprice suggested daily motives for the
dissolution of marriage; a word, a sign, a message, a letter, the
mandate of a freedman declared the separation; the most tender of human
connections was degraded to a transient society of profit or pleasure.
According to the various conditions of life, both sexes alternately
felt the disgrace and injury; an inconstant spouse transferred her
wealth to a new family, abandoning a numerous, perhaps a spurious
progeny to the paternal authority and care of her late husband; a
beautiful virgin might be dismissed to the world, old, indigent, and
friendless; but the reluctance of the Romans, when they were pressed to
marriage by Augustus, sufficiently marks that the prevailing
institutions were least favorable to the males. A specious theory is
confuted by this free and perfect experiment, which demonstrates that
the liberty of divorce does not contribute to happiness and virtue. The
facility of separation would destroy all mutual confidence, and inflame
every trifling dispute; the minute difference between a husband and a
stranger, which might so easily be removed, might still more easily be
forgotten; and the matron, who in five years can submit to the embraces
of eight husbands, must cease to reverence the chastity of her own
person.

Insufficient remedies followed with distant and tardy steps the rapid
progress of the evil. The ancient worship of the Romans afforded a
peculiar goddess to hear an