d the manners authorized, bastards were not long after put
on the footing of the issue of lawful unions. Proceeding in the spirit
of the first authors of their Constitution, succeeding Assemblies went
the full length of the principle, and gave a license to divorce at the
mere pleasure of either party, and at a month's notice. With them the
matrimonial connection is brought into so degraded a state of
concubinage, that I believe none of the wretches in London who keep
warehouses of infamy would give out one of their victims to private
custody on so short and insolent a tenure. There was, indeed, a kind of
profligate equity in giving to women the same licentious power. The
reason they assigned was as infamous as the act: declaring that women
had been too long under the tyranny of parents and of husbands. It is
not necessary to observe upon the horrible consequences of taking one
half of the species wholly out of the guardianship and protection of the
other.

The practice of divorce, though in some countries permitted, has been
discouraged in all. In the East, polygamy and divorce are in discredit;
and the manners correct the laws. In Rome, whilst Rome was in its
integrity, the few causes allowed for divorce amounted in effect to a
prohibition. They were only three. The arbitrary was totally excluded;
and accordingly some hundreds of years passed without a single example
of that kind. When manners were corrupted, the laws were relaxed; as the
latter always follow the former, when they are not able to regulate them
or to vanquish them. Of this circumstance the legislators of vice and
crime were pleased to take notice, as an inducement to adopt their
regulation: holding out an hope that the permission would as rarely be
made use of. They knew the contrary to be true; and they had taken good
care that the laws should be well seconded by the manners. Their law of
divorce, like all their laws, had not for its object the relief of
domestic uneasiness, but the total corruption of all morals, the total
disconnection of social life.

It is a matter of curiosity to observe the operation of this
encouragement to disorder. I have before me the Paris paper
correspondent to the usual register of births, marriages, and deaths.
Divorce, happily, is no regular head of registry amongst civilized
nations. With the Jacobins it is remarkable that divorce is not only a
regular head, but it has the post of honor. It occupies the first place
in