, of our manners
and of our laws, with regard to a question which concerns the life of
almost all living beings, we did not endeavor to make plain, in a short
peroration, the political causes of the infirmity which pervades all
modern society. After having exposed the secret vices of marriage, would
it not be an inquiry worthy of philosophers to search out the causes
which have rendered it so vicious?

The system of law and of manners which so far directs women and controls
marriage in France, is the outcome of ancient beliefs and traditions
which are no longer in accordance with the eternal principles of reason
and of justice, brought to light by the great Revolution of 1789.

Three great disturbances have agitated France; the conquest of the
country by the Romans, the establishment of Christianity and the
invasion of the Franks. Each of these events has left a deep impress
upon the soil, upon the laws, upon the manners and upon the intellect of
the nation.

Greece having one foot on Europe and the other on Asia, was influenced
by her voluptuous climate in the choice of her marriage institutions;
she received them from the East, where her philosophers, her legislators
and her poets went to study the abstruse antiquities of Egypt and
Chaldea. The absolute seclusion of women which was necessitated under
the burning sun of Asia prevailed under the laws of Greece and Ionia.
The women remained in confinement within the marbles of the gyneceum.
The country was reduced to the condition of a city, to a narrow
territory, and the courtesans who were connected with art and religion
by so many ties, were sufficient to satisfy the first passions of the
young men, who were few in number, since their strength was elsewhere
taken up in the violent exercises of that training which was demanded of
them by the military system of those heroic times.

At the beginning of her royal career Rome, having sent to Greece to seek
such principles of legislation as might suit the sky of Italy, stamped
upon the forehead of the married woman the brand of complete servitude.
The senate understood the importance of virtue in a republic, hence
the severity of manners in the excessive development of the marital
and paternal power. The dependence of the woman on her husband is found
inscribed on every code. The seclusion prescribed by the East becomes
a duty, a moral obligation, a virtue. On these principles were raised
temples to modesty and temples