Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 17.djvu/166

160 : but will any man infer from the husband's being invested with the executive power, that the wife is deprived of her share, and that which is the principal branch of it, the original right of cuckoldom? And that she has no remedy left, but preces & lachrymæ, or an appeal to a supreme court of judicature? No less frivolous are the arguments, that are drawn from the general appellations and terms of husband and wife. A husband denotes several different sorts of magistracy, according to the usages and customs of different climates and countries. In some Eastern nations it signifies a tyrant, with the absolute power of life and death: in Turkey it denotes an arbitrary governour, with power of perpetual imprisonment: in Italy it gives the husband the power of poison and padlocks: in the countries of England, France, and Holland, it has a quite different meaning, implying a free and equal government, securing to the wife in certain cases the liberty of cuckoldom, and the property of pinmoney, and separate maintenance. So that the arguments drawn from the terms of husband and wife are fallacious, and by no means fit to support a tyrannical doctrine, as that of absolute unlimited chastity, and conjugal fidelity.

The general exhortations to chastity in wives are meant only for rules in ordinary cases, but they naturally suppose three conditions, of ability, justice, and fidelity in the husband: such an unlimited, unconditioned fidelity in the wife could never be supposed by reasonable men: it seems a reflection upon the ch—rch, to charge her with doctrines that countenance oppression.

This doctrine of the original right of cuckoldom is congruous to the law of nature, which is superiour to all