Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 17.djvu/167

Rh all human laws, and for that I dare appeal to all wives: it is much to the honour of our English wives, that they have never given up that fundamental point; and that though in former ages they were muffied up in darkness and superstition, yet that notion seemed engraven on their minds, and the impression so strong, that nothing could impair it.

To assert the illegality of cuckoldom upon any pretence whatsoever, were to cast odious colours upon the married state, to blacken the necessary means of perpetuating families: such laws can never be supposed to have been designed to defeat the very end of matrimony, the propagation of mankind. I call them necessary means, for in many cases what other means are left? Such a doctrine wounds the honour of families; unsettles the titles to kingdoms, honours, and estates; for if the actions from which such settlements spring were illegal, all that is built upon them must be so too: but the last is absurd, therefore the first must be so likewise. What is the cause that Europe groans at present under the heavy load of a cruel and expensive war, but the tyrannical custom of a certain nation, and the scrupulous nicety of a silly queen, in not exercising this indispensable duty of cuckoldom, whereby the kingdom might have had an heir, and a controverted succession might have been avoided? These are the effects of the narrow maxims of your clergy, That one must not do evil, that good may come of it.

The assertors of this indefeasible right, and jus divinum of matrimony, do all in their hearts favour gallants, and the pretenders to married women; for VOL. XVII.