Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 1.djvu/396

286 to one man in 50° out of the 90° under every meridian of the globe.

giving Mahomet all the credit for abilities that some have done, we may surely suppofe him to know what happened in his own family, where he must have seen this great disproportion of four women born to one man; and from the obvious consequences, we are not to wonder that one of his first cares, when a legislator, was to rectify it, as it struck at the very root of his empire, power, and religion. With this view, he enacted, or rather revived, the law which gave liberty to every individual to marry four wives, each of whom was to be equal in rank and honour, without any preference but what the predilection of the husband gave her. By this he secured civil rights to each woman, and procured a means of doing away that reproach, of dying without issue, to which the minds of the whole sex have always been sensible, whatever their religion was, or from whatever part of the world they came.

, who are not conversant with Arabian history, have imagined, that this permission of a plurality of wives was given in favour of men, and have taxed one of the most political, necessary measures, of that legislator, arising from motives merely civil, with a tendency to encourage lewdness, from which it was very far distant. But, if they had considered that the Mahometan law allows divorce without any cause assigned, and that, every day at the pleasure of the man; besides, that it permits him as many concubines as he can maintain, buy with money, take in war, or gain by the ordinary means of address and solicitations, — they will think