Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 1.djvu/397

Rh such a man was before sufficiently provided, and that there was not the least reason for allowing him to marry four wives at a time, when he was already at liberty to marry a new one every day.

lays it down as a self-evident position, that four women will have more children by four men, than the same four women would have by one. This assertion may very well be disputed, but still it is not in point. For the question with regard to Arabia, and to a great part of the world besides, is, Whether or not four women and one man, married, or cohabiting at discretion, shall produce more children, than four women and one man who is debarred from cohabiting with any but one of the four, the others dying unmarried without the knowledge of man? or, in other words, Which shall have most children, one man and one woman, or one man and four women? This question I think needs no discussion.

us now consider, if there is any further reason why England should not be brought as an example, which Arabia, or the East in general, are to follow.

in England are commonly capable of child-bearing at fourteen, let the other term be forty-eight, when they bear no more; thirty-four years, therefore, an English woman bears children. At the age of fourteen or fifteen they are objects of our love; they are endeared by bearing us children after that time, and none I hope will pretend, that, at forty-eight and fifty, an English woman is not an agreeable companion. Perhaps the Iast years, to thinking minds, are fully more agreeable than the first. We grow old toge-