Page:Vindicationoflaw00hath.djvu/34

26 ground. They do not lose caste for many things which no moralist, however lax, would sanction. It is grossly immoral, I conceive, in the existing state of the law, for a man to induce a woman to place herself in such a position that a large proportion of society will withdraw themselves from her company, and that her children must be illegitimate. It is still more immoral if he commit perjury (as those married to a wife's sister by licence must have done), in order to make such an illegal marriage. If people think this respectable, what will they not think so? Indeed, in the evidence I have before referred to, Mr. Thorburn, in answer to question 123, states the case of "a man of wealth who keeps his carriage, and lives avowedly, in fact, with his deceased wife's sister, whom he would gladly marry but for the uncertain state of the law. He is much respected, and hears a high character as an excellent man and a good citizen; and though he is living in open concubinage, his neighbours sympathize with him, and in a manner excuse him, because of the restraint of an inexpedient law!" If this witness had but recollected his Latin Grammar, he would have known a heathen's notion of a good citizen and moral man, even in Rome's degenerate days, to be of a far higher stamp of morality:

It appears to me I can hardly say more to show