be comparative purity, to the numerous debaucheries through which the loveliest of the species had wallowed, in their progress to each other's arms. Modern sensibility may not be shocked at this; but I am certain old fashioned morality would startle at the mere proposal of such a system.
It is singular that Mr. Shelley should pretend to any respect for the happiness and well-being of woman, while laying down a code that would tear from her all the security she has of being treated as a rational creature. He affects to lament, that "Women, for no other crime than having followed the dictates of a natural appetite, are driven from society." Does he not perceive that it is not the law, but the individual man, (on whom Mr. Shelley would confer still more power to treat woman thus barbarously) who drives her from society? It is not the law which compels a man to support the woman he has married, that shuts prostitutes out of the pale of society. It is the want of laws to compel every man to support, as respectably as his means allow, those whom he has seduced. Seduction with impunity, which Mr. Shelley would render universal, is the evil that ought to be cured. Society does not "declare war against the prostitute;"
D
