respect, deduced; and they existed in the laws and usages of the Greeks and Romans, subject to considerable alternations of opinions, and with various modifications and extent. These regulations, as far at least as they prohibit marriages among near relations, by blood or marriage, (for the canon and common laws made no distinction on this point, between connexions by consanguinity and affinity,) are evidently founded in the law of nature; and incestuous marriages have generally (but with some strange exceptions at Athens) been regarded with abhorrence by the soundest writers and most polished states of antiquity. Under the influence of Christianity, a purer taste and stricter doctrine have been inculcated; and an incestuous connexion between an uncle and niece, has been recently adjudged, by a great master of public and municipal law, to be a nuisance extremely offensive to the laws and manners of society, and tending to endless confusion, and the pollution of the sanctity of private life."[1]
- ↑ See Kent's Com., vol. ii. p. 82. See also his authorities, Selden's Uxor. Ebr. &c.
