The social consequences of such a state of law were obviously these,—an habitual recognition of the wife's sister as a near member of the husband's own family, and a consequent freedom of intercourse, going far beyond that which is allowed between a husband and any woman with whom he could, in case of his wife's predecease, be at liberty to intermarry. I appeal to every one's experience on this head. It is very well for our opponents, as some have done, to assume a superior degree of purity, and to ask whether there be not grossness of conception at the very root of our objection to a change of the law. I answer them by these other questions. Do not married men exercise privileges of familiarity in regard to their sisters-in-law, which custom does not permit with regard to women in general, although no doubt a pure mind might be trusted equally in either case? Do widowers and ladies with whom they are at liberty to contract marriage reside alone and unmarried in the same house? and do not widowers, without scandal, so reside with their sisters-in-law[1]?
It is not because the majority of men are gross, but because not only the majority, but all, are weak, that all laws, whether of Heathens, Jews, or Christians, have fenced round the inhabitants of
- ↑ See an interesting communication from an American Clergyman in the Appendix to my second letter on the total change of social relationship introduced by such a change of the law as is now advocated.
