late meeting at Willis's Rooms, though in form a prohibition, is in reality a blessing. It is a fence round the home, and all that that word contains. But the same foresight, human only if you will, which has discountenanced promiscuous intercourse and polygamy, has guarded further human weakness by saying, that when a married man or woman is, from circumstances, in constant habits of intercourse and necessary daily familiarity with other women or men, there shall be a prohibition of all thought of union; otherwise the familiarity which now adds largely to our happiness will be but a snare. All nations have, therefore, wisely fenced all the inmates of the home, the mother, the daughter, the sister, by such prohibitive regulations, though you may assume them to have been destitute of all revelation, traditional or written, on the subject. Hence too, perhaps, the peculiarity of the unions allowed in some Eastern nations, where the brothers and sisters are kept separate from infancy.
Now that the near relations of the wife should be entitled to the privilege of this prohibition, for so I regard it, is a natural step in civilization, and will prevail more and more where the intercourse becomes more familiar, as in all Christian countries it has done. The Romans, the Greeks, and all other civilized nations have therefore rightly restrained marriage as to the step-mother and certain other relationships, though only by affinity.
