1864.] gQ'Y [Price. 



it expire as a consequence of that war, it will relieve the Northern 

 conscience of a long-endured sense of national wrong. 



That a people may be happy and virtuous, all must be of equal 

 civil rights, and of one grade, except as talents and culture and 

 virtue make individual differences; otherwise it is in human nature 

 that the favored class or classes will degrade and oppress those of 

 lower rank. Woman must be protected by severe laws in all her per- 

 sonal rights, as with us she is, and also by a sound public opinion. 

 Man must not, by law or public opinion, be suffered to have an im- 

 punity in trampling upon the weak, or of arrogating to himself more 

 of God's best gift to him, than the proportion provided by the Author 

 of nature. Slavery and polygamy are both incompatible with a just 

 equality of rights, and with human happiness, and are especially de- 

 structive of the virtue and beneficent influences of the family. They 

 are evils and wrongs, whose extirpation is always a question but of 

 the means and time of execution. 



Marriage between one man and one woman, with fidelity to the 

 marriage vow, is the natural order from which man and woman de- 

 rive their fullest happiness, and society its best welfare. The equality 

 in the number of the sexes, through all the centuries of time, shows 

 the Creative purpose that but two should become the parents of the 

 family, and when but two, these have the highest incentives of mu- 

 tual effort for the welfare of the family, without the jealousies and 

 strifes and degradation incident to polygamy. United in affection 

 and counsels, each sustaining the courage and confidence of the other, 

 the two attain a success greater than the aggregate of their separate 

 efforts; their kindly feelings towards each other and their children, 

 have their natural exercise, and these are happiness; and they escape 

 the idiosyncrasies which sometimes make singular those who pass 

 unwedded through life. 



Those temperate observances which belong to the family thus con- 

 stituted, save from the severe penalties that spring from a capricious 

 incontinence, and from a terrible disease, that seems to have been set 

 as a guard to vindicate the natural law of temperance, modesty, and 

 discretion. Population then increases faster, children are better 

 nurtured, more healthy and happy, and become better citizens, for 

 all social and industrial purposes, and for the support of the govern- 

 ment. The family, too, if fidelity be observed to its relations and 

 duties, saves man from his worst enemy, himself; saves him from 

 vices that extinguish his affections, vices that cannot be habitually 

 followed without turning his heart to stone. When celibacy and cor- 



