THE SIRE. 135 



reason from the one to the other. But, in addition to 

 this, certain facts exist of a character to cause one, at 

 least, to suspend his judgment. The world began with 

 a single pair ; and, in the human family, inbreeding, and 

 that, too, of the closest kind, must have been the rule. 

 Who can doubt but that the perfect produced the per- 

 fect? 



The Jews were forbidden to marry with foreign 

 nations ; and in the earlier portions of their history, 

 when under the government of the patriarchs, and 

 comparatively few in numbers, it is fair to suppose that 

 intermarriage must often have been between blood 

 relations. But the Jews, instead of losing stamina 

 and constitutional vitality, have held their own in 

 numbers and mental character, while a thousand nations 

 have perished. Europe also furnishes us with further 

 data. There, by reason of the law of primogeniture 

 being enforced in order to retain their great ancestral 

 estates intact, marriages between first-cousins have often 

 been made a necessity. I might mention noble houses, 

 whose ancestral records run back beyond the Norman 

 invasion, whose children have furnished England with 

 her orators; statesmen, and poets, and whose female mem- 

 bers have been among the most beautiful, vivacious, and 

 long-lived of the land, in which, nevertheless, for state 

 and property considerations, marriage between cousins 

 has been the rule rather than the exception. I might 

 adduce other illustrations equally to the point ; but those 

 already given are enough to make the thoughtful pause 



