294 Objections to this Alode considered. Bk. iv. 



A third objection wliich may be started to this 

 plan, and the only one which appears to me to 

 have any kind of plausibility, is that, by endea- 

 vouring to urge the duty of moral restraint on the 

 poor, we may increase the quantity of vice relating 

 to the sex. 



I should be extremely sorry to say any thing 

 which could either directly or remotely be con- 

 strued unfavourably to the cause of virtue ; but I 

 certainly cannot think that the vices which relate to 

 the sex are the only vices which are to be con- 

 sidered in a moral question ; or that they are even 

 the greatest and most degrading to the human cha- 

 racter. They can rarely or never be committed 

 without producing unhappiness somewhere or 

 other, and therefore ought always to be strongly 

 reprobated : but there are other vices, the effects 

 of which are still more pernicious ; and there are 

 other situations which lead more certainly to 

 moral offences than the refraining from marriage. 

 Powerful as may be the temptations to a breach 

 of chastity, I am inclined to think that they are 

 impotent, in comparison of the temptations arising 

 from continued distress. A large class of women, 

 and many men, I have no doubt, pass a consider- 

 able part of their lives consistently with the laws 

 of chastity ; but I believe there will be found very 

 few who pass through the ordeal of squalid and 

 hopeless poverty, or even of long continued em- 

 barrassed circumstances, without a great moral 

 degradation of character. 



In the higher and middle classes of society, it 



