2,98 Objections to this Mode considered. Bk. iv. 



When indigence does not produce overt acts of 

 vice, it palsies every virtue. Under the continued 

 temptations to a breach of chastity, occasional 

 failures may take place, and the moral sensibility 

 in other respects not be very strikingly impaired ; 

 but the continued temptations which beset hope- 

 less poverty, and the strong sense of injustice 

 that generally accompanies it from an ignorance 

 of its true cause, tend so powerfully to sour the 

 disposition, to harden the heart, and deaden the 

 moral sense, that, generally speaking, virtue takes 

 her flight clear away from the tainted spot, and 

 does not often return. 



Even with respect to the vices which relate to 

 the sex, marriage has been found to be by no 

 means a complete remedy. Among the higher 

 classes, our Doctors' Commons, and the lives that 

 many married men are known to lead, sufficiently 

 prove this ; and the same kind of vice, though not 

 so much heard of among the lower classes of 

 people, is probably in all our great towns not 

 much less frequent. 



Add to this, that abject poverty, particularly 

 when joined with idleness, is a state the most 

 unfavourable to chastity that can well be con- 

 ceived. The passion is as strong, or nearly so, as 

 in other situations ; and every restraint on it from 

 personal respect, or a sense of morality, is gene- 

 rally removed. There is a degree of squalid po- 

 verty, in which, if a girl was brought up, I should 

 say, that her being really modest at twenty was 

 an absolute miracle. Those persons must have 



