342 Plan of the gradual Aholition Bk. iv. 



were suffered to remain in the state in which na- 

 ture has left them, and the man were convinced 

 that the woman and the child depended solely 

 upon him for support, I scarcely believe that there 

 are ten men breathing so atrocious as to desert 

 them. But our laws, in opposition to the laws of 

 nature, say, that if the parents forsake their child, 

 other persons will undertake to support it ; or, if 

 the man forsake the woman, that she shall still 

 meet with protection elsewhere ; that is, we take 

 all possible pains to weaken and render null the 

 ties of nature, and then say that men are unna- 

 tural. But the fact is, that the society itself, in 

 its body politic, is the unnatural character, for 

 framing laws that thus counteract the laws of na- 

 ture, and give premiums to the violation of the 

 best and most honourable feelings of the human 

 heart. 



It is a common thing in most parishes, when 

 the father of an illegitimate child can be seized, 

 to endeavour to frighten him into marriage by 

 the terrors of a jail; but such a proceeding cannot 

 surely be too strongly reprobated. In the first 

 place, it is a most shallow policy in the parish 

 officers; for, if they succeed, the effect upon the 

 present system will generally be, that of having 

 three or four children to provide for, instead of one. 

 And in the next place it is difficult to conceive a 

 more gross and scandalous profanation of a reli- 

 gious ceremony. Those who believe that the 

 character of a woman is restored by such a forced 

 engagement, or that the moral worth of the man 



