2 88 TRAVELS TO DISCOVER 



ther, we have a near profpect of dying together; nothing can 

 prefent a more agreeable picture of focial life, than mono- 

 gamy in England. 



The Arab, on the other hand, if fhe begins to bear chil- 

 dren at eleven, feldom or never has a child after twenty. 

 The time then of her child-bearing is nine years, and four 

 women, taken altogether, have then the term of thirty-fix. So 

 that the Englifh woman that bears children for thirty-four 

 years, has only two years lefs than the term enjoyed by the 

 four wives whom Mahomet has allowed; and if it be grant- 

 ed an Englifh wife may bear at fifty, the terms are equal. 



But there are other grievous differences. An Arabian 

 girl, at eleven years old, by her youth and beauty, is the ob- 

 ject of man's defire ; being an infant, however, in under- 

 ftanding, fhe is not a rational companion for him. A man 

 marries there, fay at twenty, and before he is thirty, his wife, 

 improved as a companion, ceafes to be an object of his de- 

 fires, and a mother of children ; fo that all the beft, and 

 mofl vigorous of his days, are fpent with a woman he can- 

 not love, and with her he w r ould be deflined to live forty, 

 or forty-five years, without comfort to himfelf by increafe of 

 family, or utility to the public. 



The reafons, then, againfl: polygamy, which fubfifl in 

 England, do not by any means fubfift in Arabia ; and that 

 being the cafe, it would be unworthy of the wifdom of God, 

 and an unevennefs in his ways, which we fhall never fee, 

 to f abject two nations, under fuch different circumflances, 

 abfolutely to the fame obfervances. 



I consider 



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