3o6 COCHINCHINA. 
ciety and tlie abiidgmeiit of their physical powers, has pro-- 
duced ill Cochinchina a. diametrically opposite effect, by 
permitting them to revel uncontrolled in every species of 
licentiousness. This cause is their being degraded in public 
opinion, and considered as beings of an inferior nature to the 
men. Thus situated, character becomes of little value either 
to themselves or to others ; and, from all accounts, it appears 
they are fully sensible of its unimportance in this respect. 
The consequence of which is that women of less scrupulosity, 
or men of more accommodating dispositions, are not certainly 
to be met with in any part of the world than those in the en- 
virons of Turon hny. It is to be hoped, however, that the 
general character of the nation ma}' not exactly correspond 
with that which prev ails at on« of the most frequented of its 
sea-port towns. The singular indulgence, granted by the 
laws of Solon, of permitting young women to dispose of per- 
sonal favours, for the piu'pose of enabling them to procure 
articles of the first necessity for themselves or their families, 
is sanctioned by the Cochinchinese without any limitation as 
to age, condition, or object. Neither the husband nor the 
father seems to have any sci'uples in abandoning the wife 
or the daughter to her gallant. Not Galba, when he po- 
litely fell asleej:), (as we are told by Plutarch,) for the accom- 
modation of Meca'nas and rebuked his servant for ofiiciously 
rattling the plates in order to awaken him that he might see 
what was going on, could possibly have been more at ease 
than a Cochinchinese husband, to whom may justl}^ be ap- 
plied the following lines of Horace, wherein he describes the 
dissolute manners of the Romans : 
