aoo 
IMPROVEMIiNT OF THR STATE\OFaWOMEW. 
li[fewisei adultery^cby the auG^^ laws, was severely punished. King 
IJdmund ordered adultery to be punished in the same manner as 
homicide ; and Canute ordered that a man who committed adultery 
should be banished, and that the woman should have her nose and 
ears cut off. In the time of Henry I. it was punished with the loss 
ofieyes, and mutilation. Among the Mingrelians, according to Char- 
din, adultery is punished with the forfeiture of a hog, which is usua iiy 
eaten in good friendship between the gallant, the adulteress, and the 
injured party. 
Among the Japanese, and divers other nations, adultery is only 
penal in the woman. Among the Abyssiiiians, the crime of the hus- 
band is said to he only punished on the innocent wife. In the Marian 
islands, on the contrary, the woman is not punishable for adultery, 
hut if the man go astray, he pays severely : the wife and her relations 
waste his lands, turn him out of his house, &c. Among the Chinese, 
there is reason to conclude that adultery is not capital, for it is said 
that fond parents will make a contract for their daughter’s future hus^ 
band to allow them this indulgence. 
In Britain, adultery is reckoned a spiritual offence, and is cognista- 
ble by the spiritual courts, where it is punished by fine and penance. 
The common law takes no farther notice of it, than to aljiow the party 
aggrieved an action and damages. This practice is often censured by 
foreigners, as making too light of a crime, the bad consequences of 
which, public as well as private, are very great. It has been answered^ 
that perhaps this penalty, by civil actions, is more wisely calculated 
to prevent the frequency of the offence, which ought to be the end of 
all laws, than a severer punishment. He that by a judgment of law 
is, according to circumstances, stripped of a great part of his fortune, 
thrown into prison till he can pay it, or forced to fly his country, wiU, 
no doubt, in most cases, own that he pays dearly for his crime. 
Improvement OF THE State OF Women. 
Eor the present improved state of the fair sex, and, in consequence 
thereof, of society in general, modern Europeans are indebted to our 
Gothic ancestors. Women, among the ancient Greeks and Romans, 
seem to have been considered merely as objects of sensuality, or of do- 
mestic conveniency ; they were devoted to a state of seclusion and ob- 
scurity, bad few attentions paid them, and were permitted to take as 
little share in the conversation, as in the general commerce of life. 
But the northern nations, who paid a kind of devotion to the softer 
sex, even in their native forests, had no sooner settled themselves in the 
provinces of the Roman empire, than the female character began to 
assume new consequence. Those fierce barbarians, who seem to have 
thirsted only for blood, always forbore to offer any violence to the 
women. They brought along with them the respectful gallantry of 
the north, which haa power to-restrain their savage ferocity ; and they 
introduced into the west of Europe a generosity of sentiment, and a 
complaisance towards the ladies, to which the most polished nations 
of antiquity were strangers. These sentiments of generous gallantry 
were fostered by the institution of chivalry, which lifted women yet 
