426 
SUPINENESS OF THE ARMENIAN CLERGY. 
from the common lot of so many other hapless creatures in the 
same circumstances. Thus, these easy fathers, having given 
the woman the stipulated parting douceur , with all the compla¬ 
cent carelessness of having paid a debt no more to be heard of, 
quit the country, and abandon the children they would have 
cherished with anxiety and pride, had they been born in wed¬ 
lock, to the most wretched and degrading fates. When the 
girls are marketable, they are sold by their mothers to the like 
prostitution that gave them their miserable existence; and the 
boys are too often exposed to destinies yet more disgraceful. 
I do not discuss the often agitated question, of whether it be a 
crime, or merely a pleasure, with sometimes a disagreeable issue, 
that leads to the effect of bringing children into the world, thus 
excluded, like wretches out of cast, from the name, the family, 
and even the land of their fathers; with the additional evil of 
having no claim to the protection of any country whatever ; 
while they lie open to every indignity, every misery, which the 
contempt and caprice of the country of their mother can cast 
upon them. These consequences may answer the question ; for 
surely, no man, when he seriously thinks, can doubt the moral 
crime of abandoning the offspring, which he knows are his 
own, like the dropping of the ostrich’s eggs, to the desert where 
they fell. 
In these cases, we might expect the Armenian clergy would 
interfere ; both to prevent the formation of such illicit connec¬ 
tions, and, when formed, to see that justice should be done the 
innocent progeny. But they are, too often, worse than supine ; 
some way or other, rather encouraging than discountenancing 
this practice, for the sake of certain emoluments (I know not 
how gained) which they derive from the illegally contracting 
