CUSTOM OF THE MUSCOVITES.
If the laws forbidding the marriage of near relations with each other, originated from the political view of preserving the human race from degeneracy, they are the only laws we meet with on that subject, and exert almost the only care we find taken of so important a matter. The Asiatic is careful to improve the breed of his elephants, the Arabian of his horses, and the Laplander of his reindeer. The Englishman, eager to have swift horses, staunch dogs, and victorious cocks, grudges no care and spares no expense, to have the males and females matched properly; but since the days of Solon, where is the legislator, or since the days of the ancient Greeks, where are the private persons who take any care to improve, or even to keep from degeneracy the breed of their own species? The Englishman who solicitously attends the training of his colts and puppies, would be ashamed to be caught in the nursery; and while no motive could prevail upon him to breed horses or hounds from an improper or contaminated kind, he will calmly, or rather inconsiderately, match himself with the most decrepid or diseased of the human species; thoughtless of the weaknesses and evils he is going to entail on posterity, and considering nothing but the acquisition of fortune he is by her [p149] alliance to convey to an offspring, by diseases rendered unable to use it. The Muscovites were formerly the only people, besides the Greeks, who paid a proper attention to this subject. After the preliminaries of a marriage were settled between the parents of a young couple, the bride was stripped naked, and carefully examined by a jury of matrons, when if they found any bodily defect they endeavored to cure it; but if it would admit of no remedy, the match was broke off, and she was considered not only as a very improper subject to breed from, but improper also for maintaining the affections of a husband, after he had discovered the imposition she had put upon him.