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.
SALE OF CHILDREN TO PURCHASE WIVES.
In Timor, an island in the Indian Ocean, it is said, that parents sell their children in order to purchase more wives. In Circassia, women are reared and improved in beauty and every alluring art, only for the purpose of being sold. The prince of the Circassians demanded of the prince of Mingrelia an hundred slaves loaded with tapestry, an hundred cows, as many oxen, and the same number of horses, as the price of his sister. In New-Zealand, we meet with a custom which may be called purchasing a wife for a night, and which is proof that those must also be purchased who are intended for a longer duration; and what to us is a little supprising, this temporary wife, insisted upon being treated with as much deference and respect, as if she had been married for life; but in general, this is not the case in other countries, for the wife who is purchased, is always trained up in the principles of slavery; and, being inured to every indignity [p150] and mortification from her parents, she expects no better treatment from her husband.
There is little difference in the condition of her who is put to sale by her sordid parents, and her who is disposed of in the same manner by the magistrates, as a part of the state’s property. Besides those we have already mentioned in this work, the Thracians put the fairest of their virgins up to public sale, and the magistrates of Crete had the sole power of choosing partners in marriage for their young men; and, in the execution of this power, the affection and interest of the parties was totally overlooked, and the good of the state the only object of attention; in pursuing which, they always allotted the strongest and best made of the sex to one another, that they might raise up a generation of warriors, or of women fit to be the mothers of warriors.
POLYGAMY AND CONCUBINAGE.
Polygamy and concubinage having in process of time become fashionable vices, the number of women kept by the great became at last more an article of grandeur and state, than a mode of satisfying the animal appetite: Solomon had threescore queens, and fourscore concubines, and virgins without number. Maimon tells us, that among the Jews a man might have as many wives as he pleased, even to the number of a hundred, and that it was not in their power to prevent him, provided he could maintain, and pay them all the conjugal debt once a week; but in this duty he was not to run in arrear to any of them above a month, though with regard to concubines he might do as he pleased.