But Mahomet, in his permission of plurality of wives, seems constantly to have been on his guard, against suffering that, which was intended for the welfare of his people, from operating in a different manner. He did not permit a man to marry two, three, or four wives, unless he could maintain them. He was interested for the rights and rank of these women; and the man so marrying was obliged to shew before the Cadi, or some equivalent officer, or judge, that it was in his power to support them, according to their birth. It was not so with concubines, with women who were purchased, or who were taken in war. Every man enjoyed these at his pleasure, and their peril, that is, whether he was able to maintain them or not.
From this great scarcity of provisions, which is the result of an extraordinary concourse to a place almost destitute of the necessaries of life, few inhabitants of Jidda can avail themselves of the privilege granted him by Mahomet. He therefore cannot marry more than one wife, because he cannot maintain more, and from this cause arises the want of people, and the large number of unmarried women.
When in Arabia Felix, where every sort of provision is exceedingly cheap, where the fruits of the ground, the general food for man, are produced spontaneously, the supporting of a number of wives costs no more than so many slaves or servants; their food is the same, and a blue cotton shirt, a habit common to them all, is not more chargeable for the one than the other. The consequence is, that celibacy in women is prevented, and the number of people is increased in a fourfold ratio by polygamy, to what it is in those that are monogamous.
I know there are authors fond of system, enemies to free inquiry, and blinded by prejudice, who contend that polygamy, without distinction of circumstances, is detrimental to the population of a country. The learned Dr Arbuthnot, in a paper addressed to the Royal Society[189], has maintained this strange doctrine, in a still stranger manner. He lays it down, as his first position, that in semine masculino of our first parent Adam, there was impressed an original necessity of procreating, ever after, an equal number of males and females. The manner he proves this, has received great incense from the vulgar, as containing an unanswerable argument. He shews, by the casting of three dice, that the chances are almost infinite, that an equal number of males and females should not be born in any year; and he pretends to prove, that every year in twenty, as taken from the bills of mortality, the same number of males and females have constantly been produced, or at least a greater proportion of men than of women, to make up for the havock occasioned by war, murder, drunkenness, and all species of violence to which women are not subject.
I need not say, that this, at least, sufficiently shews the weakness of the argument. For, if the equal proportion had been in semine masculino of our first parent, the consequence must have been, that male and female would have been invariably born, from the creation to the end of all things. And it is a supposition very unworthy of the wisdom of God, that, at the creation of man, he could make an allowance for any deviation that was to happen, from crimes, against the commission of which his positive precepts ran. Weak as this is, it is not the weakest part of this artificial argument, which, like the web of a spider too finely woven, whatever part you touch it on, the whole falls to pieces.
After taking it for granted, that he has proved the equality of the two sexes in number, from the bills of mortality in London, he next supposes, as a consequence, that all the world is in the same predicament; that is, that an equal number of males and females is produced every where. Why Dr Arbuthnot, an eminent physician (which surely implies an informed naturalist) should imagine that this inference would hold, is what I am not able to account for. He should know, let us say, in the countries of the east, that fruits, flowers, trees, birds, fish, every blade of grass, is commonly different, and that man, in his appearance, diet, exercise, pleasure, government, and religion, is as widely different; why he should found the issue of an Asiatic, however, upon the bills of mortality in London, is to the full as absurd as to assert, that they do not wear either beard or whiskers in Syria, because that is not the case in London.
I am well aware, that it maybe urged by those who permit themselves to say every thing, because they are not at pains to consider any thing, that the course of my argument will lead to a defence of polygamy in general, the supposed doctrine of the Thelypthora[190]. Such reflections as these, unless introduced for merriment, are below my animadversion; all I shall say on that topic is, that they who find encouragement to polygamy in Mr Madan’s book, the Thelypthora, have read it with a much more acute perception than perhaps I have done; and I shall be very much mistaken, if polygamy increases in England upon the principles laid down in the Thelypthora.
England, says Dr Arbuthnot, enjoys an equality of both sexes, and, if it is not so, the inequality is so imperceptible, that no inconvenience has yet followed. What we have now to inquire is, Whether other nations, or the majority of them, are in the same situation? For, if we are to decide by this, and if we should happen to find, that, in other countries, there are invariably born three women to one man, the conclusion, in regard to that country, must be, that three women to one man was the proportion of one sex to the other, impressed at the creation in semine of our first parent.
I confess I am not fond of meddling with the globe before the deluge. But as learned men seem inclined to think that Ararat and Euphrates are the mountain and river of antediluvian times, and that Mesopotamia, or Diarbekir, is the ancient situation of the terrestrial paradise, I cannot give Dr Arbuthnot’s argument fairer play[191], than to transport myself thither; and, in the same spot where the necessity was imposed of male and female being produced in equal numbers, inquire how that case stands now. The pretence that climates and times may have changed, the proportion cannot be admitted, since it has been taken for granted, that it exists in the bills of mortality in London, and governs them to this day; and, since it was founded on necessity, which must be eternal.
Now, from a diligent inquiry into the south, and scripture-part of Mesopotamia, Armenia, and Syria, from Mousul (or Nineveh) to Aleppo and Antioch, I find the proportion to be fully two women born to one man. There is indeed a fraction over, but not a considerable one. From Latikea, Laodicea ad mare, down the coast of Syria to Sidon, the number is very nearly three, or two and three-fourths to one man. Through the Holy Land, the country called Horan, in the Isthmus of Suez, and the parts of the Delta, unfrequented by strangers, it is something less than three. But, from Suez to the straits of Babelmandeb, which contains the three Arabias, the portion is fully four women to one man, which, I have reason to believe, holds as far as the Line, and 30° beyond it.