It would perhaps be impossible to form any thing like a correct comparative estimate of the quantum of misery endured by a creature whose native purity of soul and moral principles have been thus ruined. Few men, however, are so ignorant as not to know something of the passionate fondness of a mother for her offspring; and from this some idea may be conceived of the agonized and outrageous feelings that can urge her to its destruction to conceal her guilt and the shame it occasions. Will any one pretend to say that this barbarous and unnatural murder is not often occasioned by seduction? Nay, further, let me ask, Is not the seducer by profession very frequently provided with drugs, which he hesitates not to administer to the wretch whom he has ruined, for the purpose of producing abortion? and if they fail, have not mechanical means been at times resorted to to effect the same damnable purpose?
These are facts which they cannot, dare not deny. What must we think, then, of the man who thus deliberately covers himself with innocent blood,—who wantonly takes away the life of a creature that was utterly incapable of ever having offered him any offence,—a life, too, of which he himself was the guilty author, and which by every tie of nature he was imperiously bound to cherish and protect? I do not mean to say, that every man who commits the crime of seduction, would at that same time also commit murder; but I do affirm, that there is no vice whatever, that so speedily corrupts the heart, debases its inclination, and so entirely depraves the mind, as an illegitimate intercourse between the sexes: it is a melancholy fact, not to be controverted, that even in the ordinary occurrences of life, the commission of one crime will often require and lead to many more to conceal it. The seducer, therefore, of a virtuous woman, to the enormity of that first offence, will and has been led on from one criminal act to another for the necessity of concealment, till murder has been added to the list of his foul transgressions.
The finest feather in a seducer’s plume, and on which he most prides himself, is the facility and indifference with which he can abandon his degraded victim. In this respect, indeed, it must be allowed that all of them evince considerable coolness and dexterity, consigning them in a month, or sometimes less, to rags, hunger, and infamy, leaving to perish the unhappy objects, whose confidence they had gained by solemn declarations and plighted oaths of love and regard, with the most sacred promises of never-failing protection.
Who can withhold the heartfelt, justly-merited tribute of approbation, from the poor industrious parents who are seen struggling cheerfully with want, enduring the chilling blasts of winter, and, after toiling through the day, retiring at night to a miserable ill-covered pallet, to stifle the cravings of hunger; and all borne without a murmur, that thus they may save a pittance to procure for a beloved child the blessing of ever so little knowledge, and thus infuse into her young mind a love of virtue? Who would dare the presumption that these humble honest people do wrong in cherishing the fond hope that she may contribute something hereafter towards the support of their declining years? Or would the seducer rather advise the mind of the child to remain unenlightened, that she might the more blindly fall into his snares? In that, will any man, however depraved and hardened in wickedness, lay his hand on his breast, and answer fairly, whether he does not think the ruin of such an innocent being a more heinous crime than murder, in almost any of the aggravated circumstances in which it has hitherto been exposed to public abhorrence? Will not the shame and sorrow of the parents be infinitely more afflictive than if they had seen their child deposited in the silent grave, if but unpolluted? And finally, will not the friends of human happiness sympathize more with the heart-broken parents, than if a robber had carried away the whole of their little property, and even left them without the last remains of sustenance—a morsel of bread?
That amiable Christian philosopher and excellent moralist, Dr. Paley, has expressed his sentiments on this subject in pointed and forcible terms. “Upon the whole,” says he, for I must be allowed to quote them, “if we pursue the effects of seduction through the complicated misery which it occasions; and if it be right to estimate crimes by the mischief they knowingly produce; it will appear something more than mere invective to assert, that not one half of the crimes for which men suffer death, by the laws of England, are so flagitious as this.”
There are cold-blooded mortals in the world, self-denominated sages or philosophers, who can excuse and even sanction the most disgraceful excesses, under the specious plea of what they term reasonable allowance for youthful levity—the summer of life, when all the passions flow impetuously through the free channels of the vital system, though, like other violent streams, if left to themselves they will soon become exhausted and dried up. If this sophistical mode of reasoning deserve not the name of genuine philosophy, it claims at least the peculiar merit of novelty.
Is it not fair to infer, that persons who advocate principles so hostile to the true interests of society, have themselves been profligates through life, and are still in reality the enemies of mankind? Does it follow, that because the vices of early life in themselves have in a premature old age brought on their punishment, other fountains are to be suffered to exhaust themselves in like wickedness? Whence, it may be asked, has any man derived the right to destroy the happiness of his fellow creature? or what reparation will he be able to make for unprovoked injuries so wantonly inflicted, so irreparably endured?
But unfortunately the perpetration of such crimes is not confined, in virtuous indignation it must not be concealed, to the young alone; they are practised also by men whose hoary locks and tottering steps would beguile one in charitable thought to hope, that sentiments of a far different nature should influence them to prepare for that other world, on the verge of which they seem already standing. So great indeed is the general regard I have for grey hairs, that it sometimes amounts to veneration. How much more congenial, then, would it prove to screen the foibles of that so much honoured period, than to expose any of those failings from which no part of our earthly existence is entirely free!
But when we see an old man voluntarily stripping himself of the dignity of years, and meanly descending from that eminence on which reverence and regard had placed him, to vicious indulgences which exhausted nature and the many infirmities of a debilitated frame render him incapable even of enjoying,—when we see him, I say, still hovering around those criminal gratifications which poison his every sober joy, and of which he cannot now, except in prurient imagination, be a partaker, what can or should save him from just contempt and merited indignation?
How many are there in high life, several of whom I could mention, (and were it done, it would be perhaps but the discharge of a christian duty,) who live in a state of unconcealed adultery,—fathers of families taking up with women young enough to be their daughters! At the present moment of writing, I know of two men who have grand-daughters some years older than two country girls they have under protection, as it is called, and whom they doubtless pay enormously for pampering their feeble appetites, and feeding their silly vanity. Can reformation of the young be reasonably expected, while the old continue to set such an example?