POLY GAMY ACCOMPANIED BY SLAVERY.

275

principal felicity of the faithful.” These, they say,

are created not of clay, as mortal women are, but of
pure musk.
Several causes are stated as concurring to promote
this degradation. Montesquieu in particular says,
“Women in warm climates are marriageable at the
age of eight, nine, or ten. Infancy and marriage,
therefore, go almost always together: and women be
come old at twenty. Reason, then, and beauty, are
in them never found together; when beauty wishes
for sway, reason refuses it;
and when reason might

be
it,

more. Women ought

to
no

obtain beauty
is

old age

in in
dependent: for reason cannot procure them
power that beauty did not give them even youth.”
a

of
Montesquieu was very expert writing
at
sort

a
pretty hypothetical nonsense.—“Beauty
wishes for
sway,” and “reason refuses it!”—Whose reason,

I
the thirteen year-old husband?
of

pray? The reason

child —There

is
Or that of the old ass who marries
a

no reason for slavery any time.

at

proof existence, however, Montesquieu

its
of
In

the East, that

in
of so

says, “Wives are changed often

they cannot have the power domestic government.
the eunuchs, whom
to

The care therefore committed

is

all

they intrust with their keys, and the management

of all their household affairs.”
by

we are told,
of

But, the apologists polygamy,

Turkey has little
in
of

that the condition the women

slavery, and the pity given by
to
it
to

resemblance
its

imagination than
in

Europeans has source more

reality; that from their naturally retired and indolent
an in

habits, they care less about exercise open air than

English wife
of

ourselves; that the government