It is a fatal
error which has bound up the cause of affection so intimately with
worldly considerations; and it is a growing evil. The increasing demands
of luxury in a highly civilized community operate most injuriously on
the cause of disinterested affections, and particularly so in the case
of women, who are generally precluded from maintaining or advancing
their place in society by any other schemes than matrimonial ones. I
might say something here on the cruelty of that conventional prejudice
which shackles the independence of women, by attaching the loss of
caste to almost all, nay, all, of the very few sources of pecuniary
emolument open to them. It requires great strength of principle to
disregard this prejudice; and while urged by duty to inveigh against
mercenary unions, I feel some compunction at the thoughts of the
numerous class who are in a manner forced by this prejudice into forming
them. But there are too many who have no such excuse, and to them the
remaining observations are addressed. The sacred nature of the conjugal
relation is entirely merged in the worldly aspect of it. That union
sacred, indissoluble, fraught with all that earth has to bestow of
happiness or misery, is entered upon much of the plan and principle of a
partnership account in mercantile affairs--each bringing his or her
quantum of worldly possessions--and often with even less inquiry as to
moral qualities than persons so situated would make; God's ordinances
are not to be so mocked, and such violations of his laws are severely
visited upon offenders against them.
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