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    means any thing , it is the ethics on which happiness is based . It is equally essential to both sexes in effect , and why is it not the same to both in essence ? May the one be debased , and the other remain undefiled ? No ; but selfishness likes half measures , likes to demand full and give false weight , to leave loopholes and

    make reservations ; but there is no power can secure their sole use to their nefarious framer . The serpent sin has his tail in his mouth , and the recoiling shaft brings back the venom it was designed to dispense . When contagion is abroad , it is impossible to tell whom it will touch ; it may reach the most guarded home of the most cautious criminal , and a faithless wife and fallen

    daughter consign him to the desolation and disgrace he has inflicted . But then in lieu of pure morality for men ,, have we not punishment for women ? Have we not the gibbet and the axe , public scorn and utter abandonment ?—do we not propitiate virtue by making the victim the sacrifice ? * Here are marks of civilization , ' as Mungo Park said when he saw a gallows ! In the same manner that we have distinct moralities for the

    sexes , have we such also for the classes ; an offence is enormous if it attack wealth or rank , and proportionately innocent if it assail poverty and obscurity ; the privileged criminal is allowed to expiate his offence by a disbursement from a plethoric purse ; the unprivileged criminal is compelled to submit an emaciated body to a prison , perhaps to abandon , in the interim , a helpless

    family , who thus become guiltless sharers of his calamity . I remember the deep disgust with which , a few years ago , I read , in a case of seduction , the speech of a learned counsel , who pleaded for mitigation of damages on the score that the injured girl did the menial work of her father ' s house ! inferring that a less indemnity was due to humble industry when insulted , than to the less useful but more refined . Here is morality , hollow ,

    specious , infamous ; morality for the people , like the morality for men , qualified for convenience . The principle upon which such actions as that to which I have just alluded are brought , is a disgrace to the age . What is the wrong sought to be redressed ? Injured , outraged , insulted feeling , blighted affections , disappointed hopes , why cannot these be pleaded , and as far as may be redressed ? Let us not boast that

    we have loosed the feudal collar from the neck of the serf , while an Englishwoman cannot go into an English court of justice but as a nominal , if not actual , vassal of some liege lord , the loss of her services to whom must be pleaded to obtain damages . Our legal fictions assuredly prove law to be what lawyers pretend it is , * the perfection of reason !'

    While we are thus unsound in principle , we shall be untrue in practice ; and notwithstanding fine natural capabilities , devote ourselves to social and political misery and degradation . Instead of taking prayer-books to church , we ought to take masks , and

    Untitled Article

    English morality . 787

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Nov. 2, 1833, page 787, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2626/page/55/