As Lord M. and I, between us, have three or four boroughs at command, I
think I will get into parliament, in order to bring in a bill for this
good purpose.
Neither will the house of parliament, nor the houses of convocation,
have reason to object it. And all the courts, whether spiritual or
sensual, civil or uncivil, will find their account in it when passed
into a law.
By my soul, Jack, I should be apprehensive of a general insurrection,
and that incited by the women, were such a bill to be thrown out.—For
here is the excellency of the scheme: the women will have equal reason
with the men to be pleased with it.
Dost think, that old prerogative Harlowe, for example, must not, if
such a law were in being, have pulled in his horns?—So excellent a wife
as he has, would never else have renewed with such a gloomy tyrant:
who, as well as all other married tyrants, must have been upon good
behaviour from year to year.
A termagant wife, if such a law were to pass, would be a phoenix.
The churches would be the only market-place for the fair sex; and
domestic excellence the capital recommendation.
Nor would there be an old maid in Great Britain, and all its
territories. For what an odd soul must she be who could not have her
twelvemonth’s trial?
In short, a total alteration for the better, in the morals and way of
life in both sexes, must, in a very few years, be the consequence of
such a salutary law.
Who would have expected such a one from me! I wish the devil owe me not
a spite for it.
Then would not the distinction be very pretty, Jack? as in
flowers;—such a gentleman, or such a lady, is an ANNUAL—such a one is a
PERENNIAL.
One difficulty, however, as I remember, occurred to me, upon the
probability that a wife might be _enceinte_, as the lawyers call it.
But thus I obviated it—
That no man should be allowed to marry another woman without his then
wife’s consent, till she were brought-to-bed, and he had defrayed all
incident charges; and till it was agreed upon between them whether the
child should be his, her’s, or the public’s. The women in this case to
have what I call the coercive option; for I would not have it in the
man’s power to be a dog neither.
And, indeed, I gave the turn of the scale in every part of my scheme in
the women’s favour: for dearly do I love the sweet rogues.
How infinitely more preferable this my scheme to the polygamy one of
the old patriarchs; who had wives and concubines without number!—I
believe David and Solomon had their hundreds at a time. Had they not,
Jack?
Let me add, that annual parliaments, and annual marriages, are the
projects next my heart. How could I expatiate upon the benefits that
would arise from both!