If the laws forbidding the marriage of near relations with each other,
originated from the political view of preserving the human race from
degeneracy, they are the only laws we meet with on that subject, and
exert almost the only care we find taken of so important a matter. The
Asiatic is careful to improve the breed of his elephants, the Arabian of
his horses, and the Laplander of his reindeer. The Englishman, eager to
have swift horses, staunch dogs, and victorious cocks, grudges no care
and spares no expense, to have the males and females matched properly;
but since the days of Solon, where is the legislator, or since the days
of the ancient Greeks, where are the private persons who take any care
to improve, or even to keep from degeneracy the breed of their own
species? The Englishman who solicitously attends the training of his
colts and puppies, would be ashamed to be caught in the nursery; and
while no motive could prevail upon him to breed horses or hounds from an
improper or contaminated kind, he will calmly, or rather
inconsiderately, match himself with the most decrepid or diseased of the
human species; thoughtless of the weaknesses and evils he is going to
entail on posterity, and considering nothing but the acquisition of
fortune he is by her alliance to convey to an offspring, by diseases
rendered unable to use it. The Muscovites were formerly the only people,
besides the Greeks, who paid a proper attention to this subject. After
the preliminaries of a marriage were settled between the parents of a
young couple, the bride was stripped naked, and carefully examined by a
jury of matrons, when if they found any bodily defect they endeavored to
cure it; but if it would admit of no remedy, the match was broke off,
and she was considered not only as a very improper subject to breed
from, but improper also for maintaining the affections of a husband,
after he had discovered the imposition she had put upon him.