In Timor, an island in the Indian Ocean, it is said, that parents sell
their children in order to purchase more wives. In Circassia, women are
reared and improved in beauty and every alluring art, only for the
purpose of being sold. The prince of the Circassians demanded of the
prince of Mingrelia an hundred slaves loaded with tapestry, an hundred
cows, as many oxen, and the same number of horses, as the price of his
sister. In New-Zealand, we meet with a custom which may be called
purchasing a wife for a night, and which is proof that those must also
be purchased who are intended for a longer duration; and what to us is a
little supprising, this temporary wife, insisted upon being treated with
as much deference and respect, as if she had been married for life; but
in general, this is not the case in other countries, for the wife who is
purchased, is always trained up in the principles of slavery; and, being
inured to every indignity and mortification from her parents, she
expects no better treatment from her husband.
There is little difference in the condition of her who is put to sale by
her sordid parents, and her who is disposed of in the same manner by the
magistrates, as a part of the state's property. Besides those we have
already mentioned in this work, the Thracians put the fairest of their
virgins up to public sale, and the magistrates of Crete had the sole
power of choosing partners in marriage for their young men; and, in the
execution of this power, the affection and interest of the parties was
totally overlooked, and the good of the state the only object of
attention; in pursuing which, they always allotted the strongest and
best made of the sex to one another, that they might raise up a
generation of warriors, or of women fit to be the mothers of warriors.