render them more operative than laws. Thus, it is considered disgraceful for a gentleman to degrade himself by a marriage with a poor, fond, deluded woman, whose all of happiness and hope has been sacrificed for his amusement—whose life has been rendered miserable and infamous by his treachery and falsehood—whose reputation, tainted by him, is held cheaply by all besides. The father of an illegitimate child feels no shame at the knowledge that his offspring is abandoned to all the evils of poverty, or the temptations of guilt. A small sum paid to the parish compensates for the crime, and annihilates the necesssity of feeling. It is only an illegitimate child; and whether a miserable existence be terminated by the hangman, or by disease engendered by distress, is immaterial to the gentleman father! What becomes of the mother, is a matter of still less consideration with the seducer. She is old enough to work. The parish does not insist upon a maintenance for her; and the fine feelings of our gentlemen are not in the slightest degree affected by the knowledge, that premature old age has wasted that beauty to the grave, which was once an object of the highest desire. Is it to such a race as this, that the honor, and happiness, of the whole female race, should be trusted without some better secu-
