rity, than the chance of being beloved while no fairer object of loveliness should tempt the licensed senses to fresh enjoyment! With the volume of unspeakable misery before us, which the vagrant disposition of man occasions to that part of the female world with which he can sport at pleasure, would it be wise, or prudent, or just, to subject the whole to his unbridled passions?—to break down all the fences which morality and reason have established, to enable man to enjoy a few additional moments of rapture, purchased at the price of so much agony to woman?[1]
Upon this question, Mr. Shelley takes not into the account any consideration of the happiness or advantage of the female. She is the mere instrument of male gratification—the passive and unconsulted medium of his transports.
- ↑ It would be here out of place to enter into any examination of the defence usually set up by wealth, and cunning for the seduction of ignorance, and poverty. But I cannot refrain from remarking, that the ignorance, low birth, and want of affluence, which pride insists are sufficient reasons for declining to form matrimonial connections;—ought to be still stronger reasons for the punishment of seduction in the severest manner; for surely it is most criminally despicable, to endeavour to render these disqualifications the means of triumph over female virtue, which already are of sufficient disadvantage to the parties, without the addition of infamy superadded, by those who urge them as objections against their elevation to respectability.
