A system could not well have been devised more studiously hostile to human happiness than marriage.

That orbed maiden, with white fire laden, Whom mortals call the moon.

The desire of the moth for the star, Of the night for the morrow, The devotion to something afar From the sphere of our sorrow.

I Fall upon the thorns of life.

When a man marries, dies, or turns Hindu, his best friends hear no more of him.

The emptiness and folly of retaliation are apparent from every example which can be brought forward. Not only Jesus Christ, but the most eminent professors of every sect of philosophy, have reasoned against this futile superstition.

If all the thought which had been expended on the construction of engines of agony and death - the modes of aggression and defence, the raising of armies, and the acquirement of those arts of tyranny and falsehood without which mixed multitudes could neither be led nor governed - had been employed to promote the true welfare and extend the real empire of man, how different would have been the present situation of human society!