"
"I always intend, my dear, you shall judge for yourself; and, you
know, I seldom urge you farther, when you use those words. But if
you have any thing upon your mind to say, let's have it; for your
arguments are always new and unborrowed."
"I would then, if I _must_, Sir, ask, if there be not a nation, or
if there has not been a law in some nation, which, whenever a young
gentleman, be _his_ degree what it would, has seduced a poor creature,
be _her_ degree what it would, obliges him to marry that unhappy
person?"--"I think there is such a law in some country, I can't tell
where," said Sir Jacob.
"And do you think, Sir, whether it be so or not, that it is equitable
it should be so?"
"Yes, by my troth. Though I must needs own, if it were so in England,
many men, that I know, would not have the wives they now have."--"You
speak to your knowledge, I doubt not, Sir Jacob?" said Mr. B.
"Why, truly--I don't know but I do."
"All then," said I, "that I would infer, is, whether another law would
not be a still more just and equitable one, that the gentleman who
is repulsed, from a principle of virtue and honour, should not be
censured for marrying a person he could _not_ seduce? And whether it
is not more for both their honours, if he does: since it is nobler
to reward a virtue, than to repair a shame, were that shame to be
repaired by matrimony, which I take the liberty to doubt.
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