Owen’s Moral Physiology

PREFACE.

It may be proper to state, in few words, the immediate circumstances which induced me, at the present time, to write and publish this treatise.

Some weeks since, a gentleman coming from England brought with him two pretty specimens of English typography. One represented a triumphal arch with a statue of the late king, and was made up of 17,000 different pieces of common printing type; the other, an altar piece, having the Lord’s Prayer, Creed, and Commandments, printed within it, and composed of about 13,000 separate pieces. The gentleman was requested by a Brighton printer who executed them, to present these, as specimens of English typography, to some of his brethern craftsmen in America. He presented them to me. I admired the ingenuity displayed in the performance; but thought they ought to have been presented rather to some printers’ society than to an individual. I therefore addressed them to our Typographical Society in New York, accompanied by a note simply requesting the society’s acceptance of them, as specimens of the art in England.

I thought no more of the matter, until I received, the other day, my specimens back again, with a long and not a little angry letter, signed by three of the members, xaccusing Robert Dale Owen of principles subversive of every virtue under heaven, and calculated to lead to the infraction of every commandment in the decalogue: and, more especially, accusing him of having given his sanction to a work, as they expressed it, “holding out inducements and facilities for the prostitution of their daughters, sisters, and wives.”

I subsequently learned, from one of the society, circumstances which somewhat extenuate (albeit nothing can excuse) their childish incivility. A gentleman who busied himself last year in making out a notable reply to the “Society for the Protection of Industry,” got up, at a late Typographical meeting, and read to the Society several detached extracts from a pamphlet written by Richard Carlile, entitled “Every Woman’s Book,” which extracts he pronounced to be excessively indecent; and asked the Society whether they would receive any thing at the hands of a man who publicly approved a book of a tendency so dreadfully immoral; which, he averred, I had done. The society were (or affected to be) much shocked, and thereupon chose a committee to return to me the heretical specimens, which committee penned the letter to which I have alluded.

Probably some members of the society really did believe the work to be of pernicious tendency. Had some garbled extracts only from it been read to me, I might possibly have utterly misconceived its tone and tendency, and its author’s motives. But he must be blind indeed, who can read the pamphlet through, and then (whether he approve it or not) can attribute xiother than good intentions to the individual who was bold enough to put it forth.

As to the book itself, I was requested, two years since, when residing in Indiana, to publish it, and declined doing so. My chief reasons were, that I doubted its physiological correctness; that I did not consider its style and tone in good taste; but chiefly (as I expressed it in the New Harmony Gazette) because I feared it would be circulated in this country only “to fall into the hands of the thoughtless, and to gratify the curiosity of the licentious, instead of falling, as it ought, into the hands of the philanthropist, of the physiologist, and of every father and mother of a family.” The circumstances I have just detailed may afford proof, that my fears regarding the hands into which it might fall, were well founded.

My principles thus officiously and publicly attacked, I have felt it a duty to the cause of reform to step forward and vindicate them; and this the rather, because, unless I give my own sentiments, I shall be understood as unqualifiedly endorsing Richard Carlile’s. Now, no one more admires than I do the courage and strength of mind which induced that bold advocate of heresy to broach this important subject; and to him be the praise accorded, that he was the first to venture it. But the manner of his book I do not admire. There is in it that which was repulsive (I will not say revolting) to my feelings, on the first perusal; and though I afterwards began to doubt whether that first impression was not attributable, in a great measure, to my prejudices, yet I cannot doubt that a similar, xiiand even a more unfavourable impression, will be made on the minds of others, and thus the interests of truth be jeopardized. Then again, I think the physiological portion of his pamphlet somewhat incorrect as to the facts, and therefore calculated to mislead, where an error might be of fatal consequence.

It may seem vanity in me to imagine, that this treatise is free from similar objections; yet I have taken great pains to render it so.

INTRODUCTION.

The reader, after having been taxed with the perusal of two prefaces before reaching the subject matter, may consider it a hardship to be further called upon to read a somewhat lengthy introduction, when the title of a book should be its best preface; but the Editor would ask your indulgence while he briefly states the object and design of the following pages.

It has often been held of questionable propriety, whether the public should be furnished with medical readings, it being presumed that such literature tended to thwart the very purposes it professed to encourage: that, instead of affording an exposition of the ills of our nature, whereby we might avoid or remove them, its effect necessarily, from the probable absence of all preliminary medical knowledge on the part of the reader, was but to create confusion and alarm, and, even where understood, only to magnify the fear; xivand this latter notion is grounded on the popular error, that even professional men, from the same cause, are least efficient when in attendance upon themselves. The doubt, however, may now be considered as removed if we but observe how of late years the desire to possess general information on all matters relative to the functions of life, has manifested itself, by the public attendance at the various learned institutions, and how also it has been encouraged by men eminent for their talents and worth, devoting themselves to the unfolding and simplification of the professional lore they had been years in acquiring. Lectures have been given, and large crowds of silent and anxious auditors have attended them—edition after edition of popular works on similar subjects, by the same men, have been called for, and eagerly caught up—the mysteries of physiology have been laid open from the lowest to the highest scale of creation: the history of man has been displayed, and his several elements have been demonstrated—the phenomena of respiration, digestion, and the circulation of the blood, have all had their share of attention, and many of the most prevalent diseases of humanity have xvbeen discussed and examined, their causes exposed, and the means of their avoidance detailed. So far from the public suffering from this diffusion of medical knowledge, immense advantages have accrued to all classes of mankind.

Among all the departments of anatomical research thus introduced, public decorum has judiciously excluded popular enquiries into the physiological laws of generation. I say judiciously, for the discussion of such topics, constituted as society is, could not be tolerated in large assemblies, and probably of both sexes, without the risk of engendering associations inimical to morality and virtue;^[1] but xvino one can be blind to the creeping progress there is daily being made, of touching upon these subjects in popular journals and publications, and no one can deny at least the importance of obedience to the laws that abide over the procreation of a healthy or diseased population. In the absence of information afforded through legitimate channels to the public, and feeling sensible that many errors are committed through ignorance, and endured through shame, this little work is tendered, accompanied with the hope that its usefulness may not be deteriorated by any misinterpretation of the writer’s motives.

The philosopher, in asking himself the question, what is love, solves it by asking another question, what is an animal, or what is man?

Looking at mankind, he finds them of two classes, male and female, varying but little as xviito external form or internal character. He finds that they possess the same passions, the same desires, that they live by the same means, and with the difference of the female being the body qualified to breed the species, he sees them in every respect to be exactly alike.

Reproduction or accumulation of identities similar to self is a common law of animal and vegetable matter; and the disposition to reproduce in all well-formed and healthy subjects is as powerful as hunger, or thirst, or the desire of self-preservation. It is a passion not criminal in the indulgence, but criminality attaches where the indulgence is withheld; because health, and even life, is endangered. It is not an artificial passion, such as a craving to exhibit the distinctions of society; but a natural passion, which we hold in common with every other animal. It grows with our growth, and is strengthened with our strength.

To prove that genuine love is nothing but this passion, it is sufficient to refer to the period at which it comes on, and at which it leaves us. We hear not of love in decaying age or in infancy; and the attachments of habit, of kindness, of gratitude, or of human, social, individual, parental, filial, or domestic xviiiaffection, have no connexion with the passion of love. We talk of a love, of virtue, of friendship, of heroism, of character, of generosity; but this kind of love is a matter wholly distinct from the passion of love between the male and female. All men are apt to feel the tender passion of love for a beautiful woman: all women for a handsome and agreeable man: but this is nothing more than a desire to associate ourselves with the most agreeable objects for sexual commerce. The every day occurrences of mankind explain this matter, and hence the many violences and intrigues connected with the passion of love; hence seductions, adulteries, rapes and intercourses pronounced unlawful in different countries.

The present purpose of this work is, to explain the physiology of the reproductive organs, and the social bearing that a proper control of the reproductive instinct will have upon society, and its consequences when uncontrolled, and the benefits that must necessarily accrue when kept under due restraint.

Chemical science and experimental investigation, aided by the recent discoveries in that department of literature, have enabled xixthe Editor to offer to the suffering mother a safe and sure preventive of conception. The expediency and moral propriety of its use he trusts will be satisfactorily explained in the subsequent pages.

MORAL PHYSIOLOGY.

I sit down to write a little treatise, which will subject me to abuse from the self-righteous, to misrepresentation from the hypocritical, and to reproach even from the honestly prejudiced. Some may refuse to read it; and many more will misconceive its tendency. I would have delayed its publication, had the choice been permitted me, until the popular mind was better prepared to receive it; but the enemies of reform have already foisted the subject, under an odious form, on the public: and I have no choice left. If, therefore, I prematurely touch the honest prejudices of any, let them bear in mind, that the occasion is not of my seeking.

The subject I intend to discuss is strictly a physiological subject, although connected, like many other physiological subjects, with political economy, morals, and social science. In 22discussing it, I must speak as plainly as physicians and physiologists do. What I mean, I must say. Pseudo-civilized man, that anomalous creature who has been not inaptly defined “an animal ashamed of his own body,” may take it ill that I speak simply: I cannot help that.

A foreign princess, travelling towards Madrid to become queen of Spain, passed through a little town of the peninsula, famous for its manufactory of gloves and stockings. The magistrates of the place, eager to evince their loyalty towards their new queen, presented her, on her arrival, with a sample of those commodities for which alone their town was remarkable. The major domo, who conducted the princess, received the gloves very graciously; but when the stockings were presented, he flung them away with great indignation, and severely reprimanded the magistrates for this egregious piece of indecency. “Know,” said he, “that a queen of Spain has no legs.”^[2]

I never could sympathize with this major domo delicacy; and if you can, my reader, 23you had better throw this book aside at once.

If you have travelled and observed much, you will already have learnt the distinction between real and artificial propriety. If you have been in Constantinople, you probably know, that when the grand seignor’s wives are ill, the physician is only allowed to see the wrist, which is thrust through an opening in the side of the room, because it is improper even for a physician to look upon another man’s wife; and it is thought better to sacrifice health than propriety.^[3]

If you have sojourned among the inhabitants of Turcomania, you know that they consider a woman’s virtue sacrificed for ever, if, before marriage, she be seen to stop on the public road to speak to her lover:^[4] and if you have read Buckingham’s travels, you may remember a very romantic story, in which a young Turcoman lady, having thus forfeited her reputation, is left for dead on the road by her brothers, who were determined their sister should not survive her dishonor.

24Perhaps you may have travelled in Asia. If so, you cannot be ignorant how grossly indecorous to Asiatic ears it is, to enquire of a husband after his wife’s health; and probably you may know, that men have lost their lives to atone for such an impropriety. You know, too, of course, that in Eastern nations it is indecent for a woman to uncover her face; but perhaps you may not know, unless your travels have extended to Abyssinia, that there the indecency consists in uncovering the feet.^[5]

In Central Africa, you may have seen women bathing in public, without the slightest sense of impropriety; but you were doubtless told, that men could not be permitted a similar liberty; seeing that modesty requires they should perform their ablutions in private.

If my reader has seen all or any of these countries and customs, I doubt not that he or she will read my little book understandingly, and interpret it in the purity which springs from enlarged and enlightened views; or, indeed, from common sense. If not—if you who now peruse these lines have been educated at home, and have never passed 25the boundary line of your own nation—perhaps of your own village—if you have not learnt that there are other proprieties besides those of your country; and that, after all, genuine modesty has its legitimate seat in the heart rather than in the outward form or sanctioned custom—then, I fear me, you may chance to cast these pages from you, as the major domo did the proffered stockings, unconscious that the indelicacy lies, not in my simple words, or the Spanish magistrates’ honest offering, but in the pruriently sensitive imagination that discovers impropriety in either. Yet, even though inexperienced, if you be still young and pure-minded, you may read this book through, and I shall fear from your lips, or in your hearts, no odious misconstruction.

Young men and women! you who, if ignorant, are uncorrupted also; you in whose minds honest and simple words call up none but honest and simple ideas; you who think no evil; you who are still believers in human virtue and human happiness; you who, like our fabled first parents in their paradise, are yet unlearned alike in the hypocritical conventionalities and the odious vices of pseudo-civilization; you, with whom love is stronger 26than fear, and the law within the breast more powerful than that in the statue book; you whose feelings are still unblunted, and whose sympathies still warm and generous; you who belong to the better portion of your species, and who have formed your opinion of mankind from guileless spirits like your own—young men and women! it is to your pure feelings I would fain speak: it is by your unsophisticated hearts I would fain have my treatise and my motives judged.

Libertines and debauchees! this book is not for you. You have nothing to do with the subject of which it treats. Bringing to its discussion, as you do, a distrust or contempt of the human race—accustomed as you are to confound liberty with license, and pleasure with debauchery, it is not for your palled feelings and brutalized senses to distinguish moral truth in its purity and simplicity. I never discuss this subject with such as you.

It has been remarked, that nothing is so suspicious in a woman, as vehement pretensions to especial chastity; it is no less true, that the most obtrusive and sensitive stickler for the etiquette of orthodox morality is the heartless rake. The little intercourse I have 27had with men of your stamp, warns me to avoid the serious discussion of any species of moral heresy with you. You approach the subject in a tone and spirit revolting alike to good taste and good feeling. You seem to pre-suppose—from your own experience, perhaps—that the hearts of all men, and more especially of all women, are deceitful above all things and desperately wicked; that violence and vice are inherent in human nature, and that nothing but laws and ceremonies prevent the world from becoming a vast slaughter-house, or an universal brothel. You judge your own sex and the other by the specimens you have met with in wretched haunts of mercenary profligacy; and, with such a standard in you minds, I marvel not that you remain incorrigible unbelievers in any virtue, but that which is forced on the prudish hotbed of ceremonious orthodoxy. I wonder not that you will not trust the natural soil, watered from the free skies and warmed by the life-bringing sun. How should you? you have never seen it produce but weeds and poisons. Libertines and debauchees! cast my book aside! You will find in it nothing to gratify a licentious curiosity; 28and, if you read it, you will probably only give me credit for motives and impulses like your own.

And you, prudes and hypocrites! you who strain at a gnat and swallow a camel; you whom Jesus likened to whited sepulchres, which without indeed are beautiful, but within are full of all uncleanness; you who affect to blush if the ancle is incidentally mentioned in conversation, or displayed in crossing a style, but will read indecencies enough, without scruple, in your closets; you who, at dinner, asked to be helped to the bosom of a duck, lest by mention of the word breast, you call up improper associations; you who have nothing but a head and feet and fingers; you who look demure by daylight, and make appointments only in the dark—you, prudes and hypocrites! I do not address. Even if honest in your prudery, your ideas of right and wrong are too artificial and confused to profit by the present discussion; if dishonest, I desire to have no communication with you.

Reader! if you belong to the class of prudes or of libertines, I pray you, follow my argument no farther. Stop here, and believe that my heresies will not suit you. As a 29prude, you would find them too honest; as a libertine, too temperate. In the former case, you might call me a very shocking person; in the latter, a quiz or a bore.

But if you be honest, upright, pure-minded—if you be unconscious of unworthy motive or selfish passion—if truth be your ambition, and the welfare of our race your object—then approach with me a subject the most important to man’s well-being; and approach it as I do, in a spirit of dispassionate, disinterested free enquiry. Approach it, resolving to prove all things, and hold fast that which is good. The discussion is one to which it is every man’s and every woman’s duty, (and ought to be every one’s business,) to attend. The welfare of the present generation, and—yet far more—of the next, requires it. Common sense sanctions it. And the national motto of my former country, “Honi soit qui mal y pense,”^[6] may explain the spirit in which it 30is undertaken, and in which it ought to be received.

Reader! it ought to concern you nothing who or what I am, who now addresses you. Truth is truth, if it fall from Satan’s lips; and error ought to be rejected, though preached by an angel from heaven. Even as an anonymous work, therefore, this treatise ought to obtain a full and candid examination from you. But, that you may not imagine I am ashamed of honestly discussing a subject so useful and important, I have given you my name on the title page.

Neither is it any concern of yours what my character is, or has been. No man of sense or modesty unnecessarily obtrudes personalities that regard himself on the public. And, most assuredly, it is neither to gratify your curiosity or my vanity, if I now do violence to my feelings, and speak a few words touching myself. I do so, to disarm, if I can, prejudice of her sting; and thus to obtain 31the ears, even of the prejudiced; and also to acquaint my readers, that they are conversing on such a subject as this, with one, whom circumstance and education have happily preserved from habits of excess and associations of profligacy.

All those who have intimately known the life and private habits of the writer of this little treatise, will bear him witness, that what he now states is true, to the letter. He was indebted to his parents for habits of the strictest temperance—some would call it abstemiousness—in all things. He never, at any time, habitually used ardent spirits, wine, or strong drink of any kind: latterly, he has not even used animal food. He never chanced to enter a brothel in his life; nor to associate, even for an evening, with those poor, unhappy victims, whom the brutal, yet tolerated vices of man, and sometimes their own unsuspicious or ungoverned feelings, betray to misery and degradation. He never sought the company but of the intellectual and self-respecting of the other sex, and has no associations connected with the name of woman, but those of esteem and respectful affection. To this day, he is even girlishly sensitive to 32the coarse and ribald jests in which young men think it witty to indulge at the expense of a sex they cannot appreciate. The confidence with which women may have honored him, he has never selfishly abused; and, at this moment, he has not a single wrong with which to reproach himself towards a sex, which he considers the equal of man in all essentials of character, and his superior in generous disinterestedness and moral worth.

I check my pen. I have said enough, perhaps, to awaken the confidence of those whose confidence I value; and enough, assuredly, to excite the ridicule, or the sneer, of him who walks through life wrapped up in the cloak of conformity, and laughs among his private boon companions, at the scruples of every novice, who will not, like himself, regard debauchery and seduction (in secret) as manly and spirited amusements.

And now, reader! if I have succeeded in awakening your attention, and enlisting in this enquiry your reason and your better feelings, approach with me a subject the most interesting and important to you—to me—to all our fellow-creatures. Reader! if you be a woman, forget that I am a man: if a man, 33listen to me as you would to a brother. Let us converse, not as men, nor as women, but as human beings, with common interests, instincts, wants, weaknesses. Let us converse, if it be possible, without prejudice and without passion. Reader! whatever be your sex, sect, rank, or party, to you I would now, ere I commence, address the poet’s exhortation—here, far more strictly applicable, than in the investigation to which he applied it:—

CHAPTER II. STATEMENT OF THE SUBJECT.

Among the human instincts which contribute to man’s preservation and well-being, the instinct of reproduction holds a distinguished rank. It peoples the earth; it perpetuates the species. Controlled by reason, and chastened by good feeling, it gives to social intercourse much of its charm and zest. Directed by selfishness, or governed by force, it is prolific of misery and degradation. Whether wisely or unwisely directed, its influence is that of a master principle, that colours, brightly or darkly, much of the destiny of man.

It is sometimes spoken of as a low and selfish propensity; and the Shakers call it a “carnal and sensual passion.”^[7] I see nothing 36in the instinct itself that merits such epithets. Like other instincts, it may assume a selfish, mercenary, or brutal character. But in itself, it appears to me the most social and least selfish of all our instincts. It fits us to give, even while receiving, pleasure; and, among cultivated beings, the former power is ever more highly valued than the latter. Not one of our instincts, perhaps, affords larger scope for the exercise of disinterestedness, or fitter play for the best moral feelings of our race. Not one gives birth to relations more gentle, more humanizing and endearing; not one lies more immediately at the root of the kindliest charities and most generous impulses that honor and bless human nature. Its very power, indeed, gives fatal force to its aberrations; even as the waters of the calmest river, when dammed up or forced from their bed, flood and ruin the country: but the gentle flow and fertilizing influence of the stream are the fit emblems of the instinct, when suffered, undisturbed by force or passion, to follow its own quiet channel.

37That such an instinct should be thought and spoken of as a low, selfish propensity, and, as such, that the discussion of its nature and consequences should be almost interdicted in what is called decent society, is to me a proof of the profligacy of the age, and the impurity of the pseudo-civilized mind. I imagine that if all men and women were gluttons and drunkards, they would, in like manner, be ashamed to speak of diet or of temperance.

Were I an optimist, and, as such, had I accustomed myself to judge and to admire the arrangements of nature, I should be inclined to put forward, as one of the most admirable, the arrangement according to which the temperate fulfilling of the dictates of this, as well as of almost all other instincts, confers pleasure. The desire of offspring would probably induce us to perpetuate the species, though no gratification were connected with the act. In the language of the optimist, then, “pleasure is gratuitously super-added.” But instead of pausing to admire arrangements and intentions, the great whole of which human reason seems little fitted to appreciate or comprehend, I content myself with remarking, that 38this very circumstance (in itself surely a fortunate one, inasmuch as it adds another to the sources of human happiness) has often been the cause of misery; and, from a blessing, has been perverted into a curse. Enjoyment has led to excess, and sometimes to tyranny and barbarous injustice.

Were the reproductive instinct disconnected from pleasure of any kind, it would neither afford enjoyment nor admit of abuse. As it is, the instinct is susceptible of either; just as wisdom or ignorance governs human laws, habits, and customs. It behooves us, therefore, to be especially careful in its regulation; else what is a great good may become for us a great evil.

This instinct, then, may be regarded in a two-fold light; first, as giving the power of reproduction: secondly, as affording pleasure.

And here, before I proceed, let me recall to the reader’s mind, that it is the province of rational beings to bear UTILITY strictly in view. Reason recognizes as little the romantic and unearthly reveries of Stoicism, as she does the doctrines of health-destroying and mind-debasing debauchery. She reprobates equally a contemning and an abusing of 39pleasure. She bids us avoid asceticism on the one hand, and excess on the other. In all our enquiries, then, let reason guide us, and let UTILITY be our polar star.

I have often had long arguments with my friends, the Shakers,^[8] touching the two-fold light in which the reproductive instinct may be regarded. They commonly stand out stoutly against the propriety of considering it, except as a means of perpetuating the species; and, apart from that, they deny that it may be regarded as a legitimate source of enjoyment. In this I totally dissent from them. It is a much more noble, because less purely selfish, instinct, than hunger or thirst. It is an instinct that entwines itself around the warmest feelings and best affections of the heart; and though it differ from hunger and thirst in this, that it may remain ungratified without causing death. I have yet to learn, that because it is possible, it is therefore also desirable, to mortify and repress it. I admit, 40to the Shakers, that in the world, profligate and hypocritical as we see it, this instinct is the source of infinite misery; perhaps even, on the whole, of a balance of unhappiness: and I always freely admit to them, that if I had to choose between the life of the profligate man of the world and that of the ascetic Shaker, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But for admitting that the most social and kindly of human instincts is sensual and degrading in itself, I cannot. I think its influence moral, humanizing, polishing, beneficent; and that the social education of no man or woman is fully completed without it. Its mortification (though far less injurious than its excess) is yet very mischievous. If it do not give birth to peevishness, or melancholy, or incipient disease, or unnatural practices, at least it almost always freezes and stiffens the character, by checking the flow of its kindliest emotions; and not unfrequently gives to it a solitary, anti-social, selfish stamp.

I deny the position of the Shaker, then, that the instinct is justifiable (if, indeed, it be at all) only as necessary to the reproduction of the species. It is justifiable, in my view, 41just in as far as it makes a man happier and a better being. It is justifiable, both as a source of temperate enjoyment, and as a means by which the sexes can mutually polish and improve each other.

If a Shaker has read my little book thus far, and cannot reconcile his mind to this idea, he may as well shut it at once. I found all my arguments on the position, that the pleasure derived from this instinct, independent of, and totally distinct from, its ultimate object, the reproduction of our race, is good, proper, worth securing and enjoying. I maintain, that its temperate enjoyment is a blessing, both in itself and in its influence on human character.

Upon this distinction of the instinct into its two-fold character, hinges the chief point in the present discussion. It sometimes happens, nay, it happens every day and hour, that mankind obey its impulses, not from any calculation of consequences, but simply from animal impulse. Thus many children that are brought into the world owe their existence, not to deliberate conviction in their parents that their birth was really desirable, but simply to an unreasoning instinct, which 42men, in the mass, have not learnt either to resist or control.

It is a serious question—and surely an exceedingly proper and important one—whether man can obtain, and whether he is benefitted by obtaining, control over this instinct. Is it desirable, that it should never be gratified without an increase to population? Or, is it desirable, that in gratifying it, man shall be able to say whether offspring shall be the result or not?

To answer the questions satisfactorily, it would be necessary to substantiate, that such control may be obtained without the slightest injury to the physical health, or violence to the moral feelings; and also, that it should be obtained without any real sacrifice of enjoyment; or, if that cannot be, with as little as possible.

Thus have I plainly stated the subject. It resolves itself, as my readers may observe, into two distinct heads; first, the desirability of such control; and, secondly, its possibility.

In discussing its desirability, I enter a wide field—a field often traversed by political economists, by moralists, and by philosophers, 43though generally, it will be confessed, to little purpose. This may be, in a great measure, attributed rather to their fear than their ignorance. The world would not permit them to say what they knew. I intend that my readers shall know all that I know on the subject; for I have long since ceased to ask the world’s leave to say what I think, and what I believe to be useful to the public.

I propose to begin by considering the question in the abstract, and then to examine it in its political and social bearings.

CHAPTER III. THE QUESTION EXAMINED IN THE ABSTRACT.

Is it in itself desirable, that man should obtain control over the instinct of reproduction, so as to determine when its gratification shall produce offspring, and when it shall not?

But that common sense is so scarce an article, and that the various superstitions of the nursery pervade the opinions and cramp the enquiries, even of after life—but for this, the very statement of the question might suffice to obtain for it the assent of every rational being. Nothing so elevates man above the brute creation, as the power he obtains over his instincts. The lower animal follows them blindly, unreflectingly. The serpent gorges himself; the bull fights, even to death, with his rival of the pasture; the dog makes 46deadly war for a bone. They know nothing of progressive improvement. The elephant or the beaver of the nineteenth century, are just as wise, and no wiser, than the elephant or the beaver of two thousand years ago. Man alone has the power to improve, cultivate, elevate his nature, from generation to generation. He alone can control his instincts by reflection of consequences, and regulate his passions by the precepts of wisdom.

It is strange, that even at this period of the world, we should have to remind each other, that all knowledge of facts is useful; or, at the least, cannot be injurious. The knowledge of some facts may be unimportant; the knowledge of none is mischievous. A human being is a puppet—a slave, if his ignorance is to be the safeguard of his virtue. Nor shall we know where to stop, if we follow up this principle. Shall we give our sons lessons in mechanics? but they may thereby learn to pick locks. Shall we teach them to read? but they may thus obtain access to falsehood and folly. Shall we instruct them in writing? but they may become forgers.

47Such, in effect, was the reasoning of men in the dark ages. When Walter Scott puts in the mouth of Lord Douglas, on the discovery of Marmion’s treachery the following exclamation, it is strictly in accordance with the spirit and prevailing opinions of the times:

But the days are gone by when ignorance may be the safeguard of virtue. The only rock-foundation for virtue is knowledge. There is no fact, in physics or in morals, that ought to be concealed from the enquiring mind. Let that parent, who thinks to secure his sons’ honesty or his daughters’ innocence, by keeping back from them facts—let that parent know, that he is building up their morality on a sandy foundation. The rains and the floods of the world’s influence 48shall beat upon that virtue, and great shall be the fall thereof.

If man, then, can obtain control over this most important of instincts, it is, in principle, right that he should know it. If men, after obtaining such knowledge, think fit not to use it; if they deem it nobler and more virtuous, to follow each animal impulse, like the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air, without a thought of its consequences, or an enquiry into its nature—then let them do so. The knowledge that they have the power to act more like rational beings, will not injure, if it fail to benefit them. They are at perfect liberty to set it aside, to neglect it, to forget it, if they can. Only let them show common sense enough to permit that others, who are more slow to incur sacred responsibilities, and more willing to give reason the control of instinct, should obtain the requisite knowledge, and follow out their prudent resolutions.

If this little book were in the hands of every adult in the United States, not one need profit by it, unless he sees fit. Nor will any man admit that he can possibly be injured by it. Oh no. His virtue can bear 49any quantity of light. But then, his neighbour’s, or his son’s, or his daughter’s!

This would lead me to discuss the social bearings of the question. But, as conceiving it more in order, I shall first speak of it in connexion with political economy.

CHAPTER IV. THE QUESTION IN ITS CONNEXION WITH POLITICAL ECONOMY.

The population question, as it is called, has of late years occupied much attention, especially in Great Britain. It was first prominently brought forward and discussed, through two large volumes, by Malthus, an English clergyman. Godwin, Ricardo, Thompson, Place, Mill, and other celebrated cotemporary writers, have all discussed it, with more or less reserve, and at greater or less length.

Malthus’ work has become the text book of a large politico-economist party in England. His doctrine is, that “population unrestrained, will advance beyond the means of subsistence.” He asserts, that in most countries population at this moment presses 52against the means of subsistence; and that in all countries, it has a tendency so to do. He recommends, as a preventive of the growing evil, celibacy till a late age, say thirty years; and he asserts, that unless this “moral restraint” is exerted, vice, poverty and misery, will and must become the checks to population. His book, in my opinion, has done infinite mischief. I have heard his disciples openly declare, that they considered the crimes and wretchedness of society to be necessary—to be the express ordainings of Providence, intended to prevent the earth from being over-peopled. I have heard it argued by men of rank, wealth and influence, that the distinctions of rich and poor, and even of morality and immorality, of luxury and want, will and must exist to the end of the world; that he who attempts to remove them fights against God and nature; and, if he partially succeed, will but afford the human race an opportunity to increase, until the earth shall no longer suffice to contain them, and they shall be compelled to prey on each other. It must be confessed, that this is a comfortable doctrine for the rich idler: it is a healing salve to the luxurious conscience; 53an opiate to drown the still small voice of truth and humanity, which calls to every man to be up and do his part towards the alleviation of the human suffering that every where stares him in the face.

It is vain to argue with these defenders of the evils that be, that the day of overstocking is afar off. They tell you, it must come at last; and that the more you do to remove vice and misery—those destroyers of population—the sooner it will come. And what reply can one make to the argument in the abstract? I believe it to be proved, that population, unrestrained,^[9] will double itself on an average every twenty-five to fifty years. If so, it is evident to a demonstration, that, if population be not restrained, morally or immorally, the earth will at last furnish no foothold for the human beings that will cover it.

54Take a medium calculation as to the natural rate of increase, and say, that population, unrestrained, will double itself every thirty-three and a third years. That it has done so, (without reckoning the increase from emigration,) in many parts of this continent, is certain.

Then, if we suppose the present numerous checks to population, viz. want, war, vice, and misery, removed by national reform, and if we assume the present population of the world at one thousand millions, we shall find the rate of increase as follows:

And so on, multiplying by 8 for every additional hundred years. So that, in 500 years, there would be more than thirty thousand times as many as at present: and in 1000 years, upwards of a thousand million times as many human beings as at this moment: consequently, one single pair, if suffered to increase without check, would, in 551000 years, increase to more than double the present population of the globe.

It appears evident, then, to a demonstration, that population CANNOT be suffered to increase unrestrained for more than a very few hundred years. We are thus compelled to admit to Malthus, that, sooner or later, some restraint or other to population must be employed; and compelled to admit to his aristocratic disciples, that if no other better restraint than vice and misery can be found, then vice and misery must be; they are the lot of man, from generation to generation.

Let me repeat it: it is no question—never can be a question—whether there shall be a restraint to population or not. There MUST be; unless indeed we find the means of visiting other planets, so as to people them. In the nature of things, there must be a check, of some kind, at some time. The only question is, what that check shall be—whether, as heretofore, the check of war, want, profligacy, misery; or a “moral restraint,” sanctioned by reason and suggested by experience.

Let those, then, who cry out against this little treatise, be told, that though they may postpone the question, no human power can 56evade it. It must come up. Had the friends of reform been left to choose their own time, it might, perhaps with advantage, have been postponed. And it is an imaginable case, that prejudice might delay it until a general famine or a universal civil war became the frightful checks. But will any man of common sense argue the propriety of suffering such a crisis to approach?

Malthus saw this. He saw that some check must exist; and, whatever some of his disciples might permit themselves to say, he did not choose to be considered the apologist of vice and misery. His theory, indeed, supplied specious arguments to those who asserted, with the ingenious author of the Fable of the Bees,^[10] that “private vices are public benefits;” and in consequence, its tendency appears to be essentially aristocratic and demoralizing, as tending to produce supine contentment with a vicious and degrading order of things. But Malthus himself declares the only proper check to be, the general practice of celibacy to a late age. He employs all his eloquence to persuade 57men and women that they ought not to marry till they are twenty-eight or thirty; and that if they do, they are contributing to the misery of the world.^[11]

Now, Mr. Malthus may preach for ever on this subject. Individuals may indeed be found, who will look to distant consequences, and sacrifice present enjoyment; even as individuals are found to become and remain Shaking Quakers: but to believe that the mass of mankind will abjure, through the ten fairest years of life, the nearest and dearest of social relations; and during the very holiday of existence, will live the life of monks and nuns—all to avert a catastrophe which is confessedly some hundreds of years distant—to believe this, requires a faith which no accurate observer of mankind possesses.

This weak point the aristocratic expounders of Malthus’ doctrines were not slow to discover. They broadly asserted, that such “moral restraint” would never be generally practiced. They asked, whether a young 58woman, to whom a comfortable home and a pleasant companion were offered, would refuse to accept them, on this theory of population; whether a young man who had a fair (or even but a very indifferent) prospect of maintaining a family, would doom himself to celibacy lest the world should be over-peopled. And they put it to the advocates of late marriages, whether, in one sex at least, the recommendation, if even nominally followed, would not almost certainly lead to vicious excess and degrading associations; thus resolving the check into vice and misery at last. If experience answered these questions in the negative, was it not clear, (they would exultingly ask,) that vice and misery are the natural lot of man; and that it is quixotic, if not impious, to plague ourselves about them, or to attempt, by their suppression, to controvert the decrees of God?

It was very easy for generous feelings to reply to so heartless an argument. It was easy to ask, whether even the apparent hopelessness of the case formed any legitimate apology for supine indifference; or whether, where we cannot cure, we are absolved from the duty of alleviating. But it was not very 59easy fully and fairly to meet the question. It was idle to deny that preaching would not put off marriage for ten years: and if no other species of moral restraint than ten years Shakerism could be proposed, it did appear evident enough, that moral restraint would be by the mass neglected, and that the physical checks of vice and misery must come into play at last.

I pray my readers, then, distinctly, to observe how the matter stands. Population, unrestrained, must increase beyond the possibility of the earth and its produce to support. At present it is restrained by vice and misery. The only remedy which the orthodoxy of the English clergyman permits him to propose, is, late marriages. The most enlightened observers of mankind are agreed, that nothing contributes so positively and immediately to demoralize a nation, as when its youth refrain, until a late period, from forming disinterested connections with those of the other sex. The frightful increase of prostitutes, the destruction of health, the rapid spread of intemperance, the ruin of moral feelings, are to the mass, the certain consequences. Individuals there are who escape 60the contagion; individuals whose better feelings revolt, under any temptation, from the mercenary embrace, or the Circean cup of intoxication; but these are exceptions only. The mass must have their pleasures; the pleasures of intellectual intercourse, of unbought affection, and of good taste and good feeling, if they can; but if they cannot, then such pleasure (alas! that language should be perverted to entitle them to the name!) as the sacrifice of money and the ruin of body and mind can purchase.^[12]

But this is not all. Not only is Malthus’ proposition fraught with immorality, in that it discountenances to a late age those disinterested sexual connexions which can alone save youth from vice; but it is impracticable. Men and women will scarcely pause to calculate the chances they have of affording support to their children ere they become parents: how, then, should they stop to calculate the chances of the world’s being over-peopled? Malthus may say what he pleases, 61they never will make any such calculation; and it is folly to expect they should.

Let us observe, then: unless some less ascetic and more practicable species of “moral restraint” be introduced, vice and misery will ultimately become the inevitable lot of man upon earth. He can no more escape them, than he can the light of the sun, or the stroke of death.

What an incitement, this, to the prosecution of our enquiry! Here is a principle set up, which is all but an apology for the apathy that prevails among the rich and the powerful—among governors and legislators—in regard to human improvement. How important, how essential for the interests of virtue, that it should be refuted! How beneficent that knowledge, which discloses to us some moral, practicable check to population, and relieves us from the despairing conclusion, that the irrevocable doom of man is misery, without remedy and without end! In the absence of such knowledge, truly the prospects of the world were dark and cheerless. The modern doctrine of population has weighed like a spell on the exertions of benevolence, and chilled, almost to inaction, 62even the warm heart of charity. Philanthropy herself pauses, when she begins to fear that all her exertions are to result in hopeless disappointment. And yet—such is this world—even the ablest opponents of Malthus stop short when they come to the question, and leave an argument unanswered, which a dozen pages might suffice for ever to set at rest.

Let one of the most intelligent of these opponents, a man of splendid and sterling talent—let Mill, the celebrated political economist and talented author of “British India,” speak for himself.

I extract from the article “Colony,” in the supplement to the Encyclopædia Britannica, and which is from the pen of Mill, the following paragraph:

“What are the best means of checking the progress of population, when it cannot go on unrestrained without producing one or other of two most undesirable effects, either drawing an undue portion of the population to the mere raising of food, or producing poverty and wretchedness, it is not now the time to enquire. It is, indeed, the most important 63practical problem to which the wisdom of the politician and the moralist can be applied. It has, till this time, been miserably evaded by all those who have meddled with the subject, as well as by those who were called upon by their situation to find a remedy for the evils to which it relates. And yet, if the superstitions of the nursery were disregarded, and the principle of utility kept steadily in view, a solution might not be very difficult to be found; and the means of drying up one of the most copious sources of human evil—a source which if all other sources were taken away, might alone suffice to retain the great mass of human beings in misery, might be seen to be neither doubtful nor difficult to be applied.”

Let my readers bear in mind, that this is from the pen of one of the most justly admired writers of the present day; a man celebrated throughout all Europe, for his works on political economy, and whose writings are not unknown even on this side the Atlantic. He considers the question now under discussion to involve “the most important problem to which the wisdom of the 64politician and moralist can be applied.” This question, he admits, has ever been “miserably evaded.” Yet even a man so influential and enlightened as Mill, must himself yield to the weakness he reprobates; must speak in parables, as the Nazarene reformer did before him; and, even while commenting on the “miserable evasion” of a subject so engrossingly important, must imitate the very evasion he despises.

I will not imitate it. I am more independently situated than the English economist; and I see, as clearly as he does, the extreme importance of the subject. What he saw and declared ought to be said, I will say.

Before concluding this chapter, let me state distinctly, that I by no means agree with Malthus and other political economists in believing, that, at this moment, there is an actual excess of population in any country (China perhaps excepted) in the known world. I believe that there is more than enough land in every country of Europe to support, in perfect comfort, all its present inhabitants. That they are not supported in comfort, is, in my opinion, attributable, not 65to overpopulation, but to mal-government. Monopolies favour the rich, taxes oppress the poor, commercial rivalry grinds its victims to the dust. To such causes as these, and not to overpopulation, at the time being, is the mass of distress (felt more or less over the civilized world) to be attributed. Thus, if the enemies of reform would but let us alone, we might long postpone to other and more important discussions, this population question. But they will not. They force it upon us. And though it might have evinced want of judgment to obtrude it unnecessarily or prematurely on the public, it would betray cowardice to evade it now, when thrust upon us.

Besides, though it be undeniable that iniquitous laws and a vicious order of things often produce the result that is falsely attributed to overpopulation, it is yet equally undeniable, that the most perfect system of laws in the world could not ultimately prevent the evils of a superabundant population. And it is no less certain, that, in the meantime, the pressure of a large family on the labouring man greatly augments the evil, and often deprives him of that very leisure which he might 66employ in devising constitutional means to better his condition, instead of leaving public business in the hands of political gamblers. Thus an answer to the population question is offered as an alleviation of existing evils, not as a cure for them. Population might be but half what it is, and unjust legislation and vicious customs would still give birth, as they now do, to luxury and want. The laws and customs ought to be, must be changed; but while the grass is growing, let us prevent the horse from starving, if we can.

Enough has been said, probably, in this chapter, to determine the question, whether it is, or is not, desirable, in a political point of view, that some check to population be sought and disclosed—some “moral restraint” that shall not, like vice and misery, be demoralizing, nor, like late marriages, be ascetic and impracticable.

CHAPTER V. THE QUESTION CONSIDERED IN ITS SOCIAL BEARINGS.

This is by far the most important branch of the question. The evils caused by an overstocking of the world, if even inevitable, are distant; and an abstract view of the subject, however unanswerable, does not come home to the mind with the force of detailed reality.

What would be the probable effect, in social life, if mankind obtained and exercised a control over the instinct of reproduction?

My settled conviction is—and I am prepared to defend it—that the effect would be salutary, moral, civilizing; that it would prevent many crimes and more unhappiness; that it would lessen intemperance and profligacy; that it would polish the manners and 68improve the moral feelings; that it would relieve the burden of the poor, and the cares of the rich; that it would most essentially benefit the rising generation, by enabling parents generally more careful to educate, and more comfortable to provide for, their offspring. I proceed to substantiate as I may these positions.

And first, let us look solely to the situation of married persons. Is it not notorious, that the families of the married often increase beyond what a regard for the young beings coming into the world, or the happiness of those who give them birth, would dictate? In how many instances does the hard-working father, and more especially the mother, of a poor family, remain slaves throughout their lives, tugging at the oar of incessant labour, toiling to live, and living only to die; when, if their offspring had been limited to two or three only, they might have enjoyed comfort and comparative affluence! How often is the health of the mother, giving birth every year to an infant—happy, if it be not twins!—and compelled to toil on, even at those times when nature imperiously calls for some relief from daily drudgery—how 69often is the mother’s comfort, health, nay, her life, thus sacrificed! Or, if care and toil have weighed down the spirit, and at last broken the health of the father, how often is the widow left, unable, with the most virtuous intentions, to save her fatherless offspring from becoming degraded objects of charity, or profligate votaries of vice!

Fathers and mothers! not you who have your nursery and your nursery-maids, and who leave your children at home, to frequent the crowded rout, or to glitter in the hot ball-room; but you by the labour of whose hands your children are to live, and who, as you count their rising numbers, sigh to think how soon sickness or misfortune may lessen those wages which are now but just sufficient to afford them bread—fathers and mothers in humble life! to you my argument comes home, with the force of reality. Others may impugn—may ridicule it. By bitter experience you know and feel its truth.

It will be said, that government ought to provide for the support and education of all the children of the land. No one is less inclined to deny the position than I. But it 70does not support and educate them. And, if it did, a period must come at last, when even such an act of justice would be no relief from the evils of overpopulation.

Yet this is not all. Every physician knows, that there are many woman so constituted that they cannot give birth to healthy—sometimes not to living children. Is it desirable—is it moral, that such women should become pregnant? Yet this is continually the case, the warnings of physicians to the contrary notwithstanding. Others there are, who ought never to become parents; because, if they do, it is only to transmit to their offspring grievous hereditary diseases; perhaps that worst of diseases, insanity. Yet they will not lead a life of celibacy. They marry. They become parents, and the world suffers by it. That a human being should give birth to a child, knowing that he transmits to it hereditary disease, is, in my opinion, an immorality. But it is a folly to expect that we can ever induce all such persons to live the lives of Shakers. Nor is it necessary: all that duty requires of them is, to refrain from becoming parents. Who can estimate the beneficial effect which rational 71moral restraint may thus have, on the health, beauty, and physical improvement of our race, throughout future generations?

But, apart from these latter considerations, is it not most plainly, clearly, incontrovertibly desirable, that parents should have the power^[13] to limit their offspring, whether they choose to exercise it or not? Who can lose by their having this power? and how many may gain! may gain competency for themselves, and the opportunity carefully to educate and provide for their children! How many may escape the jarrings, the quarrels, the disorder, the anxiety, which an overgrown family too often causes in the domestic circle?

It sometimes happens, that individual instances come home to the feelings with greater force than any general reasoning. I shall, 72in this place, adduce one which came immediately under my cognizance.

In June, 1829, I received from an elderly gentleman of the first respectability, occupying a public situation in one of the western states, a letter, requesting to know whether I could afford any information or advice in a case which greatly interested him, and which regarded a young woman for whom he had ever experienced the sentiments of a father. In explanation of the circumstances to which he alluded, he enclosed me a copy of a letter which she had just written to him and which I here transcribe verbatim. A letter more touching from its simplicity, or more strikingly illustrative of the unfortunate situation in which not one, but thousands, in married life, find themselves placed, I have never read.

The friendship which has existed between you and my father, ever since I can remember; the unaffected kindness you used to express towards me, when you resided in our neighbourhood, during my childhood; the 73lively solicitude you have always seemed to feel for my welfare, and your benevolence and liberal character, induce me to lay before you, in a few words, my critical situation, and ask you for your kind advice.

It is my lot to be united in wedlock to a young mechanic of industrious habits, good dispositions, pleasing manners, and agreeable features, excessively fond of our children and of me; in short, eminently well qualified to render himself and family and all around him happy, were it not for the besetting sin of drunkenness. About once in every three or four weeks, if he meet, either accidentally or purposely, with some of his friends, of whom, either real or pretended, his good nature and liberality procure him many, he is sure to get intoxicated, so as to lose his reason; and, when thus beside himself, he trades and makes foolish bargains, so much to his disadvantage, that he has almost reduced himself and family to beggary, being no longer able to keep a shop of his own, but obliged to work journey work.

We have not been married quite four years, and have already given being to three dear little ones. Under present circumstances, 74what can I expect will be their fate and mine? I shudder at the prospect before me. With my excellent constitution and industry, and the labour of my husband, I feel able to bring up these three little cherubs in decency, were I to have no more: but when I seriously consider my situation, I can see no other alternative left for me, than to tear myself away from the man who, though addicted to occasional intoxication, would sacrifice his life for my sake; and for whom, contrary to my father’s will, I successively refused the hand and wealth of a lawyer and of a preacher; or continue to witness his degradation, and bring into existence, in all probability, a numerous family of helpless and destitute children, who, on account of poverty, must inevitably be doomed to a life of ignorance, and consequent vice and misery.

The dreadful sentence pronounced against me by my father for my disobedience, forbids me applying to him, either for advice or any thing else. My husband being somewhat sceptical, my father attributes his intemperance to his infidelity; though my brother, as you know, being a member of the same 75church with my father, is nevertheless, though he does not fool away his property, more of a drunkard than my husband, and ranks among the faithful. You will therefore plainly see, that for these and other reasons, I stand the more in need of your friendly advice; and I do hope and believe, you will give me such advice and counsel as you would to your own daughter, had you one in the same predicament that I am. In so doing, you will add new claims to the gratitude of your friend,

Need I add one word of comment on such a case as this? Every feeling mind must be touched by the amiable feeling and good sense that pervade the letter. Every rational being, surely, must admit, that the power of preventing, without injury or sacrifice, the increase of a family, under such circumstances, is a public benefit and a private blessing.

Will it be asserted—and I know no other even plausible reply to these facts and arguments—will it be asserted, that the thing is, in itself, immoral or unseemly? I deny it; and I point to the population of France, in 76justification of my denial. Where will you find, on the face of the globe, a more polished or more civilized nation than the French, or one more punctiliously alive to any rudeness, coarseness or indecorum? You will find none. The French are scrupulous on these points, to a proverb. Yet, as every intelligent traveller in France must have remarked, there is scarcely to be found, among the middle or upper classes, (and seldom even among the working classes,) such a thing as a large family; very seldom more than three or four children, A French lady of the utmost delicacy and respectability will, in common conversation, say as simply—(ay, and as innocently, whatever the self-righteous prude may aver to the contrary)—as she would proffer any common remark about the weather: “I have three children; my husband and I think that is as many as we can do justice to, and I do not intend to have any more.”^[14]

I have stated notorious facts, facts which 77no traveller who has visited Paris, and seen any thing of the domestic life of its inhabitants, will attempt to deny. However heterodox, then, my view of the subject may be in this country, I am supported in it by the opinion and the practice of the most refined and most socially cultivated nation in the world.

Will it still be argued, that the practice, if not coarse, is immoral? Again I appeal to France. I appeal to the details of the late glorious revolution—to the innumerable instances of moderation, of courage, of honesty, of disinterestedness, of generosity, of magnanimity, displayed on the memorable “three days,” and ever since; and I challenge comparison between the national character of France for virtue, as well as politeness, and that of any other nation under heaven.

It is evident, then, that to married persons, the power of limiting their offspring to their circumstances is most desirable. It may often promote the harmony, peace, and comfort of families; sometimes it may save from bankruptcy and ruin, and sometimes it may rescue the mother from premature death. In no case can it, by possibility, be worse than 78superfluous. In no case can it be mischievous.

If the moral feelings were carefully cultivated, if we were taught to consult, in every thing, rather the welfare of those we love than our own, how strongly would these arguments be felt? No man ought even to desire that a woman should become the mother of his children, unless it was her express wish, and unless he knew it to be for her welfare, that she should. Her feelings, her interests, should be for him in this matter an imperative law. She it is who bears the burden, and therefore with her also should the decision rest. Surely it may well be a question whether it be desirable, or whether any man ought to ask, that the whole life of an intellectual, cultivated woman, should be spent in bearing a family of twelve or fifteen children; to the ruin, perhaps, of her constitution, if not to the overstocking of the world. No man ought to require or expect it.

Shall I be told, that this is the very romance of morality? Alas! that what ought to be a matter of every day practice—a common-place exercise of the duties and charities 79of life—a bounden duty—an instance of domestic courtesy too universal either to excite remark or to merit commendation—alas! that a virtue so humble that its absence ought to be reproached as a crime, should, to our selfish perceptions, seem but a fastidious refinement, or a fanciful supererogation!

But I pass from the case of married persons to that of young men and women who have yet formed no matrimonial connexion.

In the present state of the world, when public opinion stamps with opprobrium every sexual connexion which has not received the orthodox sanction of an oath, almost all young persons, on reaching the age of maturity, desire to marry. The heart must be very cold, or very isolated, that does not find some object on which to bestow its affections. Thus, early marriages would be almost universal, did not prudential considerations interfere. The young man thinks, “I must not marry yet. I cannot support a family. I must make money first, and think of a matrimonial settlement afterwards.”

And so he goes to making money, fully and sincerely resolved, in a few years, to share it with her whom he now loves. But passions 80are strong, and temptations great. Curiosity, perhaps, introduces him into the company of those poor creatures whom society first reduces to a dependence on the most miserable of mercenary trades, and then curses for being what she has made them. There his health and his moral feelings alike are made shipwreck. The affections he had thought to treasure up for their first object, are chilled by dissipation and blunted by excess. He scarcely retains a passion but avarice. Years pass on—years of profligacy and speculation—and his first wish is accomplished; his fortune is made. Where now are the feelings and resolves of his youth?

He is a man of pleasure—a man of the world. He laughs at the romance of his youth, and marries a fortune. If gaudy equipages and gay parties confer happiness, he is happy. But if these be only the sunshine on the stormy ocean below, he is a victim to that system of morality, which forbids 81a reputable connexion until the period when provision has been made for a large, expected family. Had he married the first object of his choice, and simply delayed becoming a father until his prospects seemed to warrant it, how different might have been his lot! Until men and woman are absolved from the fear of becoming parents, except when they themselves desire it, they ever will form mercenary and demoralizing connexions, and seek in dissipation the happiness they might have found in domestic life.

I know that this, however common, is not a universal case. Sometimes the heavy responsibilities of a family are incurred, at all risks; and who shall say how often a life of unremitting toil and poverty is the consequence? Sometimes—if even rarely—the young mind does hold to its first resolves. The youth plods through years of cold celibacy and solitary anxiety; happy, if before the best hours of life are gone, and its warmest feelings withered, he may return to claim the reward of his forbearance and his industry. But even in this comparatively happy case, shall we count for nothing the years of ascetical sacrifice at which after-happiness 82is purchased? The days of youth are not too many, nor its affections too lasting. We may, indeed, if a great object require it, sacrifice the one and mortify the other. But is this, in itself, desirable? Does not wisdom tell us, that such sacrifice is a dead loss—to the warm-hearted often a grievous one? Does not wisdom bid us temperately enjoy the spring-time of life, “while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when we shall say, ‘We have no pleasure in them?’”

Let us say, then, if we will, that the youth who thus sacrifices the present for the future, chooses wisely between two evils, profligacy and asceticism. This is true. But let us not imagine the lesser evil to be a good. It is not good for man to be alone. It is for no man’s or woman’s happiness or benefit, that they should be condemned to Shakerism. It is a violence done to the feelings, and an injury to the character. A life of rigid celibacy, though infinitely preferable to a life of dissipation, is yet fraught with many evils. Peevishness, restlessness, vague longings, and instability of character, are among the least of these. The mind is unsettled, and the 83judgment warped. Even the very instinct which is thus mortified, assumes an undue importance, and occupies a portion of the thoughts which does not of right or nature belong to it; and which, during a life of satisfied affection, it would not obtain.

I speak not now of extreme cases, where solitary vice^[15] or disease, or even insanity, has been the result of ascetical mortification. I speak of every day cases; and I am well convinced, that, (however wise it often is, in 84the present state of the world, to select and adhere to this alternative,) yet no man or woman can live the life of a conscientious Shaker, without suffering, more or less, both physically, mentally, and morally. This is the more to be regretted, because the very noblest portion of our species—the good, the pure, the high-minded, and the kind-hearted—are the chief victims.

Thus, inasmuch as the scruple of incurring heavy responsibilities deters from forming moral connexions, and encourages intemperance and prostitution, the knowledge which enables man to limit his offspring, would, in the present state of things, save much unhappiness and prevent many crimes. Young persons sincerely attached to each other, and who might wish to marry, would marry early; merely resolving not to become parents until prudence permitted it. The young man, instead of solitary toil or vulgar dissipation, would enjoy the society and the assistance of her he had chosen as his companion; and the best years of life, whose pleasures never return, would not be squandered in riot, or lost through mortification.

85My readers will remark, that all the arguments I have hitherto employed, apply strictly to the present order of things, and the present laws and system of marriage. No one, therefore, need be a moral heretic on this subject to admit and approve them. The marriage laws might all remain for ever as they are; and yet a moral check to population would be beneficent and important.

But there are other cases, it will be said, where the knowledge of such a check would be mischievous. If young women, it will be argued, were absolved from the fear of consequences, they would rarely preserve their chastity. Unlegalized connexions would be common and seldom detected. Seduction would be facilitated. Let us dispassionately examine this argument.

I fully agree with that most amiable of moral heretics, Shelley, that “Seduction, which term could have no meaning in a rational society, has now a most tremendous one.”^[16] It matters not how artificial the penality which society has chosen to affix to a 86breach of her capricious decrees. Society has the power in her own hands; and that moral Shylock, Public Opinion, enforces the penality, even though it cost the life of the victim. The consequences, then, to the poor sufferer, whose offence is, at most, but an error of judgment or a weakness of the heart, are the same as if her imprudence were indeed a crime of the blackest dye. And his conduct who, for a momentary, selfish gratification, will deliberately entail a life of wretchedness on one whose chief fault, perhaps, was her misplaced confidence in a villain, is not one whit excused by the folly and injustice of the sentence.^[17] Some poet says,

87What epithet, then, belongs to him who makes it a trade to win a woman’s gentle affections, betray her generous confidence, and then, when the consequences become apparent, abandon her to dependence, and the scorn of a cold, a self-righteous, and a wicked world; a world which will forgive any thing but rebellion against its tyranny, and in whose eyes it seems the greatest of crimes to be unsuspecting and warm-hearted! I will give my hand freely to a galley-slave, and speak to the highway-robber as to an honest man; but there is one character with whom I desire to exchange neither word nor greeting—the cold-hearted, deliberate, practiced, and calculating seducer!

And, let me ask, what is it gives to the arts of seduction their sting, and stamps to the world its victim? Why is it, that the man goes free and enters society again, almost courted and applauded for his treachery; while the woman is a mark for the finger of reproach, and a butt for the tongue of scandal? Because she bears about her the mark 88of what is called her disgrace. She becomes a mother; and society has something tangible against which to direct its anathemas. Nine tenths, at least, of the misery and ruin which are caused by seduction, even in the present state of public opinion on the subject, result from cases of pregnancy. Perhaps the unfeeling selfishness of him who fears to become a father, administers some noxious drug to procure abortion; perhaps—for even such scenes our courts of justice disclose!—perhaps the frenzy of the wretched mother takes the life of her infant, or seeks in suicide the consummation of her wrongs and her woes! Or, if the little being lives, the dove in the falcon’s claws is not more certain of death, than we may be, that society will visit, with its bitterest scoffs and reproaches, the bruised spirit of the mother and the unconscious innocence of the child.

If, then, we cannot do all, shall we neglect a part? If we cannot prevent every misery which man’s selfishness and the world’s cruelty entail on a sex which it ought to be our pride and honor to cherish and defend; let us prevent as many as we can. If 89we cannot persuade society to revoke its unmanly and unchristian^[18] persecution of those who are often the best and gentlest of its members—let us, at the least, give to woman what defence we may, against its violence.

I appeal to any father, trembling for the reputation of his child, whether, if she were induced to form an unlegalized connexion, her pregnancy would not be a frightful aggravation? I appeal to him, whether any innocent preventive which shall save her from a situation that must soon disclose all to the world, would not be an act of mercy, of charity, of philanthropy—whether it might not save him from despair, and her from ruin? The fastidious conformist may frown upon the question, but to the father it comes home; and, whatever his lips may say, his heart will acknowledge the soundness and the force of the argument it conveys.^[19]

90It may be, that some sticklers for orthodox morality will still demur to the positions I defend. 91They will perhaps tell me, as the Committee of a certain Society in this city lately did, that the power of preventing conceptions “holds out inducements and facilities for the prostitution of their daughters, their sisters, and their wives.”^[20]

92Truly, but they pay their wives, their sisters, and their daughters, a poor compliment! Is, then, this vaunted chastity a mere thing of circumstance and occasion? Is there but the difference of opportunity between it and prostitution? Would their wives, and their sisters, and their daughters, if once absolved from the fear of offspring, all become prostitutes—all sell their embraces for gold, and descend to a level with the most degraded? In truth, but they slander their own kindred; they libel their own wives, sisters, and daughters. If they spoke truth—if fear were indeed the only safeguard of their relatives’ chastity, little value should I place on virtue like that! and small would I esteem his offence, who should attempt to seduce it.^[21]

93That chastity which is worth preserving is not the chastity that owes its birth to fear and 94to ignorance. If to enlighten a woman regarding a simple physiological fact will make her a prostitute, she must be especially predisposed to profligacy. But it is a libel on the sex. Few, indeed, there are, who would continue so miserable and degrading a calling, could they but escape from it. For one prostitute that is made by inclination, ten are made by necessity. Reform the laws—equalize the comforts of society, and you need withhold no knowledge from your wives and daughters. It is want, not knowledge, that leads to prostitution.

For myself, I would withhold from no sister or daughter, or wife of mine, any ascertained fact whatever. It should be to me a duty and a pleasure to communicate to them all I knew myself: and I should hold it an insult to their understandings and their hearts to imagine, that their virtue would diminish as their knowledge increased. Vice is never the offspring of just knowledge, and they who say it is, slander their own nature. Would we but trust human nature, instead of continually 95suspecting it, and guarding it by bolts and bars, and thinking to make it very chaste by keeping it very ignorant, what a different world we should have of it! The virtue of ignorance is a sickly plant, ever exposed to the caterpillar of corruption, liable to be scorched and blasted even by the free light of heaven; of precarious growth; and, even if at last artificially matured, of little or no real value.

I know that parents often think it right and proper to withhold from their children—especially from their daughters—facts the most influential on their future lives, and the knowledge of which is essential to every man and woman’s well-being.^[22] Such a course has ever appeared to me ill-judged and productive 96of very injurious effects. A girl is surely no whit the better for believing, until her marriage night that children are found among the cabbage leaves in the garden. The imagination is excited, the curiosity kept continually on the stretch; and that which, if simply explained, would have been recollected only 97as any other physiological phenomenon, assumes all the rank and importance and engrossing interest of a mystery. Nay, I am well convinced, that mere curiosity has often led ignorant young people into situations, from which a little more confidence and openness on the part of their parents or guardians, would have effectually secured them.

In the monkish days of mental darkness, when it was taught and believed, that all the imaginations and all the thoughts of man are only evil continually—when it was deemed right and proper to secure the submission of the mass by withholding from them the knowledge even how to read and write—in those days, it was all very well to shut up the physiological page, and tell us, that on the day we read therein we should surely die. But those times are past. In this nineteenth century, men and women read, think, discuss, enquire, judge for themselves. If, in these latter days, there is to be virtue at all, she must be the offspring of knowledge and of free enquiry, not of ignorance and mystery. We cannot prevent the spread of any real knowledge, even if we would; we ought not, even if we could.

98This book will make its way through the whole United States. Curiosity and the notoriety which has already been given to the subject, will suffice at first to obtain for it circulation. The practical importance of the subject it treats of will do the rest. It needed but some one to start the stone; its own momentum will suffice to carry it forward.

But, if we could prevent the circulation of truth, why should we? We are not afraid of it ourselves. No man thinks his morality will suffer by it. Each feels certain that his virtue can stand any degree of knowledge. And is it not the height of egregious presumption in each to imagine that his neighbour is so much weaker than himself, and requires a bandage which he can do without? Most of all, is it presumptuous to suppose, that that knowledge which the man of the world can bear with impunity, will corrupt the young and the pure-hearted. It is the sullied conscience only that suggests such fears. Trust youth and innocence. Speak to them openly. Show them that you respect them, by treating them with confidence; and they will quickly learn to respect and to govern themselves. You enlist even their 99pride in your behalf; and you will soon see them make it their boast and their highest pleasure to merit your confidence. But watch them, and show your suspicion of them but once—and you are the jailor, who will keep his prisoners just as long as bars and bolts shall prevent their escape. The world was never made for a prison-house; it is too large and ill-guarded: nor were parents ever intended for goal-keepers; their very affections unfit them for the task.

There is no more beautiful sight upon earth, than a family among whom there are no secrets and no reserves: where the young people confide every thing to their elder friends—for such to them are their parents—and where the parents trust every thing to their children; where each thought is communicated as freely as it arises; and all knowledge given, as simply as it is received. If the world contain a prototype of that Paradise, where nature is said to have known no sin or impropriety, it is such a family; and if there be a serpent that can poison the innocence of its inmates, that serpent is Suspicion.

I ask no greater pleasure than thus to be the guardian and companion of young beings 100whose innocence shall speak to me as unreservedly as it thinks to itself; of young beings who shall never imagine that there is guilt in their thoughts, or sin in their confidence; and to whom, in return, I may impart every important and useful fact that is known to myself. Their virtue shall be of that hardy growth, which all facts tend to nourish and strengthen.

I put it to my readers, whether such a view of human nature, and such a mode of treating it, be not in accordance with the noblest feelings of their hearts. I put it to them, whether they have not felt themselves encouraged, improved, strengthened in every virtuous resolution, when they were generously trusted; and whether they have not felt abased and degraded, when they were suspiciously watched, and spied after, and kept in ignorance. If they find such feelings in their own hearts, let them not self-righteously imagine, that they only can be won by generosity, or that the nature of their fellow-creatures is different from their own.

There are other considerations connected with this subject, which farther attest the social advantages of the control I advocate. 101Human affections are mutable, and the sincerest of mortal resolutions may change.^[23] Every day furnishes instances of alienations, and of separations; sometimes almost before the honey-moon is well expired. In such cases of unsuitability, it cannot be considered desirable that there should be offspring; and the power of refraining from becoming parents until intimacy had, in a measure, established the likelihood of permanent harmony of views and feelings, must be confessed to be advantageous.

The limits which my numerous avocations prescribe to this little treatise, permit me not to meet every argument in detail, which ingenuity or prejudice might put forward. If the world were not actually afraid to think freely or to listen to the suggestions of common sense, three-fourths of what has already been said would be superfluous; for most of 102the arguments employed would occur spontaneously to any rational, reasoning being. But the mass of mankind have still, in a measure, every thing to learn on this subject. The world seems to me much to resemble a company of gourmands, who sit down to a plentiful repast, first very punctiliously saying grace over it; and then, under sanction of the priest’s blessing, think to gorge themselves with impunity; as conceiving, that gluttony after grace is no sin. So it is with popular customs and popular morality. Every thing is permitted, if external forms be but respected. Legal roguery is no crime, and ceremony-sanctioned excess no profligacy. The substance is sacrificed to the form, the virtue to the outward observance. The world troubles its head little about whether a man be honest or dishonest, so he knows how to avoid the penitentiary and escape the hangman. In like manner, the world seldom thinks it worth while to enquire whether a man be temperate or intemperate, prudent or thoughtless. It takes especial care to inform itself whether in all things he conforms to orthodox requirements; and, if he does, all is right. Thus men too often learn to consider 103an oath an absolution from all subsequent decencies and duties, and a full release from all after responsibilities. If a husband maltreat his wife, the offence is venal; for he premised it by making her, at the altar, an “honest woman.” If a married father neglect his children, it is a trifle; for grace was regularly said, before they were born.

So true is this, that if some heterodox moralist were to throw out the idea, that many of the rudenesses and jarrings, and much of the indifference and carelessness of each others’ feelings that is exhibited in married life, might be traced to the almost universal custom (in this country though not in France) of man and wife continually occupying the same bed—if he put it to us whether such a forced and too frequent familiarity were not calculated to lessen the charms and pleasures, and diminish the respectful regard and deference, which ought ever to characterize the intercourse of human beings—if, I say, some heretical preferrer of things to forms were to light upon and express some such unlucky idea as this, ten to one the married portion of the community would fall upon him without mercy, as an impertinent intermeddler in their most legitimate rights and prerogatives.

104With such a world as this, it is a difficult matter to reason. After listening to all I have said, it may perhaps cut me short by reminding me, that nature herself declares it to be right and proper, that we should reproduce our species without calculation or restraint. I will ask, in reply, whether nature also declares it to be right and proper, that when the thermometer is at 96°, we should drink greedily of cold water, and drop down dead in the streets? Let the world be told, that if nature gave us our passions and propensities, she gave us also the power wisely to control them; and that, when we hesitate to exercise that power we descend to a level with the brute creation, and become the sport of fortune—the mere slaves of circumstance.^[24]

105To one other argument it were not, perhaps, worth while to advert, but that it has been already speciously used to excite popular prejudice. It has been said, that to recommend to mankind prudential restraint in cases where children cannot be provided for, is an insult to the poor man; since all ought to be so circumstanced that they might provide amply for the largest family. Most assuredly all ought to be so circumstanced; but all are not. And there would be just as much propriety in bidding a poor man to go and take by force a piece of Saxony broadcloth from his neighbour’s store, because he ought to be able to purchase it, as to encourage him to go on producing children, because he ought to have wherewithal to support them. Let us exert every nerve to correct the injustice and arrest the misery that results from a vicious order of things; but, until we have done so, let us not, for humanity’s sake, madly recommend that which grievously aggravates the evil; which increases the burden on the present generation, and threatens with neglect and ignorance the next.

And now, let my readers pause. Let them 106review the various arguments I have placed before them. Let them reflect how intimately the instinct of which I treat is connected with the social welfare of society. Let them bear in mind, that just in proportion to its social influence, is it important that we should know how to control and govern it; that, when we obtain such control, we may save ourselves—and, what we ought to prize much more highly, may save our companions and our offspring, from suffering or misery; that by such knowledge, the young may form virtuous connexions, instead of becoming profligates or ascetics; that, by it, early marriage is deprived of its heaviest consequences, and seduction of its sharpest sting: that, by it, man may be saved from moral ruin, and woman from desolating dishonour; that by it the first pure affections may be soothed and satisfied, instead of being thwarted or destroyed—let them call to mind all this, and then let them say, whether the possession of such control be not a blessing to man.

It shocks the mind of a woman at the first thought; but once practiced, all prejudice flies, and gratification must be the consequence. 107To weak and sickly females, to those to whom parturition is dangerous, and who never produce living or healthy children, the discovery is a great blessing. And it is also a real blessing in all other cases, where children are not desired. It will become the very bulwark of love and wisdom, of beauty, health, and happiness.

CHAPTER VI. THE SUBJECT CONSIDERED IN ITS IMMEDIATE CONNEXION WITH PHYSIOLOGY.

It now remains, after having spoken of the desirability of obtaining control over the instinct of reproduction, to speak of its practicability.

As, in this world, the value of labour is too often estimated almost in proportion to its inutility, so in physical science, contested questions seem to have attracted attention and engaged research, almost in the inverse ratio of their practical importance. We have a hundred learned hypotheses for one decisive practical experiment. We have many thousands of volumes written to explain fanciful theories, and scarcely as many dozens to record ascertained facts.

It is not my intention, in discussing this 110branch of the subject, to examine the hundred ingenious theories of generation which ancient and modern physiologists have put forth. I shall not enquire whether the future human being owes its first existence, as Hippocrates and Galen asserted, and Buffon very ingeniously supports, to the union of two life-giving fluids, each a sort of extract of the body of the parent, and composed of organic particles similar to the future offspring; or whether, as Harvey and Haller teach, the embryo reposes in the ovum until vivified by the seminal fluid, or perhaps only by the aura seminalis; or whether, according to the theories of Leuvenhoeck and Boerhaave, the future man first exists as a spermatic animalcula, for which the ovum becomes merely the nourishing receptacle; or whether, as the ingenious Andry imagines, a vivifying worm be the more correct hypothesis; or whether, finally, as Perault will have it,^[25] the embryo beings (too wonderfully organized to be supposed the production of any mere physical phenomenon) must be 111imagined to come directly from the hands of the Creator, who has filled the universe with these little germs, too minute, indeed, to exercise all the animal functions, but still self-existent, and awaiting only the insinuation of some subtle essence into their microscopic pores, to come forth as human beings. Still less am I inclined to follow Hippocrates and Tertullian in their enquiries, whether the soul is merely introduced into the fœtus, or preexists in the semen, and becomes, as it were, the architect of its future residence, the body;^[26] or to attempt a refutation of the hypothesis of the metaphysical naturalist,^[27] who asserts, (and adduces the infinite indivisibility of matter in support of the assertion,) that the actual germs of the whole human race, and of all that are yet to be born, existed in the ovaria of our first mother, Eve. I leave these and fifty other hypotheses as ingenious and as useless, to be discussed by those who 112seem to make it a point of honour to leave no fact unexplained by some imagined theory; and I descend at once to the terra firma of positive experience and actual observation.

All things having life, increase and multiply upon an analogous principle, but the method of effecting that increase differs very considerably. In the human race, nature has furnished the sexes parts, which it is necessary for the purpose of reproduction, should approximate and commingle their elements or rudiments of future existence, and that, that intermixture should take place in the womb of the female. In some of the lower order of animals and in the vegetable world the sexes are combined in one object which object possesses the power of increase. To enter into the physiological minutæ of impregnation would be embarking more scientifically in these matters than this little book professes to do, it being our intention more to hold up a popular view than to discuss the various opinions upon any given point.

It is exceedingly to be regretted that mankind did not spend some small portion, at least, of the time and industry which has been wasted on theoretical researches, in 113collecting and collating the actual experience of human beings. But this task, too difficult for the ignorant, has generally been thought too simple and common-place for the learned. To this circumstance, joined to the fact, that it is not thought fitting or decent for human beings freely to communicate their personal experience on the important subject now under consideration—to these causes are attributable the great and otherwise unaccountable ignorance which so strangely prevails, even sometimes among medical men, as to the power which man may possess over the reproductive instinct. Many physicians will positively deny that man possesses any such power. And yet, if the thousandth part of the talent and research had been employed to investigate this momentous fact, which has been turned to the building up of idle theories, no commonly intelligent individual could well be ignorant of the truth.

I have taken great pains to ascertain the opinions of the most enlightened physicians of Great Britain and France on this subject; (opinions which popular prejudice will not permit them to offer publicly in their works;) and they all concur in admitting, what the 114experience of the French nation positively proves, that man may have a perfect control over this instinct: and that men and women may, without any injury to health, or the slightest violence done to the moral feelings, and with but small diminution of the pleasure which accompanies the gratification of the instinct, refrain at will from becoming parents. It has chanced to me, also, to win the confidence of several individuals, who have communicated to me, without reserve, their own experience: and all this has been corroborative of the same opinion.

Thus, though I pretend not to speak positively of the details of a subject, which will then only be fully understood when men acquire sense enough simply and unreservedly to discuss it, I may venture to assure my readers, that the main fact is incontrovertible. I shall adduce such facts in proof of this as may occur to me in the course of this investigation.

However various and contradictory the different theories of generation, almost all physiologists are agreed, that the entrance of the sperm itself (or of some volatile particles 115proceeding from it) into the uterus, must precede conception. This it was that probably first suggested the possibility of preventing conception at will.

The Author informs us, that among the modes of preventing conception which may have prevailed in various countries, that which has been adopted and practiced by the cultivated classes, on the continent of Europe, by the French, the Italians, and to some extent by the Spaniards and Germans, consists in a complete withdrawal, on the part of the man, immediately previous to emission. This is undoubtedly effectual where it can be done, but as our author remarks, that he can readily imagine, that there are men who, in part from temperament, but much more from their continued habits of unrestrained indulgence, may have so little command over their passions as to find difficulty in practising it, and some there may be who will declare it to be impossible. If there be any to whom it is impossible, Mr. Owen tells us, that he is convinced that the number is exceedingly small. In this, however, the Editor thinks the Author is in error.

116Numerous facts have come to the Editor’s knowledge which have demonstrated the impracticability of this check, and have convinced him that the number who are physically incapable of profiting by the Author’s recommendation, is much greater than he imagined. It is not unusual to see men, in a fit of anger, lose all self-control. Why, then, should we suppose them capable at all times of exercising restraint over the strongest passion of our nature? Mankind are endued with different degrees of passion. Some never loose that perfect command of their feelings which enables them to profit by the Author’s suggestions, while others differently constituted cannot practice the same forbearance.

The Editor knows many affectionate husbands and kind fathers who would most gladly practice the check before mentioned had they the ability to do it.

It is but recent that the father of a very large family, consulted the Editor on this subject, and in the course of conversation, he stated that he had read Mr. Owen’s book, and had endeavoured to adopt the course 117recommended by him, but found himself totally unable. Several others have mentioned the same fact. The Author tells us that the practice is attended with but trifling diminution of physical enjoyment; but however trifling it may be to some, it is not so to all, for however great their sense of duty, or however weighty the risk of incurring sacred responsibilities, they are unable to exercise the necessary restraint.

It is a commendable virtue in those who have the ability to practice it, but for such as cannot or will not, and such as are regardless of consequences, it is of the utmost moment to the mother that the power of control should be placed in the right hands. How frequently do we hear the mothers say, I have all the family I want, and am determined to have no more children if I can prevent it; but alas: she has not the power, when the partner of her bosom loses the self-control of his passions. She who bears the burden and suffers the affliction, should be able to protect herself and the fault is her own if she does not.

Mr. Owen was aware of the strong objection which would be urged against the 118practicability of the preventive recommended by him, for in speaking of it, he remarks, that it places the power in the hands of the man, and not in those of the woman—she who is the sufferer is not secured against the culpable carelessness, or perhaps the deliberate selfishness of him, who goes free and unblamed whatever may happen.

To obviate this defect, spoken of by the Author, and to provide a remedy for the suffering mother by placing it in her own hands, is the object of the Editor of the present edition of Mr. Owen’s work. The science of medicine and surgery is indebted to galvanism for some of its most important remedial agents. Physiological facts of great utility to the medical profession, have through its agency been demonstrated, and physicians have been enabled to turn the electrical influence to many useful purposes, in the treatment of diseases, and in furnishing a remedy for functional derangements. It is capable of exercising a powerful influence over the nervous system, and in the hands of the physician, is a most potent remedy.

The discovery which has enabled us to obtain such control over uterine action or 119seminal influence, as to prevent conception,^[28] was effected through its aid.

In the present state of society, a great number of persons are compelled to make an appearance and to live in a style, which consumes all their incomes, leaving nothing, or next to nothing, as a provision for their children. To such persons a great number of children, is a never failing source of discomfort and apprehension; of a state of bodily, mental, and pecuniary vexation and suffering, from which there is no escape. This state of things pervades, to a very great extent, that respectable class of society called genteel. To those whose incomes depend on some particular exertion, which cannot be remitted, these distressing circumstances are, from various causes, greatly increased. To those who constitute the great mass of the community, whose daily bread is alone procured by daily labour, a large family is almost always the cause of ruin, both of parents and children: reducing the parents to cheerless, hopeless, and 120irremediable poverty; depriving the children of those physical, moral, and mental helps which are necessary to enable them to live in comfort, and turning them out at an early age to prey upon the world, or to become the world’s prey.

For these general reasons, cognizable by every body, it is of the greatest possible importance that married people should be informed of a method to prevent such tremendous evils.

If methods can be pointed out by which all the enjoyment of wedded life may be partaken of without the apprehension of TOO LARGE a family, and all its bitter consequences, he, surely, who points them out, must be a benefactor of mankind.

The means of prevention are simple, and harmless, and might, but for the false delicacy of the press, or, rather, of those for whom it caters, have been more generally communicated.

A course of experiments instituted several years past, with a view to test the efficacy of the galvanic power, as a check to reproduction, has demonstrated and proved its perfect adaptation, to the accomplishment of this 121important object. The Editor has a very simple and perfectly harmless instrument, (so far as the health of the mother is concerned,) and one which may be depended upon for this purpose.

The application requires to be immediate, and its effect is instantaneous. Like many other operations, the effect of which is known, it may be somewhat difficult satisfactorily to explain its modus operandi; nevertheless, the certainty of its action has been clearly proved. It is known to impart a slight momentary impetus to the parts, so that the vivifying influence of the semen is destroyed or expelled.

It would be no difficult matter to devise a multitude of ingenious theories of the manner in which this operation may be accomplished, but inasmuch as no practically good effect could arise from it, we content ourselves by simply quoting the concluding remarks of Dr. Maunsell upon the theory of conception, as expressed in Dr. Gilman’s edition: “At present it will be sufficient for our purpose to state simply the facts known and indulge as little as possible in hypotheses 122which must be more the product of fancy than of reason.”

In offering this instrument to the public, the Editor is aware that his motives may be misconceived and misjudged, and that he may subject himself to be censured by that class of persons who think this too delicate a subject to be even mentioned, much less to be publicly discussed, and a remedy offered in this publication. He will be told by some that the operations of nature ought not to be interfered with, be the consequences what they may. It is well known by every person who is at all conversant with writers upon midwifery, that in consequence of deformity of the pelvis, recourse must be had in many instances to the use of instruments to destroy the child, that the life of the mother may be saved; and where the deformity is very great, resort is had to that most desperate of all remedies, the Cæsarean operation. Dr. Gilman, in the work from which we have already quoted, tells us that this last mentioned operation was performed five times upon the same woman, by Michaelis, of Kiel. It has also been performed twice by Dr. Gibson, of Philadelphia, and once by Dr. R. 123K. Hoffman, of New York, and by other operators, on the continent of Europe, and in the United States. The same Author tells us, that “A British writer suggest the propriety of dividing the Fallopian tubes when this operation is performed, that thus the women being rendered barren, might be guarded against the possibility of requiring a repetition of this terrible Cæsarean section.”

Improvements have been made in almost every department of the medical profession, and many new and important remedies have been brought to light through the aid of the science of chemistry; but none have heretofore been discovered, which could afford relief in these cases; therefore, it affords us a degree of satisfaction to be able to announce, that a safe and sure preventive of these sufferings will be found in the instrument before mentioned, which we are confident will be acceptable to every father and husband, who regards the safety and happiness of his wife. Perhaps it will be said that these cases seldom occur. In answer, it will be sufficient to state, that this is but one of a numerous class of cases, which imperiously demands the same preventive aid. As the writer, from 124whom we have just quoted, further remarks: “When an individual woman, has been frequently delivered by perforation of the child’s head, it becomes an object to devise some means for obviating these successive sacrifices, and accordingly it has been proposed in such cases, to induce premature labour at a period of gestation, when the child’s head is sufficiently small to pass through the pelvis.” This, he remarks is a step by no means to be lightly undertaken, as there must always be a certain degree of danger incurred by the mother, and the act itself, even though it be justified by a powerful necessity, is unwarrantable, and even criminal in the eye of the law.

From these quotations it will be perceived that the best and only remedy adapted to these cases, which has heretofore been devised by the profession for the relief of such as cannot safely become mothers, consists in destroying the child, that the life of the mother may be saved, and where a powerful necessity exists, premature labour or abortion at an early stage. Why not anticipate this stage, and prevent the necessity spoken of, by preventing conception? Would not 125this be more moral, and would it not save the mother from that degree of danger spoken of? Prevention is always to be preferred to cure, and where the remedy is fraught with such dangerous consequences to the patient, it is especially incumbent upon the medical attendant, to devise some means that will supersede the necessity of resorting to these desperate measures.

Since some publicity has been given to the article before mentioned, numerous applications have been made, and much enquiry elicited, which has brought a great variety of cases, under the Editor’s observation. These cases were of such a nature as to demonstrate the necessity of some preventive which should be placed in the right hands, and would have been sufficient to remove any doubt (had any remained) as to the propriety of giving publicity to this instrument. It was but yesterday that the husband of a delicate woman, and the father of a family, in conversation upon this subject, stated that his wife was the mother of two children—that since the birth of the last, she had suffered from five abortions, which had so impaired her health, that he had found it necessary to 126abstain from all intercourse with her. Numerous cases of a like nature come under his observation almost daily. Shall we be told that it is immoral and unbecoming for the physician to provide a remedy for cases of this description? Will any pretend that the delicacy of the subject should prevent us from directing the proper course to be pursued to insure health and happiness? Away with such mockery—let us speak plainly upon all subjects that equally concern the health and happiness of our fellow beings. It comes within the province of the physician, to investigate this matter in a philosophical manner, and to let nothing but a sense of duty to his patients, and to the public guide him in his determination.

The only thing that is a matter of surprise to the Editor is, that this subject should have been so long neglected by the profession. He is convinced that this little book and the means of prevention herein recommended, will do more to prevent that moral evil, abortion among married females, than all the penal enactments of our legislators, and the criminal courts which enforce them. Yes, it is his firm conviction that a moral check to 127reproduction, will do what judges and juries have in vain attempted. It will put an end to the occupation of the abortionist by removing the cause and thus striking at the root of the evil. The want of the means of prevention has lead to the commission of a crime revolting to our feelings. How many lives of mothers would have been spared, had the power of preventing conception been known to them! the feelings of the community would not be so often shocked by those horrid tales, which are so frequently related in the daily papers, of child murders: and the incensed feelings of the community, ready to burst forth in mobs, and other demonstrations of popular indignation, against those who commit such crimes. I here quote a paragraph which recently appeared in one of the New York daily papers, for the purpose of showing the feeling of the community on this subject: “The residence of Madame Restell, in Greenwich street, was beset yesterday afternoon by a vast concourse of people of all classes, many of them, doubtless, drawn thither by curiosity, or a vague idea that something extraordinary was about to be enacted in reference to this notorious 128woman, and not a few who came apparently with the intention of being actors in some scene of violence and popular outbreak. There were very many of our most respectable citizens noticed among the mass—a result unlooked for, and certainly ominous of a deep and abiding feeling of abhorrence and detestation among the better classes, for the practices of this miserable female, which may yet prove of fearful import to her, and to those who countenance and support her in the vile and unholy occupation, the known existence of which in our midst, in defiance of all law, and outraging every sense of decency and morality, has been suffered so long to rest, as a foul plague-spot upon our city. We learn that in anticipation of some energetic demonstration in the course of the day, Madame Restell early left her house, and secretly repaired to the dwelling of some unknown friend, seeking a shelter from her fears in a hiding-place, far from the scene of her iniquitous practices. Meanwhile although the Chief of Police, aided by a strong body of officers, were upon the ground of the disturbance, it seemed for some hours as though the neighbourhood was slumbering upon a 129volcano, which a mere breath would inflame into fierce and terrible action. Curses loud and deep upon Restell and her coadjutors, were rife amid the crowd, and cries of ‘Haul her out!’ ‘Where’s Mary Applegate’s child?’ ‘Where’s the thousand children murdered in this house!’ ‘Where is Miss Munson!’ ‘Throw her in the dock!’ ‘Hanging is too good for the monster!’ ‘Who murdered Mary Rodgers!’ and other inflammatory exclamations of a like nature, were continually uprising from the excited multitude. Through the whole vicinity, the windows on both sides of the street were upraised, and filled with anxious faces, intently watching the movements of the mass below; and there were not wanting those, among the inmates of the neighbouring houses, and those inmates too, females of respectability and refinement, who joined in the universal cry for vengence and retribution. It did indeed seem as though the strong feeling of popular indignation was about to be manifested in an outbreak of a serious character, and that the unhappy object of their dislikes was about to realize that there is in this land, a power above all law, whose mandates would—when the arm of justice 130became paralysed and insufficient, and was daringly sneered at by those who depend upon their ill-earned wealth, and certain peculiar influences for impunity from the just reward of crime—be suddenly executed in violence and confusion. Owing, however, to the prompt exertions of the Chief of Police, under whose directions one or two arrests were made of the most active spirits among the assembled mass, the threatened disturbance was finally put down, and at this time, (late in the evening) order and quiet are restored to the neighbourhood.

“We do not envy the feelings of the wretched woman during the existence of the threatening outbreak, for although at some distance from the scene yet she well knew what was going forward, being made acquainted at short intervals with the position of affairs. We trust that from the experience of yesterday, Madame Restell is now convinced of the necessity of immediately closing her unlawful business; otherwise, there seems to be a most fearful certainty that the end is not yet.”

See, what a mass of evil arises from bastard children, from child-murder, from deserted 131children, from diseased children, and even where the parents are most industrious and most virtuous, from a half-starved, naked, and badly housed family, from families crowded into one room, for whose health a house and garden is essential. All these matters are a tax upon love, a perpetual tax upon human pleasure, and upon health; a tax that turns beauty into shrivelled ugliness, defaces the noble attitude of mankind, and makes their condition worse than that of the cattle of the field.

Then comes the consideration—what a dreadful thing it is, that health and beauty cannot be encouraged and extended, that love cannot be enjoyed without the danger of a conception, when that conception is not desired, when it is a positive injury to the parties and to society. This circumstance has been a great bar to health, strength, and beauty.

What is to be done to remedy this evil? There is something to be done: a means has been discovered, a simple means, criminal in the neglect, not in the use. The destruction of conceptions have been sought by acts of violence, by doses of poison, that injure, and sometimes destroy the mother, to reach the 132fœtus in her womb. This is dreadful, truly dreadful. Yet custom has made it a common matter. Every village has its almost yearly cases of the kind. In this country, hundreds of infants are yearly destroyed at birth: some cases are discovered, but many pass undiscovered. We condemn and shudder at the infanticides of China and other countries: yet it is a question, if infanticide ever prevailed in any country to a greater extent than in our own. Here, then, as in every other case of disease or other evil, it is better to prevent than to cure, and here prevention is most simply practicable, a means within the reach of all.

Those who have no means of arriving at a knowledge of the extent of this evil, could scarce realize it; since the investigation of this subject was commenced and since mention has been made publicly of the instrument before alluded to, numerous facts have come to the Editor’s knowledge which would be sufficient to convince every candid reflecting person, that the utmost extent of the credulity of those who have taken but little pains to inform themselves upon this part of the subject is not half equal to the extent of this vice. He is inclined to believe that his 133statement would be doubted were he to relate the number of calls he has received from persons seeking this kind of medical service under a misapprehension of his notice. The number is not confined to such as cannot legitimately become mothers, but what is most surprising, parents who move in what is called respectable society, appear to feel no delicacy in asking relief, in these cases, at the hands of the physician.

For the purpose of illustrating still more forcibly, the extent to which the business of the abortionist is carried on in this city, and likewise the dangers to which the victim is exposed, we propose to make some extracts from a case reported by Dr. Bedford, the eminent Professor of Midwifery in the University of the city of New York. Several physicians had been called in, the patient had been in labour for twenty-four hours, and they severally professed their ignorance of the nature of the case. Dr. B. then goes on to say:—

“Mrs. M. had been taken in labour Monday, Dec. 18th, at seven o’clock, P. M. and on Tuesday at seven o’clock, P. M., I first saw her. Her pains were then almost constant, and such had been the severity of her 134suffering that her cries for relief, as her medical attendants informed me, had attracted crowds of persons about the door. As soon as I entered her room, she exclaimed, ‘For God’s sake Doctor, cut me open or I shall die: I never can be delivered without you cut me open.’ I was struck with this language, especially as I had already been informed, that she had previously borne two children. At the request of the medical gentlemen, I proceeded to make an examination per vaginam, and I must confess that I was startled at what I discovered, expecting every instant, from the intensity of the contractions of the uterus, that this organ would be ruptured in some portion of its extent. I could distinctly feel a solid, resisting tumor at the superior strait, through the walls of the uterus, but could detect no opening in the womb. In carrying my finger upward and backward toward the cul-de-sac of the vagina, I could trace two bridles, extending from this portion of the vagina to a point of the uterus, which was quite rough and slightly elevated; this roughness was transverse in shape, but with all the caution and nicety of manipulation I could bring to bear, I found it impossible 135to detect any opening in the womb. In passing my finger with care, from the bridles to the rough surface, and exploring the condition of the parts with an anxious desire to afford the distressed patient prompt and effectual relief, I distinctly felt cicatrices, of which this rough surface was one. Here, then, was a condition of things produced by injury done to the soft parts, at some previous period, resulting in the formation of cicatrices and bridles, and likewise in the closure of the mouth of the womb. At this stage of the examination, I knew nothing of the previous history of the patient more than I have already stated, and the first question I addressed to her was this: ‘Have you ever had any difficulty in your previous confinements? have you ever been delivered with instruments?’ &c., &c. She distinctly replied, that her previous labors had been of short duration, and that she had not been delivered with instruments, nor had she ever sustained any injury in consequence of her confinements. This information somewhat puzzled me, for it was not in keeping with what any one might have conjectured, taking into view her actual condition, which was undoubtedly the result of direct injury 136done to the parts. On assuring her, that she was in a most perilous situation, and at the same time, promising that we would do all in our power to rescue her, she voluntarily made the following confession:

“About six weeks after becoming pregnant, she called on the notorious Madame Restell, who, on learning her situation, gave her some powders with directions for use; these powders did not appear to produce the desired effect. She returned again to this woman, and asked her if there was no other way to make her miscarry. ‘Yes,’ says Madame Restell, ‘I can probe you; but I must have my price for this operation.’ ‘What do you probe with?’ ‘A piece of whalebone.’ ‘Well,’ thought the patient, but without expressing it, ‘I cannot afford to pay your price, and I will probe myself.’ She returned home, and used the whalebone several times; it produced considerable pain, followed by a discharge of blood. The whole secret was now disclosed. Injuries inflicted on the mouth of the womb, by these violent attempts, had resulted in the circumstances as detailed above.

“It was evident from the nature of this poor woman’s sufferings, and the expulsive 137character of her pains, that prompt artificial delivery was indicated. Accordingly, without loss of time, (she then having been in labor twenty-nine hours,) I performed the operation. In a short time, Mrs. M. was delivered of a vigorous, full grown child, whose boisterous cries were heard with astonishment by the mother, and with sincere gratification by her medical friends. The expression of that woman’s gratitude, in thus being preserved from what she and her friends supposed to be inevitable death, was an ample compensation for the anxiety experienced by those, who were the humble instruments of affording her relief. This patient recovered rapidly, and did not during the whole of her convalescence, present one untoward symptom. It is now ten weeks since the operation, and she and her infant are in the enjoyment of excellent health.

“At my last visit to this patient, with Dr. Forry, she made some additional revelations, which I think should be given not only to the profession, but to the public, in order that it may be known that in our very midst, there is a monster who speculates with human life with as much coolness as if she were engaged 138in a game of chance. This patient, with unaffected sincerity, and apparently ignorant of the moral turpitude of the act, stated, most unequivocally, to both Dr. Forry and myself that Mad. Restell, on previous occasions, had caused her to miscarry five times, and that these miscarriages had, in every instance, been brought about by drugs administered by this trafficker in human life. The only instance in which medicines failed, was the last pregnancy, when at the suggestion of Madame Restell, she probed herself, and induced the condition of things described, and which most seriously involved her own safety, as well as that of her child. In the course of conversation, this patient mentioned that she knew a great number of females, who were in the habit of applying to Madame Restell, for the purpose of miscarrying, and that she scarcely ever failed in affording the desired relief. Among others, she cited the case of a female residing in Houston-street, who was five months pregnant; Madame Restell probed her, and she was delivered of a child, which, to use her own expression, ‘kicked several times after it was put into the bowl.’ It, indeed, seems too monstrous for belief that such 139gross violations of the laws, both of God and man, should be suffered in the very heart of a community professing to be Christian, and to be governed by law and good order. Yet these facts are known to all who read. This creature’s advertisements are to be seen in our daily papers; there she invites the base and the guilty, the innocent and the unwary, to apply to her. She tells publicly what she can do, and without the slightest scruple, urges all to call on her who may be anxious to avoid having children. Here, then, is a premium offered for vice, to say nothing of the prodigal destruction of human life, that must necessarily result from the abominations of this mercenary and heartless woman.”

There is an erroneous impression upon the minds of a certain class of the community. They make no distinction between the commission of crime, and the means that are used to diffuse information, and remove the inducement to commit moral offence. Ignorance and prejudice—the parents of vice—have blinded or misguided those who have not or would not properly investigate the 140subject matter of this discussion. However, we are consoled by the reflection that the day is dawning which shall dispel the mist and vapours which have heretofore clouded and benighted the human understanding, upon matters that infinitely concern the happiness of the great mass of the human family.

We take pleasure in stating that since the publication of Mr. Owen’s little work, (now ten years,) we have good reason for believing that the public mind is better prepared for the reception of the Editor’s amended edition of his book. As each revolving year passes over, and as truth overcomes error, and as the diffusion of knowledge dispels ignorance, so will the subject elicit additional inquiry, and the merits of the work be more justly appreciated by the enlightened portion of the community. A further discussion and investigation of the subject will cause it to be better understood, and a public opinion favourable to the subject will be formed, of immense moral utility.

As in the language of the author,—How mighty and how beneficent the power which such an influence might exert, and how essentially and rapidly it might conduce to the 141gradual, but thorough extirpation of those selfish vices, legal and illegal, which now disgrace and brutify our species, it is difficult even to imagine.

In the silent, but resistless progress of human improvement, such a change is fortunately inevitable. We are gradually emerging from the night of blind prejudice and of brutal force; and, day by day, rational liberty and cultivated refinement, win an accession of power. Violence yields to benevolence, compulsion to kindness, the letter of law to the spirit of justice; and, day by day, men and women become more willing, and better prepared, to entrust the most sacred duties (social as well as political) more to good feeling and less to idle form—more to moral and less to legal keeping.

It is no question whether such reform will come: no human power can arrest its progress. How slowly or how rapidly it may come, is a question; and depends, in some degree, on adventitious circumstances. Should this little book prove one among the number of circumstances to accelerate, however slightly, that progress, its author will be 142repaid, ten times over, for any trifling labour it may have cost him.

In conclusion, the author remarks, that a knowledge of the check to population spoken of, and recommended by him, with other preventive means was for many years extensively disseminated in most of the populous towns in Great Britain; not only through the medium of “Every Woman’s Book,” but, previously to its publication, by hundreds of thousands of handbills, which were gratuitously distributed from benevolent motives. The men who were first instrumental in making them known in England, are all elderly men, fathers of families of children grown up to be men and women; men of unimpeachable integrity, and of first rate moral character; many of them men of science, and some of them known as the first political economists and philanthropists of the age. Besides the allusion to the subject already given from the Encyclopædia Britannica, it is adverted to in Mill’s “Elements of Political Economy;” in Place’s “Illustrations of the Principle of Population;” in Thompson’s “Distribution of Wealth,” and probably in other works with which I am unacquainted. 143It was also (disguisedly) broached in several English newspapers, and was preached in lectures to the labouring classes, by a most benevolent man, at Leeds. I do not believe the subject has ever been touched upon, in one single instance, except by men of irreproachable moral character, and generally of high standing in society. The chief difference between this little treatise, and the allusions made by the distinguished authors above mentioned, is, that what public opinion would only permit them to insinuate, I venture to say plainly.

My readers may implicitly depend on the accuracy of the facts I have stated. Though in the present state of public opinion, I may not, for obvious reasons, give names in proof, yet it is evident that I cannot have the shadow of a motive to mislead or deceive. I shall consider it a favour if any individuals who can adduce, from personal experience, facts connected with this subject, will communicate them to me.

Note. The enlightened Condorcet, in his well-known “Esquisse des progres de l’esprit human,” very distinctly alludes to the safety and facility with which population might be restrained, “If reason should but 144keep pace with the arts and sciences, and if the idle prejudices of superstition should cease to shed over human morals an austerity corrupting and degrading, not purifying or elevated.” See his Esquisse, pages 285 to 288, Paris Ed. 1822.

Malthus (See his “Essays on Population,” Book 3, chap. 1) “professes not to understand” the French philosopher. No Frenchman could misunderstand him.

CHAPTER VII. ADDITIONAL REMARKS.

That most practical of philosophers, Franklin, interprets chastity to mean, the regulated and strictly temperate satisfaction, without injury to others, of those desires which are natural to all healthy adult beings. In this sense, chastity is the first of virtues, and one most rarely practiced, either by young men or by married persons, even when the latter most scrupulously conform to the letter of the law.^[29]

The promotion of such chastity is the chief object of the present work. It is all-important for the welfare of our race, that the reproductive instinct should never be 146selfishly indulged; never gratified at the expense of the well-being of our companions. A man who, in this matter, will not consult, with scrupulous deference, the slightest wishes of the other sex; a man who will ever put his desires in competition with theirs, and who will prize more highly the pleasure he receives than that he may be capable of bestowing—such a man appears to me, in the essentials of character, a brute. The brutes commonly seek the satisfaction of their propensities with straight-forward selfishness, and never calculate whether their companions are gratified or teased by their importunities. Man cannot assimilate his nature more closely to theirs, than by imitating them in this.

Again. There is no instinct in regard to which strict temperance is more essential. All our animal desires have hitherto occupied an undue share of human thoughts; but none more generally than this. The imaginations of the young and the passions of the adult are inflamed by mystery or excited by restraint, and a full half of all the thoughts and intrigues of the world has a direct reference to this single instinct. Even those who, like the Shakers, “crucify the flesh,” 147are not the less occupied by it in their secret thoughts; as the Shaker writings themselves may afford proof. Neither human institutions nor human prejudices can destroy the instinct. Strange it is, that men should not be content rationally to control, and wisely to regulate it.

It is a question of passing importance, “How may it best be regulated?” Not by a Shaker vow of monkish chastity. Assuredly not by the world’s favourite regulator, ignorance. No. Do we wish to bring this instinct under easy government, and to assign it only its due rank among human sentiments? Then let us cultivate the intellect, let us exercise the body, let us usefully occupy the time, of every human being. What is it gives to passion its sway, and to desires their empire, now? It is vacancy of mind; it is listlessness of body; it is idleness. A cultivated race are never sensual; a hardy race are seldom love-sick; an industrious race have no time to be sentimental. Develop the moral sentiments, and they will govern the physical instincts. Occupy the mind and body usefully, intellectually; and the propensities will obtain that care and time only which they merit. Upon any other 148principle we may doctor poor human nature for ever, and shall only prove ourselves empirics in the end. Mortifications, vestal vows, mysteries, bolts and bars, prudish prejudices—these are all quack-medicines; and are only calculated to prostrate the strength and spirits, or to heighten the fever, of the patient. If we will dislodge error and passion from the mind, we must replace them by something better. They say that a vacuum cannot exist in nature. Least of all can it exist in the human mind. Empty it of one folly, cure it of one vice, and another flows in to fill the vacancy, unless it find it already occupied by intellectual exercise and common sense.

Husbands and fathers! study Franklin’s definition of chastity. Your fears, your jealousies, have hitherto been on the stretch to watch and guard: reflect whether it be not pleasanter and better, to enlighten and trust.

Honest ascetics! you have striven to mortify the flesh; ask yourselves whether it be not wiser to control it. You have sought to crucify the body; consider whether it be not more effectual to cultivate the mind. Have 149you succeeded in spiritualizing your secret thoughts? If not, enquire whether all human propensities, duly governed, be not a benefit and a blessing to the nature in which they are inherent.

Human beings, of whatever sex or class! examine dispassionately and narrowly the influence which the control here recommended will produce throughout society. Reflect whether it will not lighten the burdens of one sex, while it affords scope for the exercise of the best feelings of the other. Consider whether its tendency be not benignant and elevating; conducive to the exercise of practical virtue, and to the permanent welfare of the human race.

The following remarks are addressed to the reasonable and considerate among mechanics, the most numerous and most useful class of society.

It is a great truth, often told, and never denied, that when there are too many working people in any trade or manufacture, they are worse paid than they ought to be paid, and are compelled to work more hours than they ought to work.

When the number of working people in 150any trade or manufacture, has for some years been too great, wages are reduced very low, and the working people become little better than slaves.

When wages have been thus reduced to a very small sum, working people can no longer maintain their children as all good and respectable people wish to maintain their children, but are compelled to neglect them;—to send them to different employments;—to mills and manufactories, at a very early age.

The misery of these poor children cannot be described, and need not be described, to you who witness them and deplore them every day of your lives.

Many indeed among you are compelled for a bare subsistence to labor incessantly, from the moment you rise in the morning, to the moment you lie down at night, without even the hope of ever being better off.

The sickness of yourselves and your children, the privation and pain and premature death of those you love, but cannot cherish as you wish, need only be alluded to. You know all these evils too well.

And, what, you will ask, is the remedy?

How are we to avoid these miseries?

151The answer is short and plain; the means are easy. You have but to use the Electro-Galvania as directed and previously explained; it will prevent conception, and thus, without diminishing the pleasures of married life, or doing the least injury to the health of the most delicate woman, both the woman and her husband will be saved from all the miseries which having too many children produces.

By limiting the number of children, the wages both of children and of grown up persons will rise; the hours of working will be no more than they ought to be; you will have some time for recreation, some means of enjoying yourselves rationally, some means as well as some time for your own and your children’s moral and religious instruction.

At present, every respectable mother trembles for the fate of her daughters as they grow up. Debauchery is always feared. This fear makes many good mothers unhappy. The evil when it comes make them miserable.

And why is there so much debauchery? Why such sad consequences?

Why? But because many young men, who fear the consequences which a large family produces, turn to debauchery and destroy 152their own happiness as well as the happiness of the unfortunate girls with whom they connect themselves.

Other young men, whose moral and religious feelings deter then from this vicious course, marry early and produce large families, which they are utterly unable to maintain. These are the causes of the wretchedness which afflicts you.

But when it has become the custom here as elsewhere, to limit the number of children, so that none need have more than they wish to have, no man will fear to take a wife, all will be married while young;—debauchery will diminish:—while good morals, and religious duties will be promoted.

CHAPTER VIII. TO THE MARRIED OF BOTH SEXES IN GENTEEL LIFE.

Among the many sufferings of women, as mothers, there are two cases which command the utmost sympathy and commiseration.

The first arises from constitutional peculiarities, or weakness.

The second from mal-conformation of the bones of the pelvis.

Besides these two cases, there is a third case, applicable to both sexes; namely, the consequence of having more children than the income of the parents enables them to maintain and educate in a desirable manner.

The first named case produces miscarriages, and brings on a state of existence scarcely endurable. It has caused thousands of respectable 154women to linger on in pain and apprehension, till, at length, death has put an end to their almost inconceivable sufferings.

The second case is always attended with immediate risk of life. Pregnancy never terminates without intense suffering, seldom without the death of the child, frequently with the death of the mother, and sometimes with the death of both mother and child.

The third case is by far the most common, and the most open to general observation. In the middle ranks, the most virtuous and praiseworthy efforts are perpetually made to keep up the respectability of the family; but a continual increase of children gradually, yet certainly, renders every effort to prevent degradation unavailing, it paralyzes by rendering hopeless all exertion, and the family sinks into poverty and despair. Thus is engendered and perpetuated a hideous mass of misery.

The knowledge of what awaits them deters vast numbers of young men from marrying, and causes them to spend the best portion of their lives in a state of debauchery, utterly incompatible with the honorable and honest feelings which should be the characteristic of 155young men. The treachery, duplicity, and hypocrisy that they use towards their friends and the unfortunate victims of their seductions, while they devote a large number of females to the most dreadful of all states which human beings can endure, extinguishes in them, to a very great extent, all manly, upright notions; and qualifies them, to as great an extent, for the commission of acts, which, but for these vile practices they would abhor, and thus, to an enormous extent, is the whole community injured.

Marriage in early life is the only truly happy state, and if the evil consequences of too large a family did not deter them, all men would marry when young, and thus would many lamentable evils be removed from society.

A simple, effectual, and safe means of accomplishing these desirable results has long been known, and to a considerable extent practiced in some places. But until lately has been little known in the United States.

Accouchers of the first respectability, and surgeons of great eminence, have in some peculiar cases recommended it. Within the last two years, a more extensive knowledge 156of the process has prevailed and its practice has been more extensively adopted. It is now made public through the medium of this book; and to those who deem its use expedient, may not only prevent much unhappiness and physical inconvenience, but will be of incalculable benefit to society.

The great utility and importance of the use of this instrument, may be summed up under the following heads:

1st. That no married couple shall have more children than they wish to have and can maintain.

2nd. That no unhealthy woman shall bear children, that cannot be reared, and which endanger her own life in the parturition:

“Women, for no other crime than having followed the dictates of a natural appetite, are driven with fury from the comforts and sympathies of society. It is less venial than murder! and the punishment which is inflicted on her who destroys her child to escape reproach, is lighter than the life of agony and disease to which the prostitute is irrecoverable doomed. Has the woman obeyed the impulse of unerring nature;—society declares war against her, pitiless and eternal 157war; she must be a tame slave, she must make no reprisals: theirs is the right of persecution, hers the duty of endurance. She lives a life of infamy; the loud and bitter laugh of scorn scares her from all return. She dies of long and lingering disease: yet she is in fault, she is the criminal, she the froward and untameable child—and society, forsooth, is the pure and virtuous matron, who casts her as an abortion from her undefiled bosom! Society avenges itself on the criminals of its own creation; it is employed in anathematizing the vice to day, which yesterday it was the most zealous to teach.

“Young men, excluded by the fanatical idea of chastity from the society of modest and accomplished women, associate with the most vicious and miserable beings, and thus destroy those exquisite and delicate sensibilities, whose existence cold-hearted worldings have denied; thus they annihilate genuine passion, and debase that to a selfish feeling which is the excess of generosity and devotedness. Their body and mind become a hideous wreck of humanity; idiocy and disease are perpetuated in their miserable offspring, and 158distant generations suffer for the ignorance of their forefathers.”

It has also been objected, that if the physical means of preventing undesirable conceptions were to become general, debauchery, immorality, and misery would be increased, and society would be much more degraded than it is. But this is a fallacy easily exposed, and those who conclude that dissolute conduct would be increased, are but ill-formed as to the actual amount of such conduct, and it is more than probable that if the facts were disclosed to them as they are known to exist by magistrates, overseers, and medical men, they would be astounded.

Multitudes of men never marry, a still greater number refrain from marrying until they grow comparatively old; yet most such men are practiced debauchees, and the mischief they do by the fraud and hypocrisy they produce is incalculable. This would not be so were a freer intercourse permitted and physical means adopted to prevent conceptions.

But the great good which would result from physical preventives, would be, that alliances would be early formed and in most cases would 159be lasting. Girls would not then surrender themselves to the caprice and injustice of men as they do now; men would not then be able to practice upon them as they do now.

A girl would then tell her lover that there was no impediment to their submitting to the form whatever it was that society had established, and as she would be sure to make a match, she would take care to keep herself in that state which would induce the man she liked to conform. The great obstacle to marriage under its present form, is the fear of a large family, and the poverty which results therefrom. This removed, marriages would become much more common. People would form alliances while young and unpracticed in deceit and hypocrisy, and would live virtuously and happily all their lives.

Whoever will examine the statements here put forth, will assuredly be convinced that a physical preventive of conception, if in general use, would put an end to an immense quantity of debauchery, and its attendant—misery; and would greatly improve the condition of the whole body of the people. Women, if we may be allowed the expression, would then be in much greater demand, as 160every young man would take a wife, and women would be all but infinitely more respected, than they are now. It is not possible to anticipate the happiness which would result from the physical check, if once brought into general use.

CHAPTER IX. THE PURPOSES AND OBLIGATIONS OF MARRIAGE.

It is a strange world and man is a strange animal. It may appear wonderful that with such passions and powers as he possesses he should be so controllable, that he should become tamed down into a civilized being, and submit to such impositions on his desires, that make him a mere creature of circumstance; and yet from this very submission does he secure to himself the greater amount of joys and delights: so that what he partakes of by tolerance, or call it the unanimous consent of his fellow-men, is absolutely and infinitely more gratifying to him than would be the unrestricted indulgence of his appetites. The world abounds with inexhaustible sources of 162enjoyment, and man has capacity for all; but were it not for civil and wholesome restraints, it would be one continued brute struggle for possession. For no one circumstance have we more reason to rejoice in our civilization, than for the regulations regarding marriage. It is the basis of a nation’s prosperity and of individual happiness. It gives legal and strong possession of the object of our most earnest wish. It establishes regulation and order, forms ties of relationship, and makes each country one family. A happy marriage is the alpha and omega of every man’s hopes, nor is it less momentous to our companion. There is no pleasure in this life comparable to it where it is unalloyed by physical or mental disqualifications: but alas! how rarely is such a consummation to be found. It is a happy state indeed “when the fountain is blessed, and he rejoiceth with the wife of his youth, and she is to him as the loving hind and the pleasant roe, and he delights in her continually.”^[30]

Although this marriage is but a civil contract, it should not be forgotten that if injudiciously 163made or its obligations be not fulfilled, the most calamitous results oftentimes ensue. Imagine a bargain, made between two persons, in which both parties have assumed more or less disguise or dissimulation towards the other, and which are only discovered when the treaty cannot be annulled. The lady’s dower may be handsome, or the gentleman’s prospects good and his pursuits most thriving; their respective families and connexions may be equally respectable, and neither consort nor husband have reason to regret that part of the arrangement, which the world only sees or hears of. It may be a love match, a match of many years’ making, a match in which the most delicious of all anticipations assumed every likelihood of being realized, and yet which one hour’s possession has destroyed. If the denouement be not so sudden, there may grow up a secret sorrow, a sorrow that has its source, like any other feeling, in some cause, just or evil, by the discovery of some concealed hindrance to mutual love. There may arise some justifiable personal dislike, there may be found to exist some impediment to the full and proper enjoyment of those connubial delights which instinct has 164taught each party to expect from the other. It is true, and well it is so, that all marriages have not hidden griefs, but that renders not those which have, the more endurable. Marriage mostly is a matter of love, policy, or convenience; it ought no less to be a matter of conscience. The legal right which the ceremony gives to the man, of his wife, which alienates her from the world, which enslaves her to his person and passions, or shuts her for ever out from the indulgence of her own, should not be sought without reflection; for although the law awards its punishment for infidelity which is sure to follow such dissimulation, it is a poor compensation for the mortification and distress which accompanies it. The very proceeding may prove alike that nature, as well as honour, have been outraged. Love is not the parent of sexual desire—it is the offspring; and if that instinctive passion be frustrated or deprived of its just entitlement, love soon loses its name, and goes one knows not whither. Yet there are proper bounds to every thing, an excess is frequently attended with more unhappy results than want.

The end of marriage, then, is to afford the 165legitimate use of amative enjoyments; to regulate the procreation of children; to ensure succession, and thereby transmit one’s property and identity; to cultivate domestic happiness, and thereby give all an equal incentive to aspire to the same possession; and also to afford protection when so obtained. If any deception be practiced towards each other the culpable party will incur, sooner or later, the rarely failing punishment—disappointment in their pleasures, their domestic anticipations, and their hopes of hereditary succession.

Women have their disqualifications for the marriage bed—many from causes which we have already enumerated, and many from others over which they have no control. Among the latter, absolute fear of the consequences imbibed through early intuition of some disappointed maiden-aunt—some from acquired notions of the immorality of the proceeding—others from personal disrelish—a total absence of desire;^[31] and many, although 166an ungenerous world may be sceptical of the truth hereof, have not the least idea of the difference even of the sexes; at least the use and purposes of that difference. There are ways of preparing females for what they will have to encounter at all periods of life; and no mother should fail to instruct her child, as circumstances demand, of the expectancy of each succeeding era of her coming existence. It is not intended thereby to be urged, that females cannot be too early initiated into the mysteries of matrimonial ceremonies and consequences; but there is a time, and an age, when such intelligence should be conveyed to them, and by no means should they be allowed to form alliances without such knowledge. The reader, I repeat, may possibly express a doubt whether such an event ever did occur;—he may be assured that many such have, and do still occur, and are productive of much distress. Nor is it intended that the physiology of reproduction should form part 167of the preliminary education of a boarding-school young female; but no woman ought to become a mother without knowing something of the phenomena of conception. It is really astonishing to see the very great ignorance of these matters entertained by woman in general: it may be constructed into a specimen of American modesty: but it occasions many needless fears and anxieties that sometimes prove of serious consequence to a lying-in woman. At the hour of peril, as it is called, how few women, except those in humble life, and who have earnt their little knowledge by dear-bought experience,—have any idea of aiding their fellow-sister at the moment of their affliction: indeed by the ignorance, fear, and impatience they display, they unnecessarily alarm the patient or themselves, and put a whole family into confusion; whereas, by the help of a little information on this subject, they might allay the fears of the timid and assist the weak, and not unfrequently be the instruments whereby the life itself of the infant, or mother, might be saved.

We have before stated, that persons subject to hereditary diseases ought not to become parents, because by so doing they will 168bring into the world a progeny, whose issue will eventually become extinct. And it is to these persons that we now more particularly address our remarks.

The same laws which regulate the perfection of plants, the growth of corn, the fleetness of the greyhound, and the symmetry of the horse, govern the physical and mental culture of man. In the vegetable kingdom, the agriculturalist is aware that the success of his crops depends upon the condition of what he sows, and the fertility of the soil wherein it is sown. It is precisely the case with the propagation of the human species. The race may be improved, or deteriorated, accordingly as the laws which govern the continuance of mankind are more or less observed.

But we are digressing from the subject of which we intended to speak—that of the transmission of diseases from parent to child. Parents exercise a mighty influence over the physical condition of their offspring,—the general constitution, mental and physical qualities, and even individual peculiarities, being transmitted from sire to son. Premature marriage, and, consequently too 169early sexual congress, although it may not prove detrimental to the parents, except where its privileges are intemperately exercised, may be, and often is a great disadvantage to the children, they being generally delicate, imperfect, and seldom arriving at maturity. The same results follow, where the parents, or either of them are at the moment of conception in ill-health. And shall the circumstances of early marriage, or a bad state of health, debar the sexes from the satisfaction of the holiest and most ennobling of the passions? Would it not be far more just and moral, then, to make use of a preventive of conception, when from motives of economy, offspring is not desired, or, from the reasons mentioned above, health cannot be given at the same time that life is imparted? The candid reader will have but one answer.

Physicians, generally, when referring to the subject of the transmission of disease, lay it down as a law, that persons so affected should not marry. Here we beg leave to differ from them, and, we think, justly. Consumptive or scrofulous persons certainly should not beget offspring; but we cannot see why they should 170be prevented from enjoying the pleasures of the married state. It is necessary for the general health of an individual, that the sexual embrace should be occasionally enjoyed—indeed it is an established fact, that many of those women who die unmarried, owe their early death, to a species of consumption, excited by deprivation of the sexual act. We think therefore, that all ought to be married, and that those who cannot produce healthy progeny, should make use of means to prevent conception.

Enough has been said already to remove the maudlin delicacy which some people entertain on the subject of human reproduction, and as it seems to us not out of place, we will say a few words on the subject. Copulation should never be an act of effort. To use a quaint but selfish phrase, “it should only be used when the man listeth.” Much mischief may be done by fruitless endeavours; violent palpitations of the heart may ensue that so quicken the circulation of the blood, and propel it with such violence towards the brain as to induce apoplexy. I have often had the question put as to which was the most fitting season for sexual indulgence. 171We know that man is omnivorous, and after certain intervals, is capable of reperforming the procreative act. Some hold morning to be the most healthy time, as the body is renovated by the night’s rest, but the lassitude which follows encroaches on the business duties of the day, and it is more probable that so far as the health is concerned, night is the preferable; the quietude and secrecy thereby afforded are additional incentives to love, and the exhaustion of the body is repaired by the several hours sleep that follows. Too frequent indulgence in venereal pleasures are strongly opposed to the procreation of children. Abstemiousness in sexual pleasures is a physical virtue where issue be desirable; and probably the period when conception is most likely to occur, is to refrain from intercourse till a day or two after the female has ceased menstruating. Women may be sterile, but they are rarely impotent. Sterility may depend upon the absence of a uterus, of which many instances are on record. It may depend upon morbid conditions of that organ where it exists; such as excessive debility, frequent floodings, prolapsus or descent of it, eversion or misplacement 172of it; from a retention of the menstrual secretion, from the presence of leucorrhœa, or the debility induced by a long prevalence of that disorder. Too frequent indulgence in cohabitation, promiscuous intercourse, &c., as with those unfortunates who gain their subsistence by such means, are direct causes of infecundity. To bring this subject to a close, I may observe, that although nature has been apparently thus freaksome in the constitution of mankind, she is amply generous and kind to those who choose to study and observe her laws. She pays no distinction to the past, present, or future. For many of our infirmities we have to thank those who have gone before us, and many are of our own producing, the conjoined consideration ought to induce us to reflect how we are justified in transferring them to those who follow. There are seasons for all enjoyments, and limits set to all; if we infringe those limits, we are answerable for the consequences: there is much happiness in this world and much misery: a skilful pilot will see most of it and live longest in it.

The Instrument which we have brought before the public, for preventing conception, depends for its virtue upon the electric fluid. The 173public are well acquainted with the common shock of an electrical apparatus; they are probably aware that many physiologists consider electricity analogous to the principle of life itself. They know that lightning is a display of the electric power—that it abounds in all nature, but not in equal intensity. They may possibly have heard of its efficacy in cases of Rheumatism, Palsy, and many other diseases—that its property is to stimulate, and, in excess, to kill. They may be familiar with the terms Magnetism, Galvanism, &c., but, in fact, they all are the effects of one cause, differing only in the intensity of their action, and their mode of development. What is now called electro-magnetism, or magnetic electricity, is merely electricity in a modified form; the result of its application is the same. The public may be told of the extraordinary powers possessed by this fluid in supporting partial life, when it is established in nervous communications. Digestion depends upon the uninterrupted nervous communication between the brain and the stomach; if that is destroyed, digestion ceases; but if electricity or galvanism be applied to the divided ends of the nervous 174channels, digestion proceeds as before, and for a very considerable time. Its usefulness, therefore, can be fully appreciated when applied through the instrumentality of the nerves, to those organs or structures, that are not sufficiently endued with vital influence. The many hindrances heretofore existing in the employment of electricity, as a preventive, owing to the circumstance of favourable weather being required for its exhibition, and it also being difficult and formidable in its application, are now obviated by the introduction of this instrument. The advantages are, that it can be used at any time, and under all circumstances. It is perfectly safe, and that it is certain, is attested by the fact, that of the large number already sold, not one has been returned, although the purchasers have had the liberty given them of doing so, should the instrument fail in effecting its object.

CHAPTER X. CONCLUDING REMARKS.

After the publication of Mr. Owen’s first edition of this work, several communications were received by him, approbatory of his book, some of which I think of sufficient importance to be introduced into this edition, inasmuch as they contain facts that are worthy of being treasured up in the recollection of all young married persons. In the one to which I now allude his correspondent remarks as follows:

“I have read your little work with much interest, and desire that it may have a wide circulation, and that its recommendations may be adopted in practice. If you publish a third edition, I could wish that you would add a piece of advice of the greatest importance, 176especially to young married persons. Many women are ignorant, that, in the gratification of the reproductive instinct, the exhaustion to the man is much greater than to the woman: a fact most important to be known, the ignorance of which has caused more than one husband to forfeit his health, nay, his life. Tissot tells us, that the loss by an ounce of semen is equal to that by forty ounces of blood;^[32] and that, in the case of the healthiest man, nature does not demand connexion oftener than once a month.^[33]

“How many young spouses, loving their husbands tenderly and disinterestedly, if they 177were but informed of these facts, would watch over and preserve their partners’ healths, instead of exciting them to over-indulgence.

“I send you a copy of Italian verses, appropriate, like the German stanzas you have quoted in your work, to the above remarks:

178Mr. Fowler the Phrenologist in speaking upon this subject in his pamphlet entitled, “Amativeness warning and advice to married and single,” makes the following remarks, that “a hard day’s work does not equally prostrate and fatigue. The fallow-buck after his passion has subsided is tamed down by exhaustion, that he can be approached and almost caught by hand. Frequent indulgence in any of its forms will run down and run out any one of either sex. Those who would write or speak or study must forego this indulgence or intellectual exertion or else die. Powerful constitutions will stand an immense drain before they finally break, but terrible is the result. Mere animal temperaments are less injured, because by supposition their vitality is abundant, and its drain by other functions is slight; nor do they enjoy this function as do those more highly organised and hence are proportionally less exhausted; such live, to be sure; so do brutes—carnal grovelling, sensual, low-lived animals, living mainly on a single pleasure, when their nature serves up so many. Let such revel in lust because capable of little else. But then 179highly organised must partake rarely, else it will excite to distraction and proportionally exhaust.”

The readers of the editor’s second enlarged edition of the Hon. R. D. Owen’s Moral Physiology, are apprized that since the publication of his first edition of this work, considerable opportunity has been afforded by the sale of the Electro-Galvania alluded to in this work, for testing its efficacy as a preventive of conception. Time is required to test the effect and establish the certainty of every new remedial agent. Sufficient opportunity has been afforded in this instance, since this instrument was first introduced to public notice, for proving the certain control which the electrical influence is capable of exercising over the nervous system.

The increased demand for the instrument has demonstrated its perfect adaption to the accomplishment of the important object for which it is designed, and has most fully established its claim to the confidence heretofore reposed in its preventive influence. Communications from abroad, and orders for this work or the article herein alluded to, addressed to Dr. R. Glover, New York, will meet with due attention.