ABSTRACT
Nothing reflects so great lustre upon the people of England as the sacredness of their homes. It is in the home that are nurtured all those noble feelings which distinguish our nation; it is this which may be termed the cornerstone of the happiness of “merrie England.” Take this away and you pluck out the brightest gem in our civil polity. You deprive the nation of the most lasting and precious of her ornaments. Any one who invades the sanctity of marriage in these isles is scouted as an enemy to society. Compare the state of marriage in France with that of England. What contrast can be greater? What pictures can be more opposite? Analyse the social evils which paralyse the energies of France—trace her under the iron rule of Napoleon—expose her at any moment to the horrors of a revolution—and you will find that the laxity of the great social contract between the two sexes is the true cause which imperils social order, and destroys all confidence between man and man.
