ABSTRACT
For over ten centuries, marriage in Europe had been constituted on the natural law of indissolubility. Paternity or power was honored in the family as in the State, as in religion. Society was advancing, with the help of Christianity, in the knowledge of truth and the practice of good. “France,” says M. de Saint-Lambert, who cannot be suspected of partiality in favor of Christianity, “was in that period the country where justice was best administered, and in which the magistrates had the minds, characters, and morals which they should have had. Their power offended none; it contributed to the security of all. . . . The nation was acquiring all those habits which, in a society, become virtues or the support of virtues. At these times, the morals of the French may have been comparable to the finest morals of the illustrious nations of antiquity. * . . . Religion was conducive to order and morals; the religious troubles which arose forced the government to suspend the execution of its useful designs, and to oppose the new opinions.”
