It is easy to say, in reply, first of all, that the proposed system
tends to prevent those abuses which have been hitherto regarded as
incapable of prevention; but, the calculations of our statistics,
inexact as they are, have invariably pointed out a widely prevailing
social sore, and our moralists may, therefore, be accused of
preferring the greater to the lesser evil, the violation of the
principle on which society is constituted, to the granting of a
certain liberty to girls; and dissoluteness in mothers of families,
such as poisons the springs of public education and brings unhappiness
upon at least four persons, to dissoluteness in a young girl, which
only affects herself or at the most a child besides. Let the virtue of
ten virgins be lost rather than forfeit this sanctity of morals, that
crown of honor with which the mother of a family should be invested!
In the picture presented by a young girl abandoned by her betrayer,
there is something imposing, something indescribably sacred; here we
see oaths violated, holy confidences betrayed, and on the ruins of a
too facile virtue innocence sits in tears, doubting everything,
because compelled to doubt the love of a father for his child. The
unfortunate girl is still innocent; she may yet become a faithful
wife, a tender mother, and, if the past is mantled in clouds, the
future is blue as the clear sky.
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