But no one has yet undertaken either in the name of marital
honor or in the interest of marriageable people, or for the advantage
of morality and the progress of human institutions, to investigate the
number of honest wives. What! the French government, if inquiry is
made of it, is able to say how many men it has under arms, how many
spies, how many employees, how many scholars; but, when it is asked
how many virtuous women, it can answer nothing! If the King of France
took into his head to choose his august partner from among his
subjects, the administration could not even tell him the number of
white lambs from whom he could make his choice. It would be obliged to
resort to some competition which awards the rose of good conduct, and
that would be a laughable event.
Were the ancients then our masters in political institutions as in
morality? History teaches us that Ahasuerus, when he wished to take a
wife from among the damsels of Persia, chose Esther, the most virtuous
and the most beautiful. His ministers therefore must necessarily have
discovered some method of obtaining the cream of the population.
Unfortunately the Bible, which is so clear on all matrimonial
questions, has omitted to give us a rule for matrimonial choice.
Let us try to supply this gap in the work of the administration by
calculating the sum of the female sex in France. Here we call the
attention of all friends to public morality, and we appoint them
judges of our method of procedure.
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