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 the 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, listen 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:— “Retire! the world shut out: thy thoughts call home. Imagination’s airy wing repress. Lock up thy senses; let no passion stir; Wake all to reason; let her reign alone.” CHAPTER II. STATEMENT OF THE SUBJECT.