But when it has become the custom here as elsewhere, to limit the number of children, so that none need have more than they wish to have, no man will fear to take a wife, all will be married while young;—debauchery will diminish:—while good morals, and religious duties will be promoted. CHAPTER VIII. TO THE MARRIED OF BOTH SEXES IN GENTEEL LIFE. Among the many sufferings of women, as mothers, there are two cases which command the utmost sympathy and commiseration. The first arises from constitutional peculiarities, or weakness. The second from mal-conformation of the bones of the pelvis. Besides these two cases, there is a third case, applicable to both sexes; namely, the consequence of having more children than the income of the parents enables them to maintain and educate in a desirable manner. The first named case produces miscarriages, and brings on a state of existence scarcely endurable. It has caused thousands of respectable women to linger on in pain and apprehension, till, at length, death has put an end to their almost inconceivable sufferings. The second case is always attended with immediate risk of life. Pregnancy never terminates without intense suffering, seldom without the death of the child, frequently with the death of the mother, and sometimes with the death of both mother and child. The third case is by far the most common, and the most open to general observation. In the middle ranks, the most virtuous and praiseworthy efforts are perpetually made to keep up the respectability of the family; but a continual increase of children gradually, yet certainly, renders every effort to prevent degradation unavailing, it paralyzes by rendering hopeless all exertion, and the family sinks into poverty and despair. Thus is engendered and perpetuated a hideous mass of misery. The knowledge of what awaits them deters vast numbers of young men from marrying, and causes them to spend the best portion of their lives in a state of debauchery, utterly incompatible with the honorable and honest feelings which should be the characteristic of young men. The treachery, duplicity, and hypocrisy that they use towards their friends and the unfortunate victims of their seductions, while they devote a large number of females to the most dreadful of all states which human beings can endure, extinguishes in them, to a very great extent, all manly, upright notions; and qualifies them, to as great an extent, for the commission of acts, which, but for these vile practices they would abhor, and thus, to an enormous extent, is the whole community injured. Marriage in early life is the only truly happy state, and if the evil consequences of too large a family did not deter them, all men would marry when young, and thus would many lamentable evils be removed from society.