In Italy, the toleration of strumpets is yet more barefaced, as is evident from their public stews. At Venice and Naples, impurity is a kind of merchandise and traffic; the courtezans at Rome, and the cantoneras in Spain, compose a body in the state, and are under a legal tax and impost. It is well known, that the reason why so many good politicians as these tolerate lewd houses, is not their irreligion, but to prevent a worse evil, an impurity of a more execrable kind, and to provide for the safety of women of honour. "About two hundred and fifty years ago," says Monsieur de St. Didier, "Venice being in want of courtezans, the republic was obliged to procure a great number from foreign parts." Doglioni, who has written the memorable affairs of Venice, highly extols the wisdom of the republic in this point, which secured the chastity of women of honour, daily exposed to public violences, the churches and consecrated places not being a sufficient asylum for their chastity. Our universities in England are much belied, if in some colleges there was not a monthly allowance ad expurgandos renes: and time was when monks and priests in Germany were allowed concubines on paying a certain yearly duty to their prelate. "It is generally believed" says Monsieur Bayle, (to whom I owe the last paragraph) "that avarice was the cause of this shameful indulgence; but it is more probable their design was to prevent their tempting modest women, and to quiet the uneasiness of husbands, whose resentments the clergy do well to avoid." From what has been said, it is manifest that there is a necessity of sacrificing one part of womankind to preserve the other, and prevent a filthiness of a more heinous nature. From whence I think I may justly conclude (what was the seeming paradox I went about to prove) that chastity may be supported by incontinence, and the best of virtues want the assistance of the worst of vices. Line 177. The root of evil, avarice, That damn'd ill-natur'd baneful vice, Was slave to prodigality. I have joined so many odious epithets to the word avarice, in compliance to the vogue of mankind, who generally bestow more ill language upon this than upon any other vice, and indeed not undeservedly; for there is hardly a mischief to be named which it has not produced at one time or other: but the true reason why every body exclaims so much against it, is, that almost every body suffers by it; for the more the money is hoarded up by some, the scarcer it must grow among the rest, and therefore when men rail very much at misers, there is generally self-interest at bottom.