It has fallen within the observation of most persons that in the human race frequent intermarriages in the same family for successive generations often tend to degeneracy of both mind and body; size and vigor diminishing, and constitutional defects and diseases being perpetuated and aggravated; but neither in this case is the result believed to be a necessary and inevitable consequence. Else how could it be, that Infinite Wisdom, whose operations are ever in accordance with the laws of his own institution, in originating a "peculiar people," chosen to be the depositories of intellectual and physical power, wealth and influence, and who, in spite of oppression without parallel in the world's history, have ever maintained the possession of a goodly share of all these,--would have allowed their first progenitor, Abraham, to marry his near kinswoman Sarah, a half sister, niece or cousin, and Isaac their son to wed his first cousin Rebecca, and Jacob who sprang from that union, to marry first cousins, and their offspring for long generations to intermarry within their own people and tribes alone? At a later period, marriages within certain degrees of consanguinity were forbidden by Divine authority, but not until the peculiar race was fully established, and so far multiplied, as to allow departure from close breeding without change of characteristics, and not improbably the prohibition was even then based more upon moral reasons, or upon man's ignorance or recklessness regarding selection, than upon physical law. Such laws exist among us at present, and it is well they do, inasmuch as for the reasons already given there is greater probability of degeneracy by means of such connections than among those not so related by blood. But they present an instance of the imperfection of human laws, it being impossible for any legal enactments to prevent wholly the evil thus sought to be avoided. It would be better far, if such a degree of physiological knowledge existed and such caution was exercised among the community generally, as would prevent the contraction of any marriages, where, from the structure and endowments of the parties, debility, deformity, insanity or idiocy must inevitably be the portion of their offspring whether they are more nearly related than through their common ancestor, Noah, or not.