_2 Cit._ May it please your most noble devilship to hear me, before you give judgment upon us, and I don’t doubt, but I shall seriously, offer such reasons of our behaviour in that matter, as shall sufficiently move that ignominy your devilship was pleas’d to cast upon us. First, then, tho’ it be true, that upon my marriage, I agreed with my second spouse to turn all my children out of doors, yet I did it not ’till she or I had found some cause so to do; for some of them were undutiful, and others put tricks upon me, (as my good wife said) and others were lewd and extravagant, and some self-will’d; so that I deserted none of ’em without some fault. If they were undutiful, was I to blame to punish ’em for it? Or was it my duty to keep and maintain them, after they were of sufficient bigness to prog for themselves? The birds and beasts take care of their young no longer, than ’till they are able to care for themselves; and why should man be confin’d to more severe laws in that point than his vassal creatures? I must profess, on the word of a citizen, that I can see no reason why a man that gets his estate himself, may not give it away to whom he pleases; and none so and near deserving, as the wife of one’s bosom. What tho’ she may have slips, the witcheries and temptations of love are great to their soft sex; and if we have been so employ’d in getting, that we could not mind that other business, why should we blame them for easing us by other supplies, where we wanted power to give them.