Marriage occurs also very often for the purpose of getting a woman out of the Factory; that is, letting her loose on society, without the least intention of the parties living together, save for a few days to cover appearances. It is known to happen sometimes, that such connexions are formed by making a contract beforehand, that the woman, wife so called, should appropriate a certain quantum of the wages of sin for the support of the man who thus espouses her! In this state the degraded victim of sensuality is often transferred from one master to another, bandied about in this shocking and unnatural way, until the mere figure is all that remains of the human being. Should intemperance, which is always observable in such cases, and excessive extravagance, impair or totally destroy the scanty means of the _protector_ for the time being, the female so engaged looks without concern on the misfortune of which she, perhaps, has been the principal cause, and if another paramour offer, she attaches herself to him with indifference, and so the career of guilt meets with but little interruption. In several conversations on this disgraceful subject with some well informed men, whose judgement in other matters is deserving of respect, I was assured that no remedy of immediate efficacy could be applied to these evils; that time alone could weaken their malignancy, and that they would wear out of themselves! This shocking conclusion, almost amounting to despair of their eradication, was made by men who daily witnessed these vile practices, and lamented their enormity and prevalence, fully sensible of their miserable consequences.—But the performance of these odious tragedies is not left entirely to the convicts. Others, whose stations ought to claim some degree of respect, seem to vie with those degraded captives for the pre-eminence in guilt, many of them proudly wearing the laurels thus _honourably_ acquired: for these enormities, which depravity has made familiar, even palliation is insolently attempted, and that too on grounds sometimes unpardonably offensive to decency.