Many, who are not conversant with Arabian history, have imagined, that this permission of a plurality of wives was given in favour of men, and have taxed one of the most _political_, _necessary_ measures, of that legislator, arising from motives merely civil, with a tendency to encourage lewdness, from which it was very far distant. But, if they had considered that the Mahometan law allows divorce without any _cause assigned_, and that, every day at the pleasure of the man; besides, that it permits him as many concubines as he can maintain, buy with money, take in war, or gain by the ordinary means of address and solicitations,--they will think such a man was before sufficiently provided, and that there was not the least reason for allowing him to marry four wives at a time, when he was already at liberty to marry a new one every day.
Dr Arbuthnot lays it down as a self-evident position, that four women will have more children by four men, than the same four women would have by one. This assertion may very well be disputed, but still it is not in point. For the question with regard to Arabia, and to a great part of the world besides, is, Whether or not four women and one man, married, or cohabiting at discretion, shall produce more children, than four women and one man who is debarred from cohabiting with any but one of the four, the others dying unmarried without the knowledge of man? or, in other words, Which shall have most children, one man and one woman, or one man and four women? This question I think needs no discussion.
Let us now consider, if there is any further reason why England should not be brought as an example, which Arabia, or the East in general, are to follow.
Women in England are commonly capable of child-bearing at fourteen, let the other term be forty-eight, when they bear no more; thirty-four years, therefore, an English woman bears children. At the age of fourteen or fifteen they are objects of our love; they are endeared by bearing us children after that time, and none I hope will pretend, that, at forty-eight and fifty, an English woman is not an agreeable companion. Perhaps the last years, to thinking minds, are fully more agreeable than the first. We grow old together, we have a near prospect of dying together; nothing can present a more agreeable picture of social life, than monogamy in England.