Bible and obey the Church, and who know each other to be so determined, are freed from all anxiety about this matter: the wife in such case feels nothing but relief and comfort in having her sister with her in time of confinement or other sickness: and if God take her, she leaves her children cheerfully to her sister's experienced care, knowing that she will be a good aunt to them and a good sister to their father, and never can be any thing more: but what would become of all this, if the law were altered as some now desire? Why even the very tampering with it, the suggestion of ways of evading it, the notion of repealing it, has already done irreparable mischief. Widowers now feel themselves precluded from providing that sisterly help for their children, which is only second to a mother's care: this cruel agitation has effectually prevented them. The evidence itself, which has been alleged in behalf of the change, is full of facts which unquestionably indicate what discomfort the change would produce. For instance, one person[1] states, that “from the frequent confidential intercourse which is permitted by the present state of the law, an attachment
- ↑ Report of the Commission on the Marriage Laws, qu.915.
