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under circumstances which would call down a more than ordinary degree of reprobation on their heads. Thus, elderly clergymen, first cousins,[1] and still more distant connections, enjoy considerable immunities; and close observers will admit that fair allowances are made for cases of peculiar position or necessity. A very slight degree of relationship would be thought to justify a steady woman of straitened means in accepting the hospitality of a widower with children.
There is no prohibition to marry affecting any of the cases within the second principle, and the case in question obviously depends upon that. It cannot depend on the first principle, because every one knows that sensual passion is not excluded; and it would be strange if it were. There is neither blood-relationship nor early habit to exclude it: up to the period when the husband makes his selection, he necessarily regards all the sisters alike; and it is preposterous to expect that a complete revulsion in his moral being is to take place then.
At all events, there is one unanswerable proof that the social sanction, supposed to be
- ↑ It is remarkable that marriages between first cousins were formerly resisted on precisely similar grounds. See Jeremy Taylor's Duct. Dub., B. 2.
