compete with them is rather, if any tiling, an impediment to her doing so; and why too is the husband's own sister thought incompetent to the office? If this change be made, it is only as a step-mother that you can ask a wife's sister to take care of your children, for she cannot reside as a single woman in your house, and you will lose the most delicate-minded aunts as guardians. You literally, therefore, defeat your alleged object[1]. It is too much to assume that the persons who have broken the law by making these alliances have been thinking of their children. Few men who marry a second time think so much of their children as of their own comfort in a second wife and family, though they may deceive themselves into a belief that their motive is pure benevolence to their offspring. But then again, the poor man wishes (it is said) for the change. Now I must protest against this often repeated, and as often disproved assumption. It can be demonstrated to be utterly
- ↑ In the extraordinary evidence collected on the inquiry into the existing state of the law by the professional exertions of the able firm of Crowder and Maynard, and laid before Her Majesty's Commissioners, there is, among the honourable exceptions to the general rule of first breaking the law and then finding fault with it, one case of a gentleman, who, in answer to question 919 as to what feeling restrained him from asking his sister-in-law to live in his house, says, "I should say it was partly from the feeling that it was a delicate position to place a young female in to whom I was attached." This unhappy and perverted attachment thus deprived him of the comfort that thousands enjoy.
