Reader, did you ever have an income at best none too large, which
died with you all except L200 a year? Did you ever at the same time
have two sons who must be started in life somehow, and five
daughters still unmarried for whom you would only be too thankful to
find husbands- if you knew how to find them? If morality is that
which, on the whole, brings a man peace in his declining years- if,
that is to say, it is not an utter swindle, can you under these
circumstances flatter yourself that you have led a moral life?
And this, even though your wife has been so good a woman that you
have not grown tired of her, and has not fallen into such ill health
as lowers your own health in sympathy; and though your family has
grown up vigorous, amiable, and blessed with common sense. I know many
old men and women who are reputed moral, but who are living with
partners whom they have long ceased to love, or who have ugly,
disagreeable maiden daughters for whom they have never been able to
find husbands- daughters whom they loathe and by whom they are loathed
in secret, or sons whose folly or extravagance is a perpetual wear and
worry to them. Is it moral for a man to have brought such things
upon himself? Someone should do for morals what that old Pecksniff
Bacon has obtained the credit of having done for science.
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