When the might influence of this passion is considered, the important relations and weighty responsibilities to which it gives rise, we have reason to be astonished at the levity with which the subject is treated by the world at large, and the unconsciousness and indifference with which those responsibilities are assumed.  It is like the madman who flings about firebrands and calls it sport.  The remedy for this evil must begin with the sex who have in their hands that powerful influence, the liberty of rejection.  Let them not complain that liberty of choice is not theirs; it would only increase their responsibilities without adding to their happiness or to their usefulness.  The liberty which they do possess is amply sufficient to insure for them the power of being benefactors of mankind.  As soon as the noble and elevated of our sex shall refuse to unite on any but moral and intellectual grounds with the other, so soon will a mighty regeneration begin to be effected:  and this end will, perhaps, be better served by the simple liberty of rejection than by liberty of choice.  Rejection is never inflicted without pain; it is never received without humiliation, however unfounded, (for simply to want the power of pleasing can be no disgrace;) but in the existence of this conventional feeling we find the source of a deep influence.  If women would, as by one common league and covenant, agree to use this powerful engine in defence of morals, what a change might they not effect in the tone of society!  Is it not a subject that ought to crimson every woman’s cheek with shame, that the want of moral qualifications is generally the very last cause of rejection?  If the worldly find the wealth, and the intellectual the intelligence, which they seek in a companion, there are few who will not shut their eyes in wilful and convenient blindness to the want of such qualifications.  It is a fatal error which has bound up the cause of affection so intimately with worldly considerations; and it is a growing evil.  The increasing demands of luxury in a highly civilized community operate most injuriously on the cause of disinterested affections, and particularly so in the case of women, who are generally precluded from maintaining or advancing their place in society by any other schemes than matrimonial ones.  I might say something here on the cruelty of that conventional prejudice which shackles the independence of women, by attaching the loss of caste to almost all, nay, all, of the very few sources of pecuniary emolument open to them.  It requires great strength of principle to disregard this prejudice; and while urged by duty to inveigh against mercenary unions, I feel some compunction at the thoughts of the numerous class who are in a manner forced by this prejudice into forming them.  But there are too many who have no such excuse, and to them the remaining observations are addressed.  The sacred nature of the conjugal relation is entirely merged in the worldly aspect of it.  That union