I wish the nature of the ground of repeal were considered with a little attention.  It is said the act tends to accumulate, to keep up the power of great families, and to add wealth to wealth.  It may be that it does so.  It is impossible that any principle of law or government useful to the community should be established without an advantage to those who have the greatest stake in the country.  Even some vices arise from it.  The same laws which secure property encourage avarice; and the fences made about honest acquisition are the strong bars which secure the hoards of the miser.  The dignities of magistracy are encouragements to ambition, with all the black train of villanies which attend that wicked passion.  But still we must have laws to secure property, and still we must have ranks and distinctions and magistracy in the state, notwithstanding their manifest tendency to encourage avarice and ambition.

By affirming the parental authority throughout the state, parents in high rank will generally aim at, and will sometimes have the means, too, of preserving their minor children from any but wealthy or splendid matches.  But this authority preserves from a thousand misfortunes which embitter every part of every man’s domestic life, and tear to pieces the dearest lies in human society.

I am no peer, nor like to be,—­but am in middle life, in the mass of citizens; yet I should feel for a son who married a prostituted woman, or a daughter who married a dishonorable and prostituted man, as much as any peer in the realm.

You are afraid of the avaricious principle of fathers.  But observe that the avaricious principle is here mitigated very considerably.  It is avarice by proxy; it is avarice not working by itself or for itself, but through the medium of parental affection, meaning to procure good to its offspring.  But the contest is not between love and avarice.

While you would guard against the possible operation of this species of benevolent avarice, the avarice of the father, you let loose another species of avarice,—­that of the fortune-hunter, unmitigated, unqualified.  To show the motives, who has heard of a man running away with a woman not worth sixpence?  Do not call this by the name of the sweet and best passion,—­love.  It is robbery,—­not a jot better than any other.

Would you suffer the sworn enemy of his family, his life, and his honor, possibly the shame and scandal and blot of human society, to debauch from his care and protection the dearest pledge that he has on earth, the sole comfort of his declining years, almost in infantine imbecility,—­and with it to carry into the hands of his enemy, and the disgrace of Nature, the dear-earned substance of a careful and laborious life?  Think of the daughter of an honest, virtuous parent allied to vice and infamy.  Think of the hopeful son tied for life by the meretricious arts of the refuse of mercenary and promiscuous lewdness.  Have mercy on the youth of both sexes; protect them from their ignorance and inexperience; protect one part of life by the wisdom of another; protect them by the wisdom of laws and the care of Nature.