God forbid that I should have the
least inclination to diminish the public horror against a crime which
religion, morality, and civil government equally condemn. It ought to be
proscribed, were it only for its communicating to one sex the weaknesses
of the other, and for leading people by a scandalous prostitution of
their youth to an ignominious old age. What I shall say concerning it
will in no way diminish its infamy, being levelled only against the
tyranny that may abuse the very horror we ought to have against the
vice.
As a natural circumstance of this crime is secrecy, there are
frequent instances of its having been punished by legislators upon the
deposition of a child. This was opening a very wide door to calumny.
"Justinian," says Procopius,
[13]
"published a law against this crime; he
ordered an inquiry to be made not only against those who were guilty of
it, after the enacting of that law, but even before. The deposition of a
single witness, sometimes of a child, sometimes of a slave, was
sufficient, especially against such as were rich, and against those of
the green faction."
It is very odd that these three crimes, witchcraft, heresy, and that
against nature, of which the first might easily be proved not to exist;
the second to be susceptible of an infinite number of distinctions,
interpretations, and limitations; the third to be often obscure and
uncertain — it is very odd, I say, that these three crimes should
amongst us be punished with fire.
I may venture to affirm that the crime against nature will never
make any great progress in society, unless people are prompted to it by
some particular custom, as among the Greeks, where the youths of that
country performed all their exercises naked; as amongst us, where
domestic education is disused; as amongst the Asiatics, where particular
persons have a great number of women whom they despise, while others can
have none at all. Let there be no customs preparatory to this crime; let
it, like every other violation of morals, be severely proscribed by the
civil magistrate; and nature will soon defend or resume her rights.
Nature, that fond, that indulgent parent, has strewn her pleasures with
a bounteous hand, and while she fills us with delights, she prepares us,
by means of our issue, in whom we see ourselves, as it were, reproduced
-- she prepares us, I say, for future satisfactions of a more exquisite
kind than those very delights.
