16.11. 11. Of domestic Slavery independently of Polygamy.
It is not only a plurality of wives which in certain places of the East requires their
confinement, but also the climate itself. Those who consider the
horrible crimes, the treachery, the dark villainies, the poisonings, the
assassinations, which the liberty of women has occasioned at Goa and in
the Portuguese settlements in the Indies, where religion permits only
one wife; and who compare them with the innocence and purity of manners
of the women of Turkey, Persia, Hindostan, China, and Japan, will
clearly see that it is frequently as necessary to separate them from the
men, when they have but one, as when they have many.
These are things which ought to be decided by the climate. What
purpose would it answer to shut up women in our northern countries,
where their manners are naturally good; where all their passions are
calm; and where love rules over the heart with so regular and gentle an
empire that the least degree of prudence is sufficient to conduct it?
It is a happiness to live in those climates which permit such
freedom of converse, where that sex which has most charms seems to
embellish society, and where wives, reserving themselves for the
pleasures of one, contribute to the amusement of all.
