468 A PLEA FOR WELL-LIVING,

or of any profession to perform the ceremony; nor any pen and
ink or paper to write down a contract of marriage, and have it
signed between them. And T know also, sir, what the Spaniard
governor has told you; Tiean of the agreement that he obliged
them to make when they took these women—namely, that they
should choose them out by consent, and keep separately to them;
which, by the way, is nothing of a marriage, no agreement with
the women as wives, but only an agreement among themselves, to
keep them from quarreling.

“But, sir, the essence of the sacrament of matrimony” (so he
called it, being a Roman) “consists not only in the mutual consent
of the parties to take one another as man and wife, but in the
formal and legal obligation that there is in the contract to compel
the man and woman at all times to own and acknowledge each
other; obliging the men to abstain from all other women, to engage
in no other contract while these subsist, and on all occasions, as
ability allows, to provide honestly for them and their children: and
to oblige the women to the same, or like conditions, metatis mutan-
dis, on their side.

“Now, sir,” says he, “these men may, when they please, or
when occasion presents, abandon these women, disown their chil:
dren, leave them to perish, and take other women and marry then.
whilst these are living.” And here he added, with some warmth,
“Tow, sir, is God honoured in this unlawful liberty? and how
shall a blessing sueceed your endeavours in this place, however
good in themselves, and however sincere in your design, while these
men, who at present are your subjects, under your absolute govern-
ment and dominion, are allowed by you to live in open adultery?”

T confess I was struck at the thing itself, but much more with
the convincing arguments he supported it with ; for it was certainly
true, that though they had no clergyman upon the spot, yet a
formal contract on both sides, made before witnesses, and confirmed
by any token which they had all agreed to be bound by, though
it had been but breaking a stick between them, engaging the
men to own these women for their wives upon all occasions, and
never to abandon them or their children, and the women to the
same with their husbands, had been an effectual lawful marriage