wound in the very vitals of our honour and happiness? even in the reputation of our fifter? Can we, O father, be fo loft to the duties of a brother, as to fee her polluted, and in her, all our family, without punishing the ravifher? Forbid it Courage, forbid it, Virtue! Heavens, fhall our fifter, the fifter of the fons of Jacob; of Jacob, who hath contended with angelic natures, and prevailed -fhall they bafely bear a stain and an ignomy like this, without redrefs? No, my father! the spirit, the paternal fpirit, nay, the very inspiration of the Deity is in us, and urged us to the flaughter to to the facrifice, we should have faid; for lo! the victim lies bleeding before thee. Such is the language of true intrepidity: "Should he deal with "our fifter as with an harlot ?" Though I would not be thought to recommend bloodfhed, yet I can scarce avoid propofing the noble conduct of these young men as a pattern of imitation. He, who violates the chastity of a woman, is by so much the more infamous, and deferving of death, than the man who plants a piftol at the bofom, as a crime which is liable to the justice of the laws, is L 2 lefs lefs fafe, and lefs mifchievous, than that, which involves in the difgrace of one, the difgrace alfo of a numerous family, and for the moft part, a wide and infulted circle of connections. Yet where, except in the sword of a parent, or a brother, where is a redrefs for this grievance Ravishment, indeed, is cognizable; but where is the legal punishment for the more frequent and more fatal effects of undermining feduction? of ruin in the form of love, and treachery béwitchingly arrayed in the shape of reciprocal tenderness? Where, but in the bofom of bravery, is the fcourge for that accumulated injury, injury, which alienates the kindeft relatives; which entices the daughter from the house of her father, till, by degrees, the becomes an inhabitant of a brothel, paffes away the days of beauty and youth, amidst desease and wretchedness, and at length dies, untimely, a nuifance to the street? If then the laws of the land have no provifion against the increase of this forest of all human violations, what is the natural fuccedaneum ? The arm of Vengeance! And yet, are we not forbidden to abftain from blood, on any provocation? We are, and we should be: A moment's reflection convinces us, |