POLYGAMY, a plurality of wives or husbands, in the possession of one man or woman at the same time.

Polygamy is so universally esteemed unlawful, and even unnatural, throughout Europe, and in all Christian countries, that we have generally reasoned upon this conviction. Both religion and reason appear at first sight at least to condemn it; and with this view of the subject mankind in general remain satisfied. But some bolder geniuses have taken the opposite side of the question, cast off the prejudices of education, and attempted to show that polygamy is not unlawful, but that it is just and necessary, and would be a public benefit. Such writers recur to the common subterfuge, of which every setter up of strange gods, and every conscientious troubler of the public peace, have artfully availed themselves, to silence the clamour of expostulation.

Dr Percival^[1. Phil. Trans, vol. Ixvi. part i. p. 163. ] has very justly observed, that the practice is brutal, destructive to friendship and moral sentiment, inconsistent with one great end of marriage (the education of children), and subversive of the natural rights of more than half of the species. Besides, it is injurious to population, and therefore can never be countenanced or allowed in a well-regulated state; for though the number of females in the world may considerably exceed the number of males, yet there are more men capable of propagating their species than women capable of bearing children; and it is a well-known fact, that Armenia, in which a plurality of wives is not allowed, abounds more with inhabitants than any other province of the Turkish empire.

Indeed it appears, that in several countries where it is allowed, the inhabitants do not take advantage of it. “The Europeans,” says Μ. Niebuhr,^[2. Niebuhr’s Travels. ] “are mistaken in thinking the state of marriage so different amongst the Mussulmans from what it is with Christian nations. I could not discern any such difference in Arabia. The women of that country seem to be as free and as happy as those of Europe possibly can be. Polygamy is permitted, indeed, amongst Mahommedans, and the delicacy of our ladies is shocked at this idea; but the Arabians rarely avail themselves of the privilege of marrying four lawful wives, and entertaining at the same time any number of female slaves. None but rich voluptuaries marry so many wives, and their conduct is blamed by all sober men. Men of sense, indeed, think this privilege rather troublesome than convenient. A husband is by law obliged to treat his wives suitably to their condition, and to dispense his favours amongst them with perfect [7:18:312]equality; but these are duties not a little disagreeable to most Mussulmans; and such modes of luxury are too expensive to the Arabians, who are seldom in easy circumstances. I must, however, except one case; for it sometimes happens that a man marries a number of wives in the way of commercial speculation. I know a Mullah, in a town near the Euphrates, who had married four wives, and was supported by the profits of their labour.”

Selden has proved, in his Uxor Hebraica, that plurality of wives was allowed, not only amongst the Hebrews, but also amongst all other nations, and in all ages. It is true, the ancient Romans were more severe in their morals, and never practised it, though it was not forbidden amongst them; and Mark Antony is mentioned as the first who took the liberty of having two wives.

From that time it became pretty frequent in the empire till the reigns of Theodosius, Honorius, and Arcadius, who first prohibited it by express law in 393. After this the Emperor Valentinian, by an edict, permitted all the subjects of the empire, if they pleased, to marry several wives. Nor does it appear, from the ecclesiastical history of those times, that the bishops made any opposition to the introduction of polygamy. In effect, there are some even amongst the Christian casuists who do not look on polygamy as in itself criminal. Jurieu observes, that the prohibition of polygamy is a positive law, but from which a man may be exempted by sovereign necessity. Baillet adds, that the example of the patriarchs is a powerful argument in favour of polygamy. Of these arguments we shall speak hereafter.

It has been much disputed amongst the doctors of the civil law whether polygamy be adultery. In the Roman law it is denominated stuprum, and punished as such, that is, in some cases capitally. But a smaller punishment is more consistent with the Jewish law, in which the prohibition of adultery is perpetual, but that of polygamy temporary only.

Bernardus Ochinus, general of the order of Capucins, and afterwards a Protestant, published, about the middle of the sixteenth century, Dialogues in favour of Polygamy, which were answered by Theodore Beza. And about tile close of the last century, an artful treatise was published at London in behalf of a plurality of wives, under the title of Polygamia Triumphatrix, the author of which assumes the name of Theophilus Aletheus, though his true name was Lyserus. He was a native of Saxony, and his work has been answered by several writers.

A new argument in favour of polygamy has been adduced by Mr Bruce, on the principle, that in some parts of the world the proportion of female children is much greater than that of the males. “From diligent inquiry,” says he, “into the south and scripture part of Mesopotamia, Armenia, and Syria, from Mousul or Nineveh, to Aleppo and Antioch, I find the proportion to be fully two women to one man. There is indeed a fraction over, but it is not a considerable one. From Latikea, Laodicea ad mare, down the coast of Syria to Sidon, the number is nearly three, or two and three fourths, to one man. Through the Holy Land, the country called Horan, in the Isthmus of Suez, and the parts of the Delta unfrequented by strangers, it is something less than three. But from Suez to the Straits of Babelmandel, which contains the three Arabias, the proportion is fully four women to one man; which, I have reason to believe, holds as far as the line, and 30° beyond it. The imam of Sama was not an old man when I was in Arabia Felix in 1769; but he had eighty-eight children then alive, of whom fourteen only were sons. The priest of the Nile had seventy and odd children; of whom, as I remember, above fifty were daughters.

“It may be objected, that Dr Arbuthnot, in quoting the bills of mortality for twenty years, gave the most unexceptionable grounds for his opinion; and that my single exception of what happens in a foreign country, without further foundation, cannot be admitted as equivalent testimony; and I am ready to admit this objection, as there are no bills of mortality in any of these countries. I shall therefore say in what manner I attained the knowledge which I have just mentioned. Whenever I went into a town, village, or inhabited place, dwelt long in a mountain, or travelled journeys with any set of people, I always made it my business to inquire how many children they had, or their fathers, their next neighbours or acquaintance. I then asked my landlord at Sidon, suppose him a weaver, how many children he has had? He tells me how many sons and how many daughters. The next I ask is a tailor, a smith, &c., in short every man who is not a stranger, from whom I can get the proper information. I say, therefore, that a medium of both sexes, arising from three or four hundred families, indiscriminately taken, shall be the proportion in which one differs from the other; and this, I am confident, will give the result to be three women in 50° of the 90° under every meridian of the globe.”

The same author corroborates his argument by supposing that Mahommed perceived this disproportion, and that upon it he founded his institution allowing one man to have four wives. “With this view he enacted, or rather revived, the law which gave liberty to every individual to marry four wives, each of whom was to be equal in rank and honour, without any preference but what the predilection of the husband gave her.”

Having thus established, as he supposes, the necessity of polygamy in the East, Bruce proceeds to consider whether there is not some other reasons why it should not be practised in Britain further than the mere equality in numbers of the sexes to one another. This reason he finds in the difference between the constitutions of the Europeans and eastern nations. “Women in England,” says he, “are capable of child-bearing at fourteen; let the other term be forty-eight, when they bear no more; thirty-four years therefore an English woman bears children. At the age of fourteen or fifteen they are objects of our love; they are endeared by bearing us children after that time; and none, I hope, will pretend, that at forty-eight and fifty an Englishwoman is not an agreeable companion. The Arab, on the other hand, if she begins to bear children at eleven, seldom or never has a child after twenty. The time, then, of her child-bearing is nine years; and four women, taken altogether, have then the term of thirty-six. So that the English woman that bears children for thirty-four years has only two years less than the term enjoyed by the four wives whom Mahommed has allowed; and if it be granted that an English wife may bear at fifty, the terms are equal. But there are other grievous differences. An Arabian girl at eleven years old, by her youth and beauty, is the object of man’s desire: being an infant, however, in understanding, she is not a rational companion for him. A man marries there, say at twenty; and before he is thirty, his wife, improved as a companion, ceases to be the object of his desires and a mother of children: so that all the best and most vigorous of his days are spent with a woman he cannot love; and with her he would be destined to live forty or forty-five years, without comfort to himself by increase of family, or utility to the public. The reasons, then, against polygamy, which subsist in England, do not by any means subsist in Arabia; and that being the case, it would be unworthy of the wisdom of God, and an unevenness in his ways, which we shall never see, to subject two nations under such different circumstances absolutely to the same observances.”

To all this argumentation, however, it may be replied, that whatever we may now suppose to be the constitution of nature in the warmer parts of the globe, it certainly was different at the beginning. We cannot, indeed, ascertain [7:18:313] the exact position of the Garden of Eden; but it is with reason supposed not to have been far from the ancient seat of Babylon. In that country, therefore, where Mr Bruce contends that four women are necessary to the comfort of one man, it pleased God to grant only one to the first man; and that, too, when there was more occasion for population than ever there has been since, because the whole earth was to be peopled from a single pair. Matters were not altered at the Flood; for Noah had but one wife. And this is the very argument used by our Saviour himself when speaking of divorce without any sufficient cause, and then marrying another woman, which is a species of polygamy.

Again, with respect to the alleged multiplicity of females in the eastern part of the world, it is by no means probable that the calculations of Mr Bruce or any other person can be admitted in this case. History mentions no such thing in any nation; and considering the vast destruction amongst the male part of the human species more than that of the females, by war and other accidents, we may safely say, that if four women children were born for every single male, there would in such countries be five or six grown-up women for every man; a proportion which we may venture to affirm does not, and never did, exist anywhere in the world. .That it was not so in former times, we can only judge from the particular examples recorded in history, and these are but few. We read in the Greek history, indeed, of the fifty daughters of Danaus; but these are matched by as many sons of another man. Job had only one wife, yet had seven sons and but three daughters. Jacob had two wives, who bore twelve sons, and only one daughter. Abraham had only one child by his first wife, and that was a son. By his second wife Keturah he had six sons; and, considering his advanced age at the time he married her, it is by . no means probable that he could have twenty-four daughters; nay, if, as Mr Bruce tells us, the women in the eastern countries bear children only for nine years, it was impossible she could have so many. Gideon, who had many wives, had no fewer than seventy sons by these wives, and even his concubine had a son; so that if all these women had produced according to Mr Bruce’s proportion, of nearly three females to one male, he must have had almost two hundred and eighty-four children; a more numerous family probably than any of which Mr Bruce’s eastern acquaintance can boast.

With regard to the subject, however, it must be observed, that the procreation of male or female children depends in some degree on the health and vigour of the parents. It is by no means improbable, therefore, that the eastern voluptuaries, whose constitutions are debilitated by their excesses, may have many more female than male children born to them.

The boldest defence of polygamy that has appeared in modern times is that by the Rev. Mr Madan, who published a treatise artfully vindicating and strongly recommending it, under the title of Thelyphthora, or a Treatise on Female Ruin, in its Causes, Effects, Consequences, Prevention, and Remedy. Marriage, according to this writer, simply and wholly consists in the act of personal union, or actus coitus. Adultery, he says, is never used in the sacred writings but to denote the defilement of a betrothed or married woman, and to this sense he restricts the use of the term; so that a married man, in his opinion, is no adulterer, if his commerce with the sex be confined to single women, who are under no obligations by espousals or marriage to other men; but, on the other hand, the woman who should dare to have even but once an intrigue with any other man besides her husband, let him have as many wives as Solomon, would, ipso facto, be an adulteress, and ought, together with her gallant, to be punished with immediate death. This, he boldly says, is the law of God, and on this foundation he limits the privilege of polygamy to the man; in support of which he refers to the polygamous connections of the patriarchs and saints of the Old Testament, and infers the lawfulness of their practice from the blessings which attended it, and the laws which were instituted to regulate and superintend it. He contends for the lawfulness of Christians having, like the ancient Jews, more wives than one, and labours much to reconcile the genius of the evangelical dispensation with an arrangement of this sort. With this view he asserts, that there is not a single text in the New Testament that even hints at the criminality of polygamous connection; and he would infer from St Paul’s direction, that bishops and deacons should have but one wife, that it was lawful for laymen to have more. Jesus Christ, he says, was not the giver of a new law; but the business of marriage, polygamy, and divorce, had been settled before his appearance in the world, by an authority which could not be revoked. Besides, this writer not only thinks polygamy lawful in a religious, but advantageous in a civil light, and highly politic in a domestic view.

In defence of his notion of marriage, which, he says, consists in the union of man and woman as one body, the effects of which in the sight of God no outward forms or ceremonies of man’s invention can add to or detract from, he grounds his principal argument on the Hebrew words made use of in Genesis (ii. 24) to express the primitive institution of marriage, viz. wwm p□ι, rendered by the Seventy πζοσκοXKn!)ησεται ττξος τη ∣ γυναίκα αi>του, which translation is adopted by the evangelist (Mat. xix. 5), with the omission only of the superfluous preposition (ngo¢) after the verb. Our translation, “shall cleave to his wife,” does not, he says, convey the idea of the Hebrew, which is literally, as Montanus renders the words, “shall be joined or cemented in his woman, and they shall become (by this union) one flesh.” But on this criticism it is well remarked, that both the Hebrew and Greek terms mean simply and literally attachment or adherence; and are evidently made use of in the sacred writings to express the whole scope of conjugal fidelity and duty, though he would restrain them to the grosser part of it.

With respect to the Mosaic law, for which Mr Madan is a warm advocate, it was certainly a local and temporary institution, adapted to the ends for which it was appointed, and admirably calculated, in its relation to marriage, to maintain and perpetuate the separation of the Jewish people from the Gentiles. In attempting to depreciate the outward forms of marriage, this writer would make his readers believe, that because none are explicitly described, therefore none existed; and consequently that they are the superfluous ordinances of human policy. But it is evident, from comparing Ruth (iv. 10, 13) with Tobit (vii. 13, 14), and from the case of Dinah, related in Genesis (xxxiv.), that some forms were deemed essential to an honourable marriage by the patriarchs and saints under the Old Testament, exclusive of the carnal knowledge of each other’s persons. It is also evident in the case of the woman of Samaria, whose connection with a man not her husband is mentioned in John,'iv., that something besides cohabitation is necessary to constitute marriage in the sight of God.

Having stated his notion of marriage, the same writer urges, in defence of polygamy, that, notwithstanding the seventh commandment, it was allowed by God himself, who made laws for the regulation of it, wrought miracles in support of it by making the barren woman fruitful, and declared the issue legitimate, to all intents and purposes. God’s allowance of polygamy is argued from Exodus, xxi. 10, and particularly from Deut. xxi. 15, which, he says, amounts to a demonstration. This passage, however, at the utmost, only presupposes that the practice might have existence amongst so hard-hearted and fickle a people as the Jews; and therefore wisely provides against some of its more unjust and pernicious consequences, such as tended to affect [7:18:314]the rights and privileges of heirship. Laws enacted to regulate it cannot be fairly urged in proof of its lawfulness, on the author’s own hypothesis; because laws were also made to regulate divorce, which Mr Madan condemns as absolutely unlawful, except in cases of adultery. Besides, it is more probable that the “hated wife” had been dismissed by a bill of divorcement, than that she was retained by her husband; and, moreover, it is not certain but that the two wives, so far from living with the same husband at the same time, might be dead; for the words may be rendered thus, “If there should have been to a man two wives,” &c. The words expressing the original institution of marriage (Genesis, ii. 24), compared with Matthew (xix. 4, 5, 8), afford insuperable objections against Mr Madan’s doctrine of polygamy.

If we appeal on this subject from the authority of Scripture to the writings of the earliest Fathers in the Christian church, there is not to be found the faintest trace of anything resembling a testimony to the lawfulness of polygamy; on the contrary, many passages occur in which the practice of it is strongly and explicitly condemned.

In a word, when we reflect that the primitive institution of marriage limited it to one man and one woman; that this institution was adhered to by Noah and his sons, amidst the degeneracy in which they lived, and in spite of the examples of polygamy which the accursed race of Cain had introduced;—when we consider how very few, comparatively speaking, were the examples of this practice amongst the faithful; how much it brought its own punishment along with it; and how dubious and equivocal those passages are in which it appears to have the sanction of divine approbation ;—when to these reflections we add another, respecting the limited views and temporary nature of the more ancient dispensations and institutions of religion; how often the imperfections and even vices of the patriarchs and people of God, in the olden time, are recorded, without any express notification of their criminality; how much is said to be commanded, which our reverence for the holiness of God and his law will only suffer us to suppose were, for wise ends, permitted; how frequently the messengers of God adapted themselves to the genius of the people to whom they were sent, and the circumstances of the times in which they lived ;—above all, when we consider the purity, equity, and benevolence of the Christian law; the explicit declarations of our Lord, and his apostle . St Paul, respecting the institution of marriage, its design and limitation ;—when we reflect, too, on the testimony of the most ancient fathers, who could not possibly be ignorant of the general and common practice of the apostolic church ;—and, finally, when to these considerations we add those which are founded on justice to the female sex, and all the regulations of domestic economy and national policy,—we must wholly condemn the revival of polygamy, and thus bear our honest testimony against the leading design of this and all similar publications.