holy war, determined me, happily-through all my subsequent troubles, I have never ceased to consider that determination most happy to go to their school no longer. I commenced an entirely new education, threw up my living at Midhurst, as soon as I had learned my A, B, C, of Deism, got advanced to the first form in Dublin; obtained an exhibition in London, and gave such satisfaction at my public examination, that Judge Bailey sent me here to College to complete my studies.-I have taken a higher degree than any other university could have conferred. My college exercises will afford a proof of my diligence and improvement; and I expect to come out as senior wrangler. Your's truly,

King's College, Oakham, Feb. 1st, 1829.

ROBERT TAYLOR.

To the Editor of the Lion.

SIR,-I perceive in the 3rd No. of the 3rd vol. of "The Lion," my letter on the " Empire of the Nairs" or "The Nair System," as recommended by Lawrence, has found a critic who styles himself "A Mother's Son,"-and with all the ardour and vanity of youth has attempted to criticise a "Grandfather;" but as old men are often fond of their own opinions, and apt to retaliate, I trust he will submit with patience to an old man's lash,* and though I suspect he is an old boy-I will tickle his vanity by calling him your son,t as you have pleased him so much by the publicity of this work. Your son's very commencement, I consider erroneous, when he says "the philosophy of that publication (The Lion) is to show the superiority of truth over faith; and what is the foundation of paternity, and the evil that it has necessitated, marriage, but faith? shall your readers, who will not believe in Moses and the prophets, be favourable to an institution that will not bear a scrutiny, and is only founded on assertion?"-What a perversion of the merit of a work is here ?-True, the great aim of philosophy is to establish truth; and no lover of truth can have any faith, or belief in the balderdash of Moses and the prophets; -for they taught that which is inconsistent with nature and truth, and which can only be believed by faith, which is a surrender of our reasoning faculties ;-but what has paternity and marriage to do with faith of this description? The loves of the sexes require no such faith. There is positive proof in the offspring, and the foundation of paternity is in nature, (the workshop of the philosopher,) which has implanted in man, the paternal affection of love to his offspring.-What an insinuation,

The combatants are near of an age.-R. C.

+ I protest against being yet recognised as one of the Nair family, not having yet expressed an attachment to them.-R. C.

In some cases.-R. C.

to suppose the husband of a virtuous woman, and the father of a family, can doubt the honour of his wife, and the legitimacy of his children.*-The love and confidence of millions of married pairs, will bear the strictest scrutiny, is founded on truth, and not on assertion.

Your son like many other so-so-people, who want to be thought well off, by getting into good company-as a plea for your insertion of the "Introduction to the Empire of the Nairs," says " more liberal ideas were spread by the tales and novels of Voltaire and Diderot, than by the serious essays of Hume."-Does he suppose, there is any comparison between their novels, and the " Empire of the Nairs?"-Their object was morality-not prostitution.

Your son's next remark is, that he has nothing to do with the age of Wieland, Shelly, or the author of the "Empire of the Nairs;" the latter of which was under age when he wrote itand the former were poets and philosophers. This remark is just with respect to the beauty of a poem :-but to the alteration of a system, which has to undo the established custom and manners of millions.-The knowledge of mankind, which can only result from a long experience, is absolutely necessary, before we can draw just conclusions and can young men under age possess this?

Your son, next says, "the author of the Empire of the Nairs," when he published his essay, was under age, and the Child of Nature,' who has criticised him, and whom I propose to criticise in his turn is, as he has had the goodness to inform your readers, a grandfather. Yet the junior has supported his assertions with a train of argument, which the unsupported declamation of the senior cannot overthrow."

This, with your remarks, in your note on my letter, are bold assertions; but assertions are not proofs, and I am old enough, and bold enough to refer the readers of " The Lion" to my letter, as a proof, that though there may be declamation, all my arguments

This is a misstatement of the question. United love, in marriage or out of marriage, is one and the same thing; but the author of the "Empire of the Nairs" has treated of marriage without love and as destructive of love, which is rather the rule than the exception. The "Child of Nature" may be satisfied as to the virtue of his wife and the legitimacy of his children; I am satisfied: I find men in general so satisfied; but I have met with exceptions. I have met a man who treated a family of daughters kindly, the daughters of a wife and of one mother, of a virago; but who declared to me that they were not his offspring; though they passed before the world as such and with his name. Again, a very great amount of chastity grows out of social restraint, which is pernicious to the bearer, both in marriage and out of mar riage, which lessens the amount of true love, and, in relation both to the physical and moral wants of the individual, is an intolerable and an immoral tyranny. All chastity is not virtue; nor is all illicit indulgence vice. And such is the view of the author of the Empire of the Nairs;" for he supposes, in his system, that all well-matched couples will keep together through life. His system involves no other new consideration, than that divorce shall be as facile, as it is as necessary, as marriage -R. C.

are unanswered :-not that I consider it requires any ability to refute plans which it is evidently impossible to adopt; but taking them as a theory, I see no reply to the arguments I have brought forward to refute them. There is a play on words, and an attempt to ridicule the grandfather, and some unbecoming remarks on woman; the former of no value, but the latter calls for a reply, which, in its proper place, I hope to give.

I cannot agree with your son, that it was necessary for me to have read the four volumes of the " Empire of the Nairs," and to have studied the works and opinions of the author, before I attempted to overturn them; had you, sir, never made extracts from them in "The Lion," they would have remained where they have done for the last 35 years, unnoticed by me. Those extracts in "The Lion," are all that is necessary for the readers of "The Lion" to comment on; all the other parts I consider of no consequence to us at present.

On my remark, respecting the right of the Virgin Molly to prevail on Tom the carter, to get her with child, &c. Your son, says, "If your Bristol friend had reflected a moment, he must have observed, that Molly, under the Nair system, could have had no father," in which case, she would have out wondered the Virgin Mary, who did acknowledge a ghost as the father of her child. In misconstruing my meaning, your son has worked a miracle. In my remark on Molly and Tom, I did not suppose them Nairs, because I consider the system impracticable, as I do the probability of brothers, working for, and supporting all the children which their amorous sisters uncontrolled, might produce. I know a young surgeon, who has eight sisters, good, warm-hearted, breeding girls. Suppose each of them to produce only six children. This will give him the trifling number of 48 children to maintain, besides his eight Platonic wives. And though all cases may not be equal to this, yet, on the whole, the plan is unnatural, brothers and sisters feel not the same affection for each other, as man and wife; and what comparison can there be drawn between the love of an uncle, for all the children which his sisters force on him, and that which a father feels for those children he believes are his own. That unmarried uncles are sometimes fond of the nephew or niece which they select, I admit; but even in that case, I never saw the affection equal to the parents, nor will the pretty tale your son tells, of his having no wife, when he is indulging himself in unrestrained intercourse with as many girls as will admit him, tend to make him attentive to his sister's children. Nor will the knowledge that "they are his own flesh and blood, sprung up from that sister, who had issued from the same womb, who had fed at the same breast, with himself," produce much affection for her children. Against all those fine words, place the father's reflection, that they are all his flesh and blood, produced by the endearing embraces of the woman he loves, that they had fed

from that bosom he had fondly pressed, that they are his own, and draw a comparison of their feelings. Your son concludes this part with the following base insinuation:-" He, like an European husband, cannot look in their faces, and fancy that he sees there the features of a rival; whoever is their father, he must be their uncle." The reply to this reflection on our women, I leave to every one who reads it.

Your son says, 66 your Bristol friend seems not aware that the Nairs are not the only people that follow this system, but that other nations now, and several in all parts of the globe, have followed the same, as the Ashantees, the ancient Gauls and Americans." I am indeed not aware of it, nor do I believe any nation ever did, or ever will, or can adopt it-and I defy your son to prove that it was ever practised by the majority of any people. The Ashantees admit the descent of the royal family by the female, and so may other nations, but does this exclude the husband and father, or give the girls a right to frolic with whom they please? On the contrary, we find the women in all the countries he alludes to, more like slaves than ladies of pleasure.

I consider your son has completely failed in his reply on my reference to animals, in which he includes birds and fishes. My inference was not whether the young first followed the male or female; for the law of nature, except where the male and female have nothing to do with their offspring, have consigned the young principally to the care of the female; but to prove that nature had implanted in the male of those animals, where the young requires more attention than the female can bestow, an inclination to assist in rearing them. Hence, the analogy, I drew, between the birds and man. Your son laments, that we have adopted the affection of the birds in preference to the indifference of the beasts of the field. We have no choice in the adoption-necessity compels us-nature decrees it. To act like the brute we must be formed like it, and possess the same passions and temperament. Would your Nair lady like to have, like the cow, her periodical love fit, which happens only once in a great many months? Would your Nair swain like to receive from the amorous girl of one night, a kicking, if he attempted to repeat his love the next? This act of nature gives to the male of the brute creation, an apparent liberty to enjoy a variety of females, which man has no need of; because his one female is quite equal to all his proper wants. Your son says, the usage of society, which requires a lawful father to a child, deprives it of its mother, and thus like the spawn of fishes, casts them on the ocean of life. Why this, I contend, is the effect of the Nair system, and a sample of that misery which will extend in proportion as it is adopted. It is not the loves of the sexes, but the effects of inconsiderate enjoyment, and brings us back to Molly and the carter. No one complains if Molly by herself, or she and

the carter maintain their young; but in this land of thorns and briars, where with every effort of toil and labour, we can hardly support ourselves and children; is it just we should be compelled to support the offspring of your son's admired friends, the unnatural brutes, who wantonly beget, and then forsake their young? This is the great proof of the necessity of marriage, for the welfare of society compels the married man to support his young, and his paternal affection gives him a stimulus.

I think your son felt a great pleasure in inditing the following amorous remark:-"If all voluptuous and debauched characters are fond of admiring the liberty of the bull, the prodigal life of the cock, and envy every sparrow that they meet, must they not be little qualified for marriage, and must not an unprejudiced mind approve a system, that would permit them to follow their natural inclinations, without doing harm to themselves or others?" Most certainly, the gratification of that which does no harm, is harmless, and here the case of Molly and the carter is again applicable; but I beg to apologise for the debasing comparison, for I presume those are of the Corinthian order. If the Nair system could be established, and there were no jealousy in the human frame, they may be all the go with the females of similar passions; but in society formed as at present, they are the curse of our homes, and the destruction of our children, they are the wolves of the forest, the destruction of whom ought to be the work of every shepherd.

Your son says "do not the number of murders of man and wife, with which our daily papers are filled, to the disgrace of our lawgivers, proceed from the same cause?" There are few murders of this description committed, and the cause is found in the bad passions, with which the parties abound-and not in marriage.Jealousy is too often the cause ;-but if we are to judge of a system by such acts, what comparison can be drawn between those and the females that are murdered by their lovers, and those who destroy themselves through the enjoyment of love, without marriage.

I must consider your son's reply to my arguments respecting the infancy of children, feeble in the extreme, he asks "who is more capable than the mother to superintend this feebleness of his first years?" Why in my letter, I gave the mother all the care of infants; but to do this, I provided a good husband to take care of her, and provide the means to enable her to have plenty of milk for that purpose, (a trifle your son forgot,) but he says, " she is to have a different education, and would be a superior being herself." This superiority must depend on fancy, I acknowledge the woman who has to work for the support of her children, to educate, and rear them, must have a different education from the majority of our women.-It would have a great tendency to tame an amorous lady, and then we are to have Lancaster schools and