False Marriages -- It follows, by immediate, natural and necessary consequence, that all marriages, so called, in which this sentiment of mutual tenderness does not prevail, are not true and real marriages, but merely false and seeming ones; and that the intercourse of such persons is not much better than a legalized prostitution. For how much better is the woman who reluctantly and unsympathetically submits to the embraces of a husband, because he furnishes her with a home and luxuries, and has thus purchased the right to her person, than the degraded creature who, for a similar consideration and without the sanction of a violated vow, submits to the same thing? And how much better is the other party - the man - who can thus brutally claim and use his wife as a purchased possession, because the law gives him the right to her, and it is "so nominated in the bond," than the wretch who outrages the moral sense and good order of society by his kept mistress, or his habitual visits to the dens of prostitution? That the children of such parents should be born vicious and depraved, can be no matter of surprise to those who have properly estimated the base ties by which their fathers and mothers are held together. Indeed, it could not be otherwise, in accordance with the laws of Nature and of God. The first effect of these unions - falsely called marriages and well named, by the French, marriage de convenance, marriage for convenience - is, of course, the excessive indulgence of the sexual appetite. The husband has purchased and brought home, and why should he not take possession of, the trembling and shuddering bride? He does. Her sensations, it is true, are those of unmitigated and immitigable loathing. Whatever native capacity for love and the pure and delightful offices of marriage she possesses is slain - murdered outright - on the very threshold of this hideous union. She submits, because she must, but she submits to an outrage; and no gliding of respectability can render it otherwise than hateful to her eyes. And when, at last, wearied and disgusted with his own excesses, her owner leaves her in peace, it is like the peace of the damned. She weeps bitter tears of mingled humiliation and indignation, and wishes she had never been born; or, at least, that she had never been married. Such has been the experience of thousands of miscalled wives, who, if the truth could be told without shame and disgrace, would confess that they look back, even from the distance of years, to the occasion of their marriage, with feelings of horror and disgust.