The History of John Bull [10]
faithful to his friends, liberal to his dependents, and dutiful to his superiors; he values not your money more than the dust under his feet, but he hates to be abused. Once for all, Mrs. Minx, leave off talking of Hocus, or I will pull out these saucer-eyes of yours, and make that redstreak country face look as raw as an ox-cheek upon a butcher's-stall; remember, I say, that there are pillories and ducking-stools."*** With this away they flung, leaving Mrs. Bull no time to reply. No stone was left unturned to frighten John from his composition. Sometimes they spread reports at coffee-houses that John and his wife were run mad; that they intended to give up house, and make over all their estate to Lewis Baboon; that John had been often heard talking to himself, and seen in the streets without shoes or stockings; that he did nothing from morning till night but beat his servants, after having been the best master alive. As for his wife, she was a mere natural. Sometimes John's house was beset with a whole regiment of attornies' clerks, bailiffs, and bailiffs' followers, and other small retainers of the law, who threw stones at his windows, and dirt at himself as he went along the street. When John complained of want of ready-money to carry on his suit, they advised him to pawn his plate and jewels, and that Mrs. Bull should sell her linen and wearing clothes.
* Talk of peace, and the struggle of the party against it. ** The endeavours made use of to stop the Treaty of Peace, *** Reflections upon the House of Commons as ignorant, who know nothing of business.
CHAPTER XIII. Mrs. Bull's vindication of the indispensable duty incumbent upon Wives in case of the Tyranny, Infidelity, or Insufficiency of Husbands; being a full Answer to the Doctor's Sermon against Adultery.*
* The Tories' representation of the speeches at Sacheverel's trial.
John found daily fresh proofs of the infidelity and bad designs of his deceased wife; amongst other things, one day looking over his cabinet, he found the following paper:--
"It is evident that matrimony is founded upon an original contract, whereby the wife makes over the right she has by the law of Nature in favour of the husband, by which he acquires the property of all her posterity. But, then, the obligation is mutual; and where the contract is broken on one side it ceases to bind on the other. Where there is a right there must be a power to maintain it and to punish the offending party. This power I affirm to be that original right, or rather that indispensable duty lodged in all wives in the cases above mentioned. No wife is bound by any law to which herself has not consented. All economical government is lodged originally in the husband and wife, the executive part being in the husband; both have their privileges secured to them by law and reason; but will any man infer from the husband being invested with the executive power, that the wife is deprived of her share, and that she has no remedy left but preces and lacrymae, or an appeal to a supreme court of judicature? No less frivolous are the arrangements that are drawn from the general appellations and terms of husband and wife. A husband denotes several different sorts of magistracy, according to the usages and customs of different climates and countries. In some eastern nations it signifies a tyrant, with the absolute power of life and death. In Turkey it denotes an arbitrary governor, with power of perpetual imprisonment; in Italy it gives the husband the power of poison and padlocks; in the countries of England, France, and Holland, it has a quite different meaning, implying a free and equal government, securing to the wife in certain cases the liberty of change, and the property of pin-money and separate maintenance. So that the arguments drawn from the terms of husband and wife are fallacious, and by no means fit to support a tyrannical doctrine, as that of absolute unlimited chastity and conjugal fidelity.
"The general exhortations to fidelity in wives are meant only for rules in ordinary
* Talk of peace, and the struggle of the party against it. ** The endeavours made use of to stop the Treaty of Peace, *** Reflections upon the House of Commons as ignorant, who know nothing of business.
CHAPTER XIII. Mrs. Bull's vindication of the indispensable duty incumbent upon Wives in case of the Tyranny, Infidelity, or Insufficiency of Husbands; being a full Answer to the Doctor's Sermon against Adultery.*
* The Tories' representation of the speeches at Sacheverel's trial.
John found daily fresh proofs of the infidelity and bad designs of his deceased wife; amongst other things, one day looking over his cabinet, he found the following paper:--
"It is evident that matrimony is founded upon an original contract, whereby the wife makes over the right she has by the law of Nature in favour of the husband, by which he acquires the property of all her posterity. But, then, the obligation is mutual; and where the contract is broken on one side it ceases to bind on the other. Where there is a right there must be a power to maintain it and to punish the offending party. This power I affirm to be that original right, or rather that indispensable duty lodged in all wives in the cases above mentioned. No wife is bound by any law to which herself has not consented. All economical government is lodged originally in the husband and wife, the executive part being in the husband; both have their privileges secured to them by law and reason; but will any man infer from the husband being invested with the executive power, that the wife is deprived of her share, and that she has no remedy left but preces and lacrymae, or an appeal to a supreme court of judicature? No less frivolous are the arrangements that are drawn from the general appellations and terms of husband and wife. A husband denotes several different sorts of magistracy, according to the usages and customs of different climates and countries. In some eastern nations it signifies a tyrant, with the absolute power of life and death. In Turkey it denotes an arbitrary governor, with power of perpetual imprisonment; in Italy it gives the husband the power of poison and padlocks; in the countries of England, France, and Holland, it has a quite different meaning, implying a free and equal government, securing to the wife in certain cases the liberty of change, and the property of pin-money and separate maintenance. So that the arguments drawn from the terms of husband and wife are fallacious, and by no means fit to support a tyrannical doctrine, as that of absolute unlimited chastity and conjugal fidelity.
"The general exhortations to fidelity in wives are meant only for rules in ordinary