220. In both these cases, the wife _helps to gain the money_; and in cases where there is no gain, where the income is by descent, or is fixed, she helps to prevent it from being squandered away. It is, therefore, as much _hers_ as it is the husband's; and though _the law_ gives him, in many cases, the power of keeping her share from her, no just man will ever avail himself of that power. With regard to the _tying up_ of widows from marrying again, I will relate what took place in a case of this kind, in America. A merchant, who had, during his married state, risen from poverty to very great riches, and who had, nevertheless, died at about forty years of age, left the whole of his property to his wife for her life, and at her disposal at her death, _provided that she did not marry_. The consequence was, that she took a husband _without marrying_, and, at her death (she having no children), gave the whole of the property to the second husband! So much for _posthumous jealousy_!
221. Where there are _children_, indeed, it is the duty of the husband to provide, in certain cases, against _step-fathers_, who are very prone not to be the most just and affectionate parents. It is an unhappy circumstance, when a dying father is compelled to have fears of this sort. There is seldom _an apology_ to be offered for a mother that will hazard the happiness of her children by a second marriage. The _law_ allows it, to be sure; but there is, as Prior says, 'something beyond the letter of the law.' I know what ticklish ground I am treading on here; but, though it is _as lawful_ for a woman to take a second husband as for a man to take a second wife, the cases are different, and widely different, in the eye of morality and of reason; for, as adultery in the wife is a greater offence than adultery in the husband; as it is more gross, as it includes _prostitution_; so a second marriage in the woman is more gross than in the man, argues great deficiency in that _delicacy_, that _innate_ modesty, which, after all, is the _great charm_, the charm of charms, in the female sex. I do not _like_ to hear a man _talk_ of his _first wife_, especially in the presence of a second; but to hear a woman thus _talk_ of her _first husband_, has never, however beautiful and good she might be, failed to sink her in my estimation. I have, in such cases, never been able to keep out of my mind that _concatenation of ideas_, which, in spite of custom, in spite of the frequency of the occurrence, leave an impression deeply disadvantageous to the party; for, after the greatest of ingenuity has exhausted itself in the way of apology, it comes to this at last, that the person has _a second time_ undergone that surrender, to which nothing but the most ardent affection, could ever reconcile a chaste and delicate woman.