[4] The pride of families and tribes, and the desire
of the multitude to participate in the enjoyment of such ceremonies,
tend to keep up this usage after the cause in which it originated may
have ceased to operate; but it will, it is to be hoped, gradually
decline with the increased feeling of security to person, property,
and character under our rule. Nothing is now more common than to see
an individual in the humblest rank spending all that he has, or can
borrow, in the marriage of one of many daughters, and trusting to
Providence for the means of marrying the others; nor in the higher,
to find a young man, whose estates have, during a long minority,
under the careful management of Government officers, been freed from
very heavy debts, with which an improvident father had left them
encumbered, the moment he attains his majority and enters upon the
management, borrowing three times their annual rent, at an exorbitant
interest, to marry a couple of sisters, at the same rate of outlay in
feasts and fireworks that his grandmother was married with.[5]
Notes:
1. The author's figure of 'eighty millions' was a mere guess, and
probably, even in his time, was much below the mark.
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