account.

It is not difficult, if the fact be as it is stated, to assign a reason
for this difference of number in the two sexes.

When men wish to marry, they wish, at least if they are men of sense, to
find such women as are virtuous; to find such as are prudent and
domestic, and such as have a proper sense of the folly and dissipation
of the Fashionable world; such in fact as will make good mothers and
good wives. Now if a Quaker looks into his own society, he will
generally find the female part of it of this description. Female Quakers
excel in these points. But if he looks into the world at large, he will
in general find a contrast in the females there. These, in general, are
but badly educated. They are taught to place a portion of their
happiness in finery and show: utility is abandoned for fashion: The
knowledge of the etiquette of the drawing-room usurps the place of the
knowledge of the domestic duties: A kind of false and dangerous taste
predominates: Scandal and the card-table are preferred to the pleasures
of a rural walk: Virtue and Modesty are seen with only half their
energies, being overpowered by the noxiousness of novel-reading
principles, and by the moral taint which infects those who engage in the
varied rounds of a fashionable life. Hence a want of knowledge, a love
of trifles, and a dissipated turn of mind, generally characterize those
who are considered as having had the education of the world.

We see therefore a good reason why Quaker-men should confine themselves
in their marriages to their own society. But the same reason, which thus
operates with Quaker-men in the choice of Quaker-women, operates with
men who are not of the society, in choosing them also for their wives.
These are often no strangers to the good education, and to the high