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Degeneration of the family

“Even amongst women there were symptoms of revolt against the older order, which showed itself in a growing freedom of manners and impatience of control, the marriage tie was relaxed…" Encyclopedia Britannica ‘57 Vol. 19 p 490.2

The “sanctity of marriage had ceased… Abortion, and the exposure and murder of newly-born children, were common and tolerated; unnatural vices, which even the greatest philosophers practiced, if not advocated, attained proportions which defy description.” Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, By Alfred Edersheim, Chapter XI.

"Men nowadays no longer secretly, but openly outrage the wives of others, and allow others access to their own wives. A match is thought countrified, uncivilized, in bad style, and to be protested against by all matrons, if the husband should forbid his wife to appear in public in a litter, and to be carried about exposed to the gaze of all observers. If a man has not made himself notorious by a liaison with some mistress, if he does not pay an annuity to some one else's wife, married women speak of him as a poor-spirited creature, a man given to low vice, a lover of servant girls. Soon adultery becomes the most respectable form of marriage, and widowhood and celibacy are commonly practiced. No one takes a wife unless he takes her away from some one else. Now men vie with one another in wasting what they have stolen, and in collecting together what they have wasted with the keenest avarice; they become utterly reckless, scorn poverty in others, fear personal injury more than anything else, break the peace by their riots, and by violence and terror domineer over those who are weaker than themselves. No wonder that they plunder provinces and offer the seat of judgment for sale, knocking it down after an auction to the highest bidder, since it is the law of nations that you may sell what you have bought... Our ancestors before us have lamented, and our children after us will lament, as we do, the ruin of morality, the prevalence of vice, and the gradual deterioration of mankind;" On Benefits (De Beneficiis) by Seneca. See Riots

"That the man who first ruined the Roman people twas he who first gave them treats and gratuities. But this mischief crept secretly and gradually in, and did not openly make it's appearance in Rome for a considerable time." Plutarch's Life of Coriolanus (c. 100 AD.)

“The real destroyers of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations, and benefits.” Plutarch

"The people who had once bestowed commands, consulships, legions, and all else now longs eagerly for just two things, bread and circus games." Juvenal a Roman poet. See legal charity.