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I wish next to prove to you that the adoption was carried out in the proper legal manner. So please read me the law which ordains that a man can dispose as he likes of his own property, if he does not possess male issue of his own. The law-giver, gentlemen, legislated thus, because he saw that for childless persons the only refuge for their solitary condition, and the only possible comfort in life, lay in the possibility of adopting whomsoever they wished.