tender and indulgent sentiments towards women, which at present characterize the general way of thinking, have, owing to their not being sufficiently regulated by enlightened reason and to their jarring with existing national laws, utterly failed in producing, between married couples, greater happiness and a more tender, mutual attachment.

Yet, I maintain, that it is not by the confinement of women again to a more narrow sphere than that which they now fill, that the marriage state could be made appear, in general, respectable and interesting, owing to the happiness and good conduct of the parties engaged in it.

It is, on the contrary, by removing with caution, and on a regular plan, the barriers which still prevent women from using the liberty accorded them, for the indulgence of any noble impulse of ambition, and which hinder them from seeing any other career lying open before them, but one inviting them to pleasure and frivolous pursuits.

§ 3. While the situation of women should be made to correspond with the aspirations of a noble and active mind, husbands should also be taught,—what would be far from being imcompatible with the full, and orderly enlargement of the prospects of wives, to look on society as a judge prompt steadily to sanction them in the exercise of a supreme, legitimate authority. They should, no doubt, be aware that they would incur its censure, were they to be seen ungenerously to abuse their power over their feeble companion.

But so clear and express should be its notions, in regard to the behaviour constituting such an abuse, and so much should they be trained to have no inclination to exhibit it, that their general feeling towards society should be à confidence of finding in its opinions, a firm support to their marital and domestic authority.

This, I am convinced, is no wise the sentiment of husbands at present.

Enough, indeed, may be seen in men of that inclination to take their part and to sympathize with them, the observation of which has led me to conclude, that the rebound towards their own sex of the tenderness excited in them by women, was what first morally disposed them to uniting together in a

social corps. But now that sympathy with husbands is counteracted in men, by a generous tenderness for women,—for it is counteracted by it, on account of both sentiments not being so modified as to be made to harmonize together,—it yields husbands but little protection; and, indeed, it is well for wives that it does not yield them more, for in its present harsh, untutored state, it could not be made firmly to sustain a husband's supremacy, without plunging wives,-and with them all women,-into slavery.

The fact is, that this sympathy with husbands is now rather a speculative than a practical sentiment. Men are too apt, still, to let harsh, unkind passions accumulate in their bosoms, and to vent them, in speculation, on the feeble sex; but when an instance occurs in real life, of a husband who appears, in some degree, blameable towards his wife, these same harsh passions then take him for their object, and urge those whom they move to rage without measure against him.

Those who, when they speak abstractly, express themselves with the greatest unkindness toward wives, are the most bitter against the husband,-if they be not his particular friends, in whose quarrels with his wife they think themselves bound to interfere. Besides, that they are pushed by malignant, ungoverned passions to treat him with unwarrantable severity, they are eager to prove, by the warmth with which they espouse the cause of women, that they are at heart their zealous champions, though they sometimes rail against them.*

Men, in general, who, in the eyes of the public, are somewhat in the wrong, or appear to be so, in regard to their behaviour to their wives, are, usually, viewed by it with detestation. The public is, indeed, prone to look with an ill natured, prying eye, into the reciprocal conduct of both husbands and wives, but it uses particular severity towards the

I have observed that those men who most adhere to the maxim that the female sex ought to be kept in an abject subordination to theirs, are the persons who most endeavour to render the females to whom they are attached, as, for instance, their daughters, so entirely independent of men, as to have no need of their protection.

They first make a frightful bugbear of manly power, as if it were right and agreeable to the intention of nature, that women should be cruelly oppressed by it, and then they exert themselves, entirely to withdraw, in defiance of nature's decrees, the women whom they love from its grasp.

former. This ungracious curiosity does not tend to enlighten married men, on the manner in which they should comport themselves as the chiefs and protectors of a confiding woman, for a husband who would, in that capacity, seek to obtain the approbation of society, instead of proceeding, with firmness and decision, as the strength which he would receive from being supported by the general sentiment ought to enable him to do,—would feel embarrassed and undecided at every step that he took.

Nor is the curiosity which induces society to pry, censoriously, into the conduct of husbands, awakened by the desire to befriend wives were such the case, its animadversions would almost entirely fall on those husbands that render their wives unhappy, by allowing themselves to be agitated by passions, on which they impose no restraint. Now, though it does sometimes happen that, when a husband suffers himself to be betrayed, by a favourite passion, into a shameful excess, the public manifest a violent indignation against him, yet, in general, is the married man treated with great indulgence,though he should prove the ruin of his family,-who lets it appear that nature has endued him with warm, good-natured feelings, but that, untaught to subdue, conscientiously, whatever might be his momentary ruling passion, he has not made them take a regular ascendency in his breast, for the benefit of all connected with him.

On the other hand, the man of unyielding, good principles, but who appears of rather an inflexible disposition, is looked on, in society, as a person undeserving of an amiable wife. It is true, that frequently after he is married, no aspersions are cast on him for his demeanour towards a wedded partner, because he dwells in such harmony with her, that society cannot avoid knowing that it has no pretence for censuring his conduct as a husband: but previous to his marriage, a man. of this description has unusual difficulty in obtaining a wife.

Fathers and brothers, in general, shun his alliance, though they would not scruple to bestow a daughter or a sister on a man whom they knew to have relaxed principles, and to be unfit to govern himself, provided that they believed him to have a heart overflowing so much with the milk of human

kindness, that it would be easy for a wife to acquire an absolute ascendency over him.

The maxims, at present, received in society, being such, that they teach it to let a beam pass in the eye of the husband who does wrong, because he is unexercised in self-government, sooner than a mote in that of another, who has good intentions and firm principles, but who exercises, somewhat injudiciously, his marital authority,—such maxims as these being received in society, it is easy to conceive that a deference for its opinion can only serve to embarrass the man who is, sincerely, anxious to govern himself and his wife with enlightened, steady wisdom.

A deference for the opinion of society is not only perplexing to the husbands who wish, with firmness, yet with a just moderation, to exercise the supreme rule in their families, but it also serves, treacherously, as I may say, to blind those who would require to be ruled by a discreet wife, from having no force in themselves, to resist the passions tempting them to swerve from the line of duty. Society, to a certain point, winks at, or even encourages the vicious wanderings of the men who veer with every wind of passion. But, after having indulgently connived at their misconduct, till they, considering themselves sanctioned by its opinion, entirely lose the habit of self-control, then should they, after having united a woman's destiny to theirs, be precipitated, by passions long become ungovernable, one step further down the rapid steep of vice than suits the notions prevailing in society, they find themselves, they scarcely know why, regarded by it as degenerate reprobates unworthy an admission into it.

This imperious, censorious kind of control which the opinion of society exercises over husbands, only serves to exasperate and humiliate them, for they have an instinctive feeling which tells them that they ought to find in it a friend and support, not an unkind censor.

In consequence of their displeasure on seeing it unduly armed against them, the sentiment of honour, which ought to prescribe to them the duty of being generous protectors to the woman who has committed herself to their power; that sentiment, their lively sensibility to which would be their

wives' best worldly security for meeting with, from them, liberal treatment, is enfeebled, or totally extinguished within them.

Instead of being counselled by their heart, generously to support a feeble companion, they only pity themselves för having inadvertently submitted to the degrading thraldom of matrimony.

Once the notion that the marriage state is, for their sex, one of unworthy bondage, spreads among the generality of men, it tempts them to become immoral, selfish, and despisers of women; rendering, in consequence, the situation of wives very deserted and unhappy.

§ 4. The relation between husband and wife, being that wherein nature designs that the manly and womanly character should particularly unite, in order that the latter may be drawn up to a level, at which it shall become a suitable companion for the former, is also the relation which makes the character of men most correspond, or even assimilate itself, by its weaknesses, to that of women. It is a relation which, while it enriches the heart of men and women with a variety of deep and tender feelings,-with which all persons must sympathize, or else be insensible barbarians,-still communicates, to both parties, a proneness to great weaknesses, that the system of society should induce them to soar above. It should, however, act upon them tenderly; not to crush in them those noble and delicate feelings, that the marriage connexion is proper to inspire to them.

If it should watch, with a kind of parental eye, over women, for the sake of granting to all the noble aspirations of their heart,-which the least relapse of the nation to barbarity, would tend to blight,-full liberty to mount; it should also extend to husbands the indulgence with which it contemplates them.

Husbands, considered, as such,-are not, if they have to deal with an enlightened society, the tyrants of women: they are simply,-morally speaking,-the partakers of their weakness; and, if they be somewhat stronger, they do not on that account, the less demand an indulgent treatment from society