Yes, she has the same passions, and requires, like him, to have them corrected; not by repressing them, but by calling them forth, and teaching her, resolutely, to encounter them. Where you attempt to stifle them in her breast, you only contract her mind, you cannot purify it.

§ 2. By arresting, in women, the natural current of personal ambition, you do a great moral injury to men.

First By depriving them of those incentives to virtue, which they would derive from acquiring a deep sense of her charms. They would acquire this sense from the anxiety with which they would watch, in women, the impulse of ambition. They would recognise, in regard to them, with incomparably greater quickness than they do relatively to themselves, how much this passion is contemptible and disfiguring, when it is not regulated by the laws of virtue.

Secondly-By nullifying the influence, which women, whose ambition had been purified by the enlightened cares of society, would exercise over men.

§ 3. A great moral injury is also done to women by not allowing to their personal ambition its proper scope.

Women are entirely abandoned, in consequence, to those strong, partial affections, which prompt them to forget their country's weal, for the sake of promoting the private interest of their family.

By being left thus resigned to them, they are denied the opportunity to undergo that mental process by which it is the especial intention of nature, that the desires of their heart shall be rectified.

The process to which I allude, lies in a conflict established between their general principles, and particular affections. Their general principles, which should bid them prefer, to every partial advantage, the good of their country.

Their particular affections, which tempt them to postpone that good to the private interests of their family.

Their true triumph over their weak, erring nature, consists in the display, on their part, of such vigour of mind, as that their principles gain the victory.

Where women are left, as they now are, with no other concern than to attend to the welfare of their family, surely their

task is rendered too easy for creatures who ought to become virtuous by combating their native propensities. Though they may have rigorous obligations to fulfil in regard to the objects of their private affections, yet these affections are commonly so strong that they impel them by an irresistible force, willingly to make every sacrifice which they may require of them.

Whilever, therefore, women's chief duty is made to consist in an entire abnegation of self for the sake of their families, instead of in a vigorous resolution to establish a happy accord between their private and public affections; we shall see great numbers of them whom we must, in justice, pronounce to have performed, in an exemplary manner, the duties imposed on them by the construction of the society; and yet whom it will be impossible for our hearts to reverence as characters, determined to obey, whatever it may cost them, the ordinances of virtue.

4. Notwithstanding that amiable, pious women, never, perhaps, more abounded in this and the neighbouring kingdoms than they do at present; yet, the complaint which aged persons generally make of the rapid increase, in them, of a deplorable corruption of morals, is, I believe, too well founded, for it to be reasonable to conclude, that it originates, solely, in the cynical, peevish temper which, too often, accompanies declining years. It, therefore, appears, that the excellently disposed women to whom I allude, exercise but little influence over their fellow-creatures, and, indeed, when we observe them closely, we cannot help being struck with the idea that their views are too petty, too little favourable to the beneficial display in the world of all the powers of mind and frame with which mankind are endowed, for them to induce men to hearken to them; or for society to be, at all, inclined to fashion itself according to their notions of a virtuous system of social order.

§ 5. If they be not proper to advance, on earth, the reign of virtue and good national morals; if, too, as I think it probable, the system of social order established here below, has direct bearings on the polity of the inhabitants of higher spheres, this world will be far from doing its part, in sending, continually, to nobler globes, beings proper to contribute their

share to perfecting, throughout the universe, a glorious system of moral order, whilever the holy women, who indulge a well founded trust in the application to them of their Saviour's promise to receive, after death, pious souls into mansions of bliss, shall have such narrow or false views, concerning their duties to their neighbour, that their conduct, owing to their forming to themselves an impracticable type of the perfection to which nations should endeavour to arrive, is more likely to introduce.disorders into society, than widely to improve it, throughout its various classes.

WOMEN

CHAPTER XIII.

ARE VIRTUALLY SUBMITTED TO THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OPINIONS OF SOCIETY, NOT TO THAT OF THE WISDOM OF THEIR HUSBANDS.

By the constitutions of society, the character of women is made originally to depend on a husband and a father. This consideration naturally leads to the enquiry whether nature has formed men to be themselves, in their domestic capacity, of so robust, a moral constitution, that they can, individually, serve for a steady and sure support to all the virtues which ought to crown the female part of their family.

As to their conduct to their daughters, I shall not enter into any disquisition respecting it.

It evidently depends, usually, on the nature of their relations with their mother. But in regard to their behaviour, as husbands, I shall say, that it does not appear to me that nature's general rule has granted them a character of sufficient firmness to enable them to govern their wives according to their own notions, unaided by the maxims reigning in the world around them. In fact, I do not consider that I advance a paradox in asserting that it is not immediately to their husbands, but to the laws sanctioned by the opinion of society that women, speaking generally, are submitted.

Throughout Europe, many are the customs affecting wedded

life, so revolting to a husband's feelings,* that it may fairly be inferred that they would never have suffered them to be introduced, were they practically in possession of half the authority which is legally ascribed to them.

Notwithstanding their despotic power, they are so timidly ruled by public opinion, that a wife perfectly obedient to her husband, may yet commit great errors, for both will be likely to go entirely wrong, if the public opinion be depraved.

The legislator who confides the guidance of a wife solely to her husband's wisdom, and takes no pains to purify the opinions of society, abandons the character of married women, that is, of the females the most influential over their own, and over the other sex, entirely to the power of the fantastical notions of the giddy multitude, and to the caprices of the mode.

This abandonment, to such tutors, of the conduct and way of thinking of married women, affords matter of very serious consideration to those who, like me, believe it to be nature's design, that the persons who would willingly labour to render mankind virtuous and orderly, ought to begin with inducing women to distinguish themselves by their virtues and their enlightened attachment to order; since pure, well directed sentiments, must take their first rise in their bosom, and be, by them, communicated to the other sex.

CHAPTER XIV.

DISCUSSION ON THE MORAL BOND OF UNION OF SAVAGE PEOPLE, TENDING TO SHOW, THAT THE LAW PLACING WIVES IN ABSOLUTE SUBJECTION TO THEIR HUSBANDS, ANSWERS, AMONG THEM, THE ENDS PROPOSED BY ITS ENACTMENT, THOUGH IT DOES NOT IN THESE COUNTRIES.

§ 1.-If I be right in thinking that the reign of national good order cannot be promoted by making men absolute in

* Witness the Italian, Cavalieri Serventi.

their families, it would appear, that almost all mankind have, throughout all ages, been under a great mistake; since their usual custom has ever been to invest husbands with a large discretionary power, with a view to their charging themselves solely, with the obligation wisely to control a wife's conduct.

This measure was, however, much more productive of good effects in former ages than it is at present in the civilized world: the truth of this proposition, without our giving ourselves the trouble of scrutinizing into the ancient customs of different nations, will appear, I think, sufficiently, if we just cast a cursory glance, on the nature of the moral bond of union which holds together, as one people, a number of savage

men.

They are held together-as from the accounts of them I judge-by a general, sympathetic wish to keep women in subjection; for, had they not this wish, I do not think it probable that views of interest would ever have induced them to associate together. Each of them would, in all likelihood, have lived apart, shut up in the bosom of his own family, making war with all the rest of his species, and the human race would soon have become extinct. To obviate this evil, men's hostile passions were taught by nature, to direct themselves so far on the other sex, as to excite, in them, a brotherly interest with their own.

Here we cannot avoid having the curiosity to inquire, by what different process does nature ordain that, whilst among all the inferior animals, the weaker sex lives peaceably under the protection of the stronger, it is obnoxious in the human race alone, to finding its yoke a tyrannic one.

She partly, I believe, produces this singular contrast, by ordering that mankind shall be differently affected from any of the brute creation, by amatory passions.

Among the various tribes composing the latter, the attraction between the sexes is either promiscuous, in which case all the males are kindly disposed towards all the females.

Or else it unites together constant couples. Where it acts in this manner, the female lives happily under the protection of her tender mate.

In mankind, alone, does it seem, in any considerable degree,