creature of purity, render it her true interest to remain under the protection of the aged and experienced. But the ill-judged restraint in which young women pass their lives prevents their ever acquiring experience for themselves. The valuable opportunity of practising self-guidance, under the eye of those who could step in to prevent real danger, is lost. The best and tenderest parents take too little pains to replace that healthy direction, given by professions to the minds of men, by an education that would enlarge women's views of their duties. Such narrow limits are set to their standard of excellence, that the powers which nature has given them are crippled rather than improved by education.

Women cannot have the same degree of excitement as men, but neither do they require it. Less active and enterprising by nature, they do well in a more confined sphere of action, but they cannot do without any. There will be contentment and perfection for woman as for man, in her limited sphere, so that the limits be fixed by the nature of things, and not the stinting of art.

Before I conclude this chapter, I shall endeavour to sanction the opinions it contains by quotations from a writer, whose sentiments on the subject are the most liberal of any I have met with.

* The quotations, being taken from various parts of the supposed "instruction to a rising colony," and from letters on more general subjects, will not be found together, nor in the same order in the book, as in this place, where they are arranged in a manner more consistent with the plan of the present work. In some instances, for the purpose of compression, the substance only of the original has been given.

"Here," says Jackson, in his Letters from Barbary, "the separation of the women is the great impediment to all the advances of the species, and one of the many pernicious consequences of the subordination of one sex to the other. I think even with us the sexes retiring so much from one another seldom proceeds from any good motive and has no good effects. In the history of nations you will see how manners and opinions have changed to contrary extremes; you may contemplate Spartan mothers exciting their sons to war and glory, and some modern mothers dreading to expose theirs even to the weather.

"If you dignify their character by a free and manly education, and keep them to a near resemblance with yourselves, they in return will temper and refine your manners, and without the danger of rendering you or your sons too effeminate; so that you will meet half way, and being more alike and better acquainted than formerly, objects of intercourse will multiply and you will be fitter company for each other. I have thought," says he, (in treating of the causes that misdirect our advances in knowledge and art, and lead finally to decay,) "that the best remedies to these evils may be hoped for, from the admission of women to a better education and more influence in the councils of taste and learning; and it might be as well, perhaps, if they were not entirely excluded from any other councils. We know from Sparta, that a wise government might do much towards modelling their character, and directing their education towards the public good.

I would have both sexes to join in some degree, and each to lend the helping hand of relief whenever it is possible. Women might be of great use in all the sedentary and learned professions.

"It is desirable that a right division of public labour, between corporate bodies and individuals, should bring all the powers of both sexes into activity. The share of the female part should be the formation of opinion and the circulation of knowledge; to improve them, their views must be raised. At present they are the great upholders of arbitrary power, love of rank, and superstition. Women might do much towards disseminating a general spirit of veracity. But the nature of female education at present does more harm by the bounds it sets to moral and intellectual elevation, than it does good by what it teaches; women, if left wholly to themselves, participate much more in the characters of men. Nor can I conceive with some that we should have less, but certainly more conjugal happiness in the world, by an increase of female wisdom and knowledge, by means of more numerous and more important objects of mutual intercourse and employ; I have known examples that confirm me in this opinion*. Strength of body and mind are perfectly compatible with softness and gentleness of manner. Beauty belongs more to strength than to weakness, and force is essential to grace.

"Many of those female weaknesses, which we term delicacy and pretend to admire, we secretly laugh at, or when our taste is vitiated so far as really to like

See Note N. at the end of the volume.

them, it is chiefly from their being symptoms of inferiority and subordination, that soothe and feed our pride and domineering spirit. Men subject to the mean fear or jealousy of female learning are certainly not the fittest to dictate, and they who do so are not usually the most learned or manly of men. Women should assuredly be so educated as to take the lead, well and wisely, in the fine arts and in elegance of every kind, personal and intellectual. But while we preclude them from every occupation that gives them self-importance, from all management of public and even of their own affairs, we have no right to complain of the consequences, of which a life and character of idleness and dissipation may be among the least pernicious. To attempt depriving them of their natural influence would be futile, and beginning at the wrong end; rather qualify them to exert it to some good purposes. We might as well expect in mechanics a self motion that should begin, continue, and end without a cause, as expect from human beings the duties of society, without sufficient motive and control. The less people are trusted the worse they are. Confidence creates the virtues it assumes. The less people manage their own concerns, the less responsibility, the less conscience they will have. The young and the governed repose on the judgment of their seniors, and content themselves with doing, or seeming to do as they are bid. In proportion as people are influenced by force or authority, they become languid, weak, and indolent; under opposite circumstances, all their powers increase by exercise. Some, it is true, will

go wrong; but the increase of evil will not be commensurate to the good. Neither is any evil essentially inseparable from liberty.

"Though we act the tyrants over the female part of society with more politeness than in former and rude times, yet all the romantic nonsense of modern gallantry and affected regard for the sex, the remains of chivalry, though better than nothing, we know to be an insufficient restraint on man, on his real power and assumed superiority. I fear, nothing but legal and acknowledged equality, and a liberal education, can secure to women their natural rights and

influence."

In the course of this chapter, I have so fully declared that the social position of women must ever be subordinate to that of the other sex, that I cannot omit to observe on the above terms, "legal and acknowledged equality," that nothing in the writings of this author leads to taking women out of their own sphere. That all men are equal in the eye of the law is the boast of the English constitution; legal and acknowledged equality, therefore, is consistent with social subordination, and tends to preserve to each party, the peculiar privileges which are reasonably and rightfully theirs.

Natural differences create forms of superiority which nothing can destroy; the weak and the strong, the rational and irrational, can never be on a level. Social differences, such as the privileges of rank and authority, are (or ought to be) created for the advantage of all. The office of justice is to control and direct both to the benefit and service of mankind,