What then is justice but the rule for dispensing the widest beneficence, with the least selfish interest on the part of the bestower? For justice lays no claim to any return, not even to thanks. It might be objected that if justice be indeed the most extensive beneficence, we ought to be more grateful for it than for acts of generosity, which would be contrary to natural sentiment. This objection will vanish, if we reflect that generosity presupposes that justice has first been fulfilled: it would excite small gratitude, to rob a man of his rights and then give him back part as a present. But when justice has been satisfied, the generosity that ministers to wants, which justice cannot relieve, naturally excites the warmer emotion. It leaves all the general good, and supplies the particular besides. It comes in where no right can be granted, and where all rules must cease; but it never could supply the place of rule: all the benevolence in the world would never compensate for the absence of a system of rights and justice. No human charity, liberality, friendship, or love, dispensed by any wisdom our nature is capable of, could spread through society the plenty, the security, the independence, the industry, the contentment that flow from the administration of justice: and in fact, if gratitude be measured by the duration and extensiveness of love and respect, rather than by momentary intensity, it may be affirmed with great truth, that no virtue excites it so much as justice.

NOTE I, (p. 201.)

In the text the remark upon justice is not offered as a full definition of the term; in fact, it leaves out that remarkable part of our sense of justice, which leads us to think happiness the due meed of virtue, and pain and punishment that of vice, independently of any theory in men's minds about the utility of such examples to society. But it seemed unnecessary to consider that branch of the subject which has no peculiar connexion with the rights of women. The definition is true as far as it goes.

NOTE K, (p. 203.)

To refer the substitution of justice for force, to reason, is not inconsistent with deriving its origin from our native sympathy with each other, as already done in a preceding place. If we had no power whatever of knowing each other's feelings, or no satisfaction whatever in their good, it would be impossible for us to form any notion of what would be just towards them; reason could have no data to go upon. It signifies not how weak, people may reckon our sympathy compared with our selfishness; weak or strong, it is an element of our nature which certainly exists, and is indispensable to the perception of justice. Another proof that justice springs from reason, is its absence in the case of brutes and the lowest orders of human nature. In animals sympathy exists, but not such reason as can ripen those

sympathies into rights and justice. In savages, where their sympathies exist, as they do between one another, some principles of justice begin to show themselves, but for strangers they have not sympathy, and as their reason is uncultivated, so justice fails to appear.

NOTE L, (p. 213.)

A question has occasionally been raised, and I believe by more than one writer, whether the right of voting be not unjustly withheld from women. But it seems an almost conclusive objection to giving them the franchise, that by the very principle upon which it is bestowed, women are unfit for it, being always under influence. There are no doubt some cases of exception to that rule, but so there are to every other rule, by which persons are excluded from the right. Perhaps no other rule is so extensively true, as that women are under influence. But farther, women have no political interests apart from those of men. The public measures that are taken, the restrictions or taxes imposed on the community do not affect them more than male subjects. In all such respects, the interests of the two sexes are identified. As citizens, therefore, they are sufficiently represented already. To give them the franchise would just double the number of voters, without introducing any new interest, and far from improving society, few things would tend more to dissever and corrupt it.

But the disabilities or oppressions to which they

are subject as women, could not be in any degree remedied by possessing the franchise. Interests of that description, being exclusively female, would come into collision, not, as in other cases, with the interests of a class or a party, but with those of the whole male sex, and one of two things would happen. Either one sex would be arrayed in a sort of general hostility to the other, or they would be divided amongst themselves. Than the first, nothing could possibly be devised more disastrous to the condition of women. They would be utterly crushed; the old prejudices would be revived against their education, or their meddling with anything but household duties. Every man of mature age would probably stipulate on marrying, that his wife should forswear the use of the franchise, and all ideas connected with political influence or the coarse and degrading contentions of the elections.

If each sex were divided among themselves on particular questions, unprincipled men would endeavour to secure their elections, by creating female parties. Men of such characters now disguise their personal interests, by affecting to adopt some measure popular with the mob, or suited only to the partial interests of some locality. They do not always desire to forward such measures; but they delude and corrupt the people by using them as pretexts. If women had the franchise, men would address themselves to the worst part of the sex, the most clamorous, and those least restrained by female decorum. The pretexts made use of to delude them would probably be injudicious, as measures, and condemned by the informed and reflecting of their own sex.

It has been maintained throughout this work, that the interests of women can be served, chiefly through opinion, though without denying that some legal enactments might also be required for certain special hardships. Can it be seriously imagined by any dispassionate woman, that those legal changes could be as well brought about, by the power of now and then forcing an advocate into the legislature, as by their general influence in society, won through their own moral and mental deserts, and identified in men's minds with the influence, which justice must always retain over their feelings?

Conducted as elections now are, scenes of violence and tumult, women would be subject to every species of insult. It may be imagined that a remedy might be found for that—but what remedy would be found for the inflictions no law could reach or define, and which they would suffer at home for that exertion of their right, which was opposed to the interests or prejudices of their male relations? Can it be supposed the ballot would give any security? Surely not. Intimidation and bribery, already so mischievous, would be far more dangerous to the timidity, and comparative poverty of women, than they now are to men. And educated as they are, their most honest decisions would be worse formed, even than those of the other sex, defective as the political knowledge of the greater number is still allowed to be.