“Whatever may be the customs and laws of a country, women always give the tone to morals. Whether slaves or free, they reign, because their empire is that of the affections. This influence, however, is more or less salutary, according to the degree of esteem in which they are held: they make men what they are. It seems as though Nature had made man’s intellect depend upon their dignity, as she has made his happiness depend upon their virtue. This, then, is the law of eternal justice, man cannot degrade woman without himself falling into degradation: he cannot elevate her without at the same time elevating himself. Let us cast our eyes over the globe! Let us observe those two great divisions of the human race, the East and the West. Half the old world remains in a state of inanity, under the oppression of a rude civilization: the women there are slaves; the other advances in equalization and intelligence: the women there are free and honoured.

“If we wish, then, to know the political and moral condition of a state, we must ask what rank women hold in it. Their influence embraces the whole life. A wife, a mother, two magical words, comprising the sweetest sources of man’s felicity. Theirs is the reign of beauty, of love, of reason. Always a reign! A man takes counsel with his wife; he obeys his mother; he obeys her long after she has ceased to live, and the ideas which he has received from her become principles stronger even than his passions.

“The reality of the power is not disputed; but it may be objected that it is confined in its operation to the family circle: as if the aggregate of families did not constitute the nation! The man carries with him to the forum the notions which the woman has discussed with him by the domestic hearth. His strength there realizes what her gentle insinuations inspired. It is sometimes urged as matter of complaint that the business of women is confined to the domestic arrangements of the household: and it is not recollected that from the household of every citizen issue forth the errors and prejudices which govern the world!

“If, then, there be an incontestable fact, it is the influence of women: an influence extended, with various modifications, through the whole of life. Such being the case, the question arises, by what inconceivable negligence a power of universal operation has been overlooked by moralists, who, in their various plans for the amelioration of mankind, have scarcely deigned to mention this potent agent. Yet evidence, historical and parallel, proves that such negligence has lost to mankind the most influential of all agencies. The fact of its existence cannot be disputed; it is, therefore, of the greatest importance that its nature should be rightly understood, and that it be directed to right objects."

It would not be uninteresting to trace the action and reaction by which women have degraded and been degraded alternately the source and the victims of mistaken social principles; but it would be foreign to the design and compass of this work to do so. The subject, indeed, would afford matter for a philosophical treatise of deep interest, rather than for a chapter of a small work. A rapid historical sketch, and a few deductions which seem to bear upon the main point, are all that can be here attempted.

The gospel announced on this, as on every other subject, a grand comprehensive principle, which it was to be the work of ages (perhaps of eternity) to develop. The rescue of this degraded half of the human race was henceforth the ascertained will of the Almighty. But a long series of years were to elapse before this will worked out its issues. Its decrees, with the noble doctrines of which it formed a part, lay buried beneath the ruins of human intellect. But they were only buried, not destroyed; and rose, like wildflowers on a ruined edifice, to adorn the irregularity which they could not conceal. The fantastic institutions of chivalry which it is now the fashion to deride (how unjustly!) were among the first scions of this plant of heavenly origin. They bore the impress of heaven, faint and distorted indeed, but not to be mistaken! Devotion to an ideal good, self-sacrifice, subjugation of selfish and sensual feelings; wherever these principles are found, disguised, disfigured though they be, they are not of the earth, earthly. They, like the fabled amaranth, are plants which are not indigenous here below! The seeds must come from above, from the source of all that is pure, of all that is good! Of these principles the gospel was the remote source: women were the disseminators. “Shut up in their castellated towers, they civilized the warriors who despised their weakness, and rendered less barbarous the passions and prejudices which themselves shared." It was they who directed the savage passions and brute force of men to an unselfish aim, the defence of the weak, and added to courage the only virtue then recognised humanity. “Thus chivalry prepared the way for law, and civilization had its source in gallantry."

At this epoch, the influence of women was decidedly beneficial; happy for them and for society if it had continued to be so! If we attempt to trace the source of this influence, we shall find it in the intellectual equality of the two sexes; equally ignorant of what we call knowledge, the respect due by men to virtue and beauty was not checked by any disdain of real or fancied superiority on their part.

The intellectual exercises (chiefly imaginative) of the time, so far from forming a barrier between the two sexes, were a bond of union. The song of the minstrel was devoted to the praise of beauty, and paid by her smile. The spirit of the age, as imbodied in these effusions, is the best proof of the beneficial influence exercised over that age by our sex. In them, the name of woman is not associated in the degrading catalogue of man’s pleasures, with his bottle and his horse, but is coupled with all that is fair and pure in nature, the fields, the birds, the flowers; or high in virtue or sentiment, with honour, glory, self-sacrifice.

To the age of chivalry succeeded the revival of letters; and (strange to say!) this revival was any thing but advantageous to the cause of women. Men found other paths to glory than the exercise of valour afforded, and paths into which women were forbidden to follow them. Into these newly-discovered regions, women were not allowed to penetrate, and men returned thence with real or affected contempt for their unintellectual companions, without having attained true wisdom enough to know how much they would gain by their enlightenment.

The advance of intelligence in men not being met by a corresponding advance in women, the latter lost their equilibrium in the social balance. Honour, glory, were no longer attached to the smile of beauty. The dethroned sovereigns, from being imperious, became abject, and sought, by paltry arts, to perpetuate the empire which was no longer conceded as a right. Influence they still possessed, but an influence debased in its character, and changed in its mode of operation. Instead of being the objects of devotion of heart, fantastic, indeed, but high-minded, they became the mere playthings of the imagination, or worse, the mere objects of sensual passion. Respect is the only sure foundation of influence. Women had ceased to be respected: they therefore ceased to be beneficially influential. That they retained another and a worse kind of influence, may be inferred from the spirit, as imbodied in the literature, of the period. Fiction no longer sought its heroes among the lofty in mind and pure in morals its heroines in spotless virgins and faithful wives. The reckless voluptuary, the faithless and successful adulteress, these were the noble beings whose deeds filled the pages which formed the delight of the wise and the fair. The ultimate issues of these grievous errors were most strikingly developed in the respective courts of Louis XIV. and Charles II., where they reached their climax. The vicious influence of which we have spoken was then at its height, and the degradation of women had brought on its inevitable consequence, the degradation of men. With some few exceptions, (such exceptions, indeed, prove rules!) we trace this evil influence in the contempt of virtue, public and private; in the base passions, the narrow and selfish views peculiar to degraded women, and reflected on the equally degraded men whom such women could have power to charm.

A change of opinions and of social arrangements has long been operating, which ought entirely to have abrogated these evils. That they have not done so is owing to a grand mistake. Women having recovered their rights, moral and intellectual, have resumed their importance in the eye of reason: they have long been the ornaments of society, which from them derives its tone, and it has become too much the main object of their education to cultivate the accomplishments which may make them such. A twofold injury has arisen from this mistaken aim; it has blinded women as to the true nature and end of their existence, and has excited a spirit of worldly ambition opposed to the devoted unselfishness necessary for its accomplishment. This is the error of the unthinking the reflecting have fallen into another, but not less serious one. The coarse, but expressive satire of Luther, “That the human mind is like an intoxicated man on horseback, if he is set up on one side, he falls off on the other,” was never more fully justified than on this subject. Because it is perceived that women have a dignity and value greater than society or themselves have discovered, because their talents and virtues place them on a footing of equality with men, it is maintained that their present sphere of action is too contracted a one, and that they ought to share in the public functions of the other sex. Equality, mental and physical, is proclaimed! This is matter too ludicrous to be treated anywhere but in a professed satire; in sober earnest, it may be asked, upon what grounds so extraordinary a doctrine is built up! Were women allowed to act out these principles, it would soon appear that one great range of duty had been left unprovided for in the schemes of Providence; such an omission would be without parallel. Two principal points only can here be brought forward, which oppose this plan at the very outset; they are

1st. Placing the two sexes in the position of rivals, instead of coadjutors, entailing the diminution of female influence.

2d. Leaving the important duties of woman only in the hands of that part of the sex least able to perform them efficiently.

The principle of divided labour seems to be a maxim of the Divine government, as regards the creature. It is only by a concentration of powers to one point, that so feeble a being as man can achieve great results. Why should we wish to set aside this salutary law, and disturb the beautiful simplicity of arrangement which has given to man the power, and to woman the influence, to second the plans of Almighty goodness? They are formed to be co-operators, not rivals, in this great work; and rivals they would undoubtedly become, if the same career of public ambition and the same rewards of success were open to both. Woman, at present, is the regulating power of the great social machine, retaining, through the very exclusion complained of, the power to judge of questions by the abstract rules of right and wrong a power seldom possessed by those whose spirits are chafed by opposition and heated by personal contest.

The second resulting evil is a grave one, though, in treating of it, also, it is difficult to steer clear of ludicrous associations. The political career being open to women, it is natural to suppose that all the most gifted of the sex would press forward to confer upon their country the benefit of their services, and to reap for themselves the distinction which such services would obtain; the duties hitherto considered peculiar to the sex would sink to a still lower position in public estimation than they now hold, and would be abandoned to those least able conscientiously to fulfil them. The combination of legislative and maternal duties would indeed be a difficult task, and, of course, the least ostentatious would be sacrificed.

Yet women have a mission! ay, even a political mission of immense importance! which they will best fulfil by moving in the sphere assigned them by Providence: not comet-like, wandering in irregular orbits, dazzling indeed by their brilliancy, but terrifying by their eccentric movements and doubtful utility. That the sphere in which they are required to move is no mean one, and that its apparent contraction arises only from a defect of intellectual vision, it is the object of the succeeding chapters to prove.