dge or ignorance, ease or labor,
power or subjection, mark the endless diversity in the condition of men.

But we have not arrived at the profundity of the maxim. This inequality
is, in a great measure, the result of abuses in the institutions of
society. They do not speak of what exists, but of what ought to exist.
Every one should be left at liberty to obtain all the advantages of
society which he can compass, by the free exertion of his faculties,
unimpeded by civil restraints. It may be said that this would not remedy
the evils of society which are complained of. The inequalities to which
I have referred, with the misery resulting from them, would exist in
fact under the freest and most popular form of government that man could
devise. But what is the foundation of the bold dogma so confidently
announced? Females are human and rational beings. They may be found of
better faculties, and better qualified to exercise political privileges,
and to attain the distinctions of society, than many men; yet who
complains of the order of society by which they are excluded from them?
For I do not speak of the few who would desecrate them; do violence to
the nature which their Creator has impressed upon them; drag them from
the position which they necessarily occupy for the existence of
civilized society, and in which they constitute its blessing and
ornament--the only position which they have ever occupied in any human
society--to place them in a situation in which they would be alike
miserable and degraded. Low as we descend in combating the theories of
presumptuous dogmatists, it cannot be necessary to stoop to this. A
youth of eighteen may have powers which cast into the shade those of any
of his more advanced cotemporaries. He may be capable of serving or
saving his country, and if not permitted to do so now, the occasion may
have been lost forever. But he can exercise no political privilege, or
aspire to any political distinction. It is said that, of necessity,
society must exclude from some civil and political privileges those who
are unfitted to exercise them, by infirmity, unsuitableness of
character, or defect of discretion; that of necessity there must be some
general rule on the subject, and that any rule which can be devised will
operate with hardship and injustice on individuals. This is all that can
be said, and all that need be said. It is saying, in other words, that
the privileges in question are no matter of nat