women from political power in this State is simply usurpation.
"In every age and country," says the historian Gibbon, nearly a
hundred years ago, "the wiser or at least the stronger of the two
sexes has usurped the powers of the State, and confined the other
to the cares and pleasures of domestic life."

The historical fact is that the usurping class, as Gibbon calls
them, have always regulated the position of women by their own
theories and convenience. The barbaric Persian, for instance,
punished an insult to the woman with death, not because of her
but of himself. She was part of him. And the civilized English
Blackstone only repeats the barbaric Persian when he says that
the wife and husband form but one person--that is the husband.
Sir, it would be extremely amusing, if it were not tragical, to
trace the consequences of this theory on human society and the
unhappy effect upon the progress of civilization of this morbid
estimate of the importance of men. Gibbon gives a curious
instance of it, and an instance which recalls the spirit of the
modern English laws of divorce. There was a temple in Rome to the
goddess who presided over the peace of marriages. "But," says the
historian, "her very name, Viriplaca--the appeaser of
husbands--shows that repentance and submission were always
expected from the wife," as if the offense usually came from her.
In the "Lawe's resolution of Women's Rights," published in the
year 1632, a book which I have not seen, but of which there are
copies in the country, the anonymous and quaint author says, and
with a sly satire: "It is true that man and woman are one person,
but understand in what manner. When a small brooke or little
river incorporateth with Rhodanus, Humber, or the Thames, the
poor rivulet looseth her name; it is carried and recarried with
the new associate--it beareth no sway--it possesseth nothing
during coverture. A woman as soon as she is married is called
_covert_--in Latine, _nupta_--that is, veiled; as it were
overclouded and shadowed; she hath lost her streame. I may more
truly, farre away, say to a married woman, her new self is her
superior; her companion her master.... See here the reason of
that which I touched before--that women have no voice in
Parliament; they make no laws; they