ion of the public, the very same act may be punished alternately
as a crime or only as a fault. The Americans know not this iniquitous
division of duties and rights; amongst them the seducer is as much
dishonored as his victim. It is true that the Americans rarely lavish
upon women those eager attentions which are commonly paid them in
Europe; but their conduct to women always implies that they suppose them
to be virtuous and refined; and such is the respect entertained for
the moral freedom of the sex, that in the presence of a woman the
most guarded language is used, lest her ear should be offended by an
expression. In America a young unmarried woman may, alone and without
fear, undertake a long journey.

The legislators of the United States, who have mitigated almost all the
penalties of criminal law, still make rape a capital offence, and no
crime is visited with more inexorable severity by public opinion.
This may be accounted for; as the Americans can conceive nothing more
precious than a woman's honor, and nothing which ought so much to be
respected as her independence, they hold that no punishment is too
severe for the man who deprives her of them against her will. In France,
where the same offence is visited with far milder penalties, it is
frequently difficult to get a verdict from a jury against the prisoner.
Is this a consequence of contempt of decency or contempt of women? I
cannot but believe that it is a contempt of one and of the other.

Thus the Americans do not think that man and woman have either the duty
or the right to perform the same offices, but they show an equal regard
for both their respective parts; and though their lot is different, they
consider both of them as beings of equal value. They do not give to the
courage of woman the same form or the same direction as to that of man;
but they never doubt her courage: and if they hold that man and his
partner ought not always to exercise their intellect and understanding
in the same manner, they at least believe the understanding of the one
to be as sound as that of the other, and her intellect to be as clear.
Thus, then, whilst they have allowed the social inferiority of woman
to subsist, they have done all they could to raise her morally and
intellectually to the level of man; and in this respect they appear
to me to have excellently understood the true principle of democratic
improvement. As for myself, I do not hesitate to avow that, although