to "write his wife a
bill of divorcement and give it in her hand, and send her out of his
house?"

Would women in Turkey or Persia have made it a heinous, if not capital,
offence for a wife to be seen abroad with her face not covered by an
impenetrable veil?

Would women in England, however learned, have been for ages subjected to
execution for offences for which men, who could read, were only
subjected to burning in the hand and a few months imprisonment?

The principle which governs in these cases, or which has done so
hitherto, has been at all times and everywhere the same. Those who
succeed in obtaining power, no matter by what means, will, with rare
exceptions, use it for their exclusive benefit. Often, perhaps
generally, this is done in the honest belief that such use is for the
best good of all who are affected by it. A wrong, however, to those upon
whom it is inflicted, is none the less a wrong by reason of the good
motives of the party by whom it is inflicted.

The condition of subjection in which women have been held is the result
of this principle; the result of superior strength, not of superior
rights, on the part of men. Superior strength, combined with ignorance
and selfishness, but not with malice. It is a relic of the barbarism in
the shadow of which nations have grown up. Precisely as nations have
receded from barbarism the severity of that subjection has been relaxed.
So long as merely physical power governed in the affairs of the world,
the wrongs done to women were without the possibility of redress or
relief; but since nations have come to be governed by laws, there is
room to hope, though the process may still be a slow one, that injustice
in all its forms, or at least political injustice, may be extinguished.
No injustice can be greater than to deny to any class of citizens not
guilty of crime, all share in the political power of a state, that is,
all share in the choice of rulers, and in the making and administration
of the laws. Persons to which such share is denied, are essentially
slaves, because they hold their rights, if they can be said to have any,
subject to the will of those who hold the political power. For this
reason it has been found necessary to give the ballot to the emancipated
slaves. Until this was done their emancipation was far from complete.
Without a share in the political powers of the state, no class of
citizens has any security for its rights, and the history of nat