erse with the defendant. The
despotic power which the law gives to the husband may be a reason to
make the wife assent to any compromise by which power is practically
shared between the two, but it cannot be the reason why the husband
does. That there is always among decently conducted people a
practical compromise, though one of them at least is under no
physical or moral necessity of making it, shows that the natural
motives which lead to a voluntary adjustment of the united life of
two persons in a manner acceptable to both, do on the whole, except
in unfavourable cases, prevail. The matter is certainly not improved
by laying down as an ordinance of law, that the superstructure of
free government shall be raised upon a legal basis of despotism on
one side and subjection on the other, and that every concession which
the despot makes may, at his mere pleasure, and without any warning,
be recalled. Besides that no freedom is worth much when held on so
precarious a tenure, its conditions are not likely to be the most
equitable when the law throws so prodigious a weight into one scale;
when the adjustment rests between two persons one of whom is declared
to be entitled to everything, the other not only entitled to nothing
except during the good pleasure of the first, but under the strongest
moral and religious obligation not to rebel under any excess of
oppression.

A pertinacious adversary, pushed to extremities, may say, that
husbands indeed are willing to be reasonable, and to make fair
concessions to their partners without being compelled to it, but that
wives are not: that if allowed any rights of their own, they will
acknowledge no rights at all in any one else, and never will yield in
anything, unless they can be compelled, by the man's mere authority,
to yield in everything. This would have been said by many persons
some generations ago, when satires on women were in vogue, and men
thought it a clever thing to insult women for being what men made
them. But it will be said by no one now who is worth replying to. It
is not the doctrine of the present day that women are less
susceptible of good feeling, and consideration for those with whom
they are united by the strongest ties, than men are. On the contrary,
we are perpetually told that women are better than men, by those who
are totally opposed to treating them as if they were as good; so that
the saying has passed into a piece of tiresome cant, intended to put
a