it. What is more; in the
most naturally brutal and morally uneducated part of the lower
classes, the legal slavery of the woman, and something in the merely
physical subjection to their will as an instrument, causes them to
feel a sort of disrespect and contempt towards their own wife which
they do not feel towards any other woman, or any other human being,
with whom they come in contact; and which makes her seem to them an
appropriate subject for any kind of indignity. Let an acute observer
of the signs of feeling, who has the requisite opportunities, judge
for himself whether this is not the case: and if he finds that it is,
let him not wonder at any amount of disgust and indignation that can
be felt against institutions which lead naturally to this depraved
state of the human mind.

We shall be told, perhaps, that religion imposes the duty of
obedience; as every established fact which is too bad to admit of any
other defence, is always presented to us as an injunction of
religion. The Church, it is very true, enjoins it in her formularies,
but it would be difficult to derive any such injunction from
Christianity. We are told that St. Paul said, "Wives, obey your
husbands:" but he also said, "Slaves, obey your masters." It was not
St. Paul's business, nor was it consistent with his object, the
propagation of Christianity, to incite any one to rebellion against
existing laws. The apostle's acceptance of all social institutions as
he found them, is no more to be construed as a disapproval of
attempts to improve them at the proper time, than his declaration,
"The powers that be are ordained of God," gives his sanction to
military despotism, and to that alone, as the Christian form of
political government, or commands passive obedience to it. To pretend
that Christianity was intended to stereotype existing forms of
government and society, and protect them against change, is to reduce
it to the level of Islamism or of Brahminism. It is precisely because
Christianity has not done this, that it has been the religion of the
progressive portion of mankind, and Islamism, Brahminism, &c., have
been those of the stationary portions; or rather (for there is no
such thing as a really stationary society) of the declining portions.
There have been abundance of people, in all ages of Christianity, who
tried to make it something of the same kind; to convert us into a
sort of Christian Mussulmans, with the Bible for a Koran, prohibitin