essity, either of the
one slavery or of the other. By degrees such thinkers did arise: and
(the general progress of society assisting) the slavery of the male
sex has, in all the countries of Christian Europe at least (though,
in one of them, only within the last few years) been at length
abolished, and that of the female sex has been gradually changed into
a milder form of dependence. But this dependence, as it exists at
present, is not an original institution, taking a fresh start from
considerations of justice and social expediency--it is the primitive
state of slavery lasting on, through successive mitigations and
modifications occasioned by the same causes which have softened the
general manners, and brought all human relations more under the
control of justice and the influence of humanity. It has not lost the
taint of its brutal origin. No presumption in its favour, therefore,
can be drawn from the fact of its existence. The only such
presumption which it could be supposed to have, must be grounded on
its having lasted till now, when so many other things which came down
from the same odious source have been done away with. And this,
indeed, is what makes it strange to ordinary ears, to hear it
asserted that the inequality of rights between men and women has no
other source than the law of the strongest.

That this statement should have the effect of a paradox, is in some
respects creditable to the progress of civilization, and the
improvement of the moral sentiments of mankind. We now live--that is
to say, one or two of the most advanced nations of the world now
live--in a state in which the law of the strongest seems to be
entirely abandoned as the regulating principle of the world's
affairs: nobody professes it, and, as regards most of the relations
between human beings, nobody is permitted to practise it. When any
one succeeds in doing so, it is under cover of some pretext which
gives him the semblance of having some general social interest on his
side. This being the ostensible state of things, people flatter
themselves that the rule of mere force is ended; that the law of the
strongest cannot be the reason of existence of anything which has
remained in full operation down to the present time. However any of
our present institutions may have begun, it can only, they think,
have been preserved to this period of advanced civilization by a
well-grounded feeling of its adaptation to human nature, and
conduciven