and social position and the whole habit of a life, must
easily recognise in that influence a complete explanation of nearly
all the apparent differences between women and men, including the
whole of those which imply any inferiority.

As for moral differences, considered as distinguished from
intellectual, the distinction commonly drawn is to the advantage of
women. They are declared to be better than men; an empty compliment,
which must provoke a bitter smile from every woman of spirit, since
there is no other situation in life in which it is the established
order, and considered quite natural and suitable, that the better
should obey the worse. If this piece of idle talk is good for
anything, it is only as an admission by men, of the corrupting
influence of power; for that is certainly the only truth which the
fact, if it be a fact, either proves or illustrates. And it _is_ true
that servitude, except when it actually brutalizes, though corrupting
to both, is less so to the slaves than to the slave-masters. It is
wholesomer for the moral nature to be restrained, even by arbitrary
power, than to be allowed to exercise arbitrary power without
restraint. Women, it is said, seldomer fall under the penal
law--contribute a much smaller number of offenders to the criminal
calendar, than men. I doubt not that the same thing may be said, with
the same truth, of negro slaves. Those who are under the control of
others cannot often commit crimes, unless at the command and for the
purposes of their masters. I do not know a more signal instance of
the blindness with which the world, including the herd of studious
men, ignore and pass over all the influences of social circumstances,
than their silly depreciation of the intellectual, and silly
panegyrics on the moral, nature of women.

The complimentary dictum about women's superior moral goodness may be
allowed to pair off with the disparaging one respecting their greater
liability to moral bias. Women, we are told, are not capable of
resisting their personal partialities: their judgment in grave
affairs is warped by their sympathies and antipathies. Assuming it to
be so, it is still to be proved that women are oftener misled by
their personal feelings than men by their personal interests. The
chief difference would seem in that case to be, that men are led from
the course of duty and the public interest by their regard for
themselves, women (not being allowed to have private inte