ther will use the power solely for the good of the person
subjected to it. Marriage is the only actual bondage known to our
law. There remain no legal slaves, except the mistress of every
house.

It is not, therefore, on this part of the subject, that the question
is likely to be asked, _Cui bono_? We may be told that the evil would
outweigh the good, but the reality of the good admits of no dispute.
In regard, however, to the larger question, the removal of women's
disabilities--their recognition as the equals of men in all that
belongs to citizenship--the opening to them of all honourable
employments, and of the training and education which qualifies for
those employments--there are many persons for whom it is not enough
that the inequality has no just or legitimate defence; they require
to be told what express advantage would be obtained by abolishing it.

To which let me first answer, the advantage of having the most
universal and pervading of all human relations regulated by justice
instead of injustice. The vast amount of this gain to human nature,
it is hardly possible, by any explanation or illustration, to place
in a stronger light than it is placed by the bare statement, to any
one who attaches a moral meaning to words. All the selfish
propensities, the self-worship, the unjust self-preference, which
exist among mankind, have their source and root in, and derive their
principal nourishment from, the present constitution of the relation
between men and women. Think what it is to a boy, to grow up to
manhood in the belief that without any merit or any exertion of his
own, though he may be the most frivolous and empty or the most
ignorant and stolid of mankind, by the mere fact of being born a male
he is by right the superior of all and every one of an entire half of
the human race: including probably some whose real superiority to
himself he has daily or hourly occasion to feel; but even if in his
whole conduct he habitually follows a woman's guidance, still, if he
is a fool, she thinks that of course she is not, and cannot be, equal
in ability and judgment to himself; and if he is not a fool, he does
worse--he sees that she is superior to him, and believes that,
notwithstanding her superiority, he is entitled to command and she is
bound to obey. What must be the effect on his character, of this
lesson? And men of the cultivated classes are often not aware how
deeply it sinks into the immense majority of male