t laws
might be passed or repealed here.' Our ancestors thought it not
proper that women should perform any, even private business, without
a director; but that they should be ever under the control of parents,
brothers, or husbands. We, it seems, suffer them, now, to interfere in
the management of state affairs, and to introduce themselves into the
forum, into general assemblies, and into assemblies of election. For,
what are they doing, at this moment, in your streets and lanes? What,
but arguing, some in support of the motion of the plebeian tribunes;
others, for the repeal of the law? Will you give the reins to their
intractable nature, and their uncontrolled passions, and then expect
that themselves should set bounds to their licentiousness, when you
have failed to do so? This is the smallest of the injunctions laid on
them by usage or the laws, all which women bear with impatience: they
long for liberty; or rather, to speak the truth, for unbounded freedom
in every particular. For what will they not attempt, if they now come
off victorious?

3. "Recollect all the institutions respecting the sex, by which
our forefathers restrained their undue freedom, and by which they
subjected them to their husbands; and yet, even with the help of all
these restrictions, you can scarcely keep them within bounds. If,
then, you suffer them to throw these off one by one, to tear them all
asunder, and, at last, to be set on an equal footing with yourselves,
can you imagine that they will be any longer tolerable by you? The
moment they have arrived at an equality with you, they will have
become your superiors. But, forsooth, they only object to any new
law being made against them: they mean to deprecate, not justice,
but severity. Nay, their wish is, that a law which you have admitted,
established by your suffrages, and confirmed by the practice and
experience of so many years to be beneficial, should now be repealed;
that is, that, by abolishing one law, you should weaken all the
rest. No law perfectly suits the convenience of every member of the
community: the only consideration is, whether, upon the whole, it be
profitable to the greater part. If because a law proves obnoxious to
a private individual, that circumstance should destroy and sweep it
away, to what purpose is it for the community to enact general laws,
which those, with reference to whom they were passed, could presently
repeal? I should like, however, to hear what th