ill it be maintained that Mistress Macaulay would not have expressed
her opinions in the House of Commons better than many representatives
of the British nation? In dealing with the question of liberty of
conscience, would she not have expressed more elevated principles than
those of Pitt, as well as more powerful reasoning? Although as great
an enthusiast on behalf of liberty as Mr. Burke could be on behalf of
its opposite, would she, while defending the French Constitution, have
made use of such absurd and offensive nonsense as that which this
celebrated rhetorician made use of in attacking it? Would not the
adopted daughter of Montaigne have better defended the rights of
citizens in France, in 1614, than the Councillor Courtin, who was a
believer in magic and occult powers? Was not the Princesse des Ursins
superior to Chamillard? Could not the Marquise de Chatelet have
written equally as well as M. Rouille? Would Mme. de Lambert have made
laws as absurd and as barbarous as those of the "garde des Sceaux," of
Armenouville, against Protestants, invaders of domestic privacy,
robbers and negroes? In looking back over the list of those who have
governed the world, men have scarcely the right to be so very
uplifted.

Women are superior to men in the gentle and domestic virtues; they, as
well as men, know how to love liberty, although they do not
participate in all its advantages; and in republics they have been
known to sacrifice themselves for it. They have shown that they
possess the virtues of citizens whenever chance or civil disasters
have brought them upon a scene from which they have been shut out by
the pride and the tyranny of men in all nations.

It has been said that women, in spite of much ability, of much
sagacity, and of a power of reasoning carried to a degree equalling
that of subtle dialecticians, yet are never governed by what is called
"reason."

This observation is not correct. Women are not governed, it is true,
by the reason (and experience) of men; they are governed by their own
reason (and experience).

Their interests not being the same (as those of men) by the fault of
the law, the same things not having the same importance for them as
for men, they may, without failing in rational conduct, govern
themselves by different principles, and tend towards a different
result. It is as reasonable for a woman to concern herself respecting
her personal attractions as it was for Demosthenes to cultivate