on, and this is certainly neither from lack of talent nor
lack of zeal. I venture to believe that it will be the same with
regard to equality of rights between the two sexes. It is sufficiently
curious that, in a great number of countries, women have been judged
incapable of all public functions yet worthy of royalty; that in
France a woman has been able to be regent, and yet that up to 1776 she
could not be a milliner or dressmaker ("marchande des modes") in
Paris, except under cover of her husband's name;[2] and that, lastly,
in our elective assemblies they have accorded to rights of property
what they have refused to natural right. Many of our noble deputies
owe to ladies the honour of sitting among the representatives of the
nation. Why, instead of depriving of this right women who were owners
of landed estates, was it not extended to all those who possessed
property or were heads of households? Why, if it be found absurd to
exercise the right of citizenship by proxy, deprive women of this
right, rather than leave them the liberty of exercising it in person?

[2] Before the suppression of "jurandes," in 1776, women
could neither carry on a business of a "marchande des modes"
(milliner and dressmaker) nor of any other profession
exercised by them, unless they were married, or unless some
man lent or sold them his name for that purpose.--_See_
preamble of the Edict of 1776.

REMARKS.

Although I am not aware of any previous translation of the foregoing
essay, and do not remember to have seen anywhere any allusion to this
first publication on the subject of woman's emancipation, yet I have
been struck by the close similarity of the arguments used by J. S.
Mill and by those who have succeeded him in the advocacy of women's
electoral freedom to those used by the Marquis de Condorcet in this
essay. It could not, indeed, well be otherwise, since the fundamental
principle of equal rights, and equal claim to protection in the
exercise of these rights, must present itself in the same forcible
light to any really intelligent person who is truly anxious to lay
down just and fair principles of government. That it should be within
the reach of every individual of the human race to attain to the power
of influencing the Government under which he or she lives, follows
inevitably to logical minds, and the only exceptions which can fairly
be made are those of the immature and the failures.

The im