that no domestic, civil, or political,
institution, is right, which sacrifices her interest to promote that of
the other sex. But in order to secure her the more firmly in all these
privileges, it is decided, that, in the domestic relation, she take a
subordinate station, and that, in civil and political concerns, her
interests be intrusted to the other sex, without her taking any part in
voting, or in making and administering laws. The result of this order of
things has been fairly tested, and is thus portrayed by M. De
Tocqueville, a writer, who, for intelligence, fidelity, and ability,
ranks second to none.

"There are people in Europe, who, confounding together the different
characteristics of the sexes, would make of man and woman, beings not
only equal, but alike. They would give to both the same functions,
impose on both the same duties, and grant to both the same rights. They
would mix them in all things,--their business, their occupations, their
pleasures. It may readily be conceived, that, by _thus_ attempting to
make one sex equal to the other, both are degraded; and, from so
preposterous a medley of the works of Nature, nothing could ever result,
but weak men and disorderly women.

"It is not thus that the Americans understand the species of democratic
equality, which may be established between the sexes. They admit, that,
as Nature has appointed such wide differences between the physical and
moral constitutions of man and woman, her manifest design was, to give a
distinct employment to their various faculties; and they hold, that
improvement does not consist in making beings so dissimilar do pretty
nearly the same things, but in getting each of them to fulfil their
respective tasks, in the best possible manner. The Americans have
applied to the sexes the great principle of political economy, which
governs the manufactories of our age, by carefully dividing the duties
of man from those of woman, in order that the great work of society may
be the better carried on.

"In no country has such constant care been taken, as in America, to
trace two clearly distinct lines of action for the two sexes, and to
make them keep pace one with the other, but in two pathways which are
always different. American women never manage the outward concerns of
the family, or conduct a business, or take a part in political life; nor
are they, on the other hand, ever compelled to perform the rough labor
of the fields, or to make a