evolves the duty of protecting and supporting them
through the wedded and the widowed state. The links that united them
to their parents are broken. All the reciprocity of rights and duties
which have bound together the parent and child from infancy is
considered to end with the consummation of her marriage; nor does the
stain of any subsequent female backsliding ever affect the family of
her parents; it can affect that only of her husband, who is held
alone responsible for her conduct. If a widow inherits the property
of her husband, on her death the property would go to her husband's
brother, supposing neither had any children by their husbands, in
preference to her own brother; but between the son and his parents
this reciprocity of rights and duties follows them to the grave.[2]
One is delighted to see in sons this habitual reverence for the
mother; but, as in the present case, it is too apt to occasion a
domineering spirit, which produces much mischief even in private
families, but still more in sovereign ones. A prince, when he attains
the age of manhood, and ought to take upon himself the duties of the
government, is often obliged to witness a great deal of oppression
and misrule, from his inability to persuade his widowed mother to
resign the power willingly into his hands. He often tamely submits to
see his country ruined, and his family dishonoured, as at Jhansi,
before he can bring himself, by some act of desperate resolution, to
wrest it from her grasp.[3] In order to prevent his doing so, or to
recover the reins he has thus obtained, the mother has often been
known to poison her own son; and many a princess in India, like
Isabella of England, has, I believe, destroyed her husband, to enjoy
more freely the society of her paramour, and hold these reins during
the minority of her son.[4]

In the exercise of dominion from behind the curtain (for it is those
who live behind the curtain that seem most anxious to hold it), women
select ministers who, to secure duration to their influence, become
their paramours, or, at least, make the world believe that they are
so, to serve their own selfish purposes. The sons are tyrannized over
through youth by their mothers, who endeavour to subdue their spirit
to the yoke, which they wish to bind heavy upon their necks for life;
and they remain through manhood timid, ignorant, and altogether
unfitted for the conduct of public affairs, and for the government of
men under a de