95£ ANNUAL REGISTER, 1804. 



In Wales wives were sold to their hus- 

 bands. In Scotland women could not 

 appear as evidences in a court of jus- 

 tice. In the time of Henry the eighth, 

 an aft w«s passed prohibiting women 

 and apprentices from reading the 

 New Testament in the Enj;li3h lan- 

 guage. Among the polished Greeks 

 they w^re held in little estimation. 

 Uomtr degrades all his females : he 

 makes the Grecian princesses weave 

 the web, spin, and do all the drudgery 

 of a moiiern washer- woman ; and 

 rarely allows them any share of so- 

 cial intercourse with the other sex. 

 Yet the very foundations on which 

 he has co'.i--tru6ted his two matchless 

 poems, are Avosnen ! it appears also 

 from all the dramatic writers of an- 

 cient Greece, Avhose aim was " to 

 hold as 'twere the nyrror up to na- 

 ture, to shew tile very age and body 

 of the time its form and pressure,'' 

 that notwithstanding their extreme 

 delicacy of taste, and rapid progress 

 in the line arts, their manners were 

 low and coarse ; and that thcj' were 

 entire strangers to any other grati- 

 fication arising from the society of 

 women, than the indulgence of the 

 sensual appetite. Even the grave 

 Herodotus mentions, iu the highest 

 terms of approbation, the custom 

 of Babylon of selling by auftion, on 

 a certain fixed day, all the young 

 women who had any pretensions to 

 beauty, in order to raise a sum of 

 money for portioning otf the rest of 

 the females, to whom nature had 

 been less liberal in be?towing her 

 gifts, and who were knocked down 

 to those who were satisfied to take 

 them with the least money. This 

 degradation of women would seem 

 to be as impolitic as it is extraordi- 

 nary, since, under their guidance, 

 the earliest and sometimes the most 

 indelible (I believe 1 may safely 



add, the best and most amiable) 

 impressions are stamped on the 

 yo'.ithfid mind. In infancy their 

 protection is indispensably neces- 

 sary, and in sickness, or in old age, 

 they unquestionably afford the best 

 and kindest relief: or as a French 

 author has neatly observed, " Sans 

 hs Jl' mines ^ les dd!(x ex/remifef de la 

 vie seroient sans secjurs, et le iixHieu 

 sarii plaisirs. — Without women the 

 two extremities ot life would be help- 

 less, and the middle of it joyless." 



' • The Chinese, it' possible, have im- 

 posed on their women a greater de- 

 gree of humility and restraint than 

 the Greeks of old, or the Europe- 

 ans in the dark ages. Not satisfied 

 V, ith the physical deprivation of the 

 use of their limbs, they iiave con- 

 trived, in order to keep them the 

 more confined, to make it a moral 

 crime for a woman to be seen abroad. 

 If they should have occasion to vi- 

 sit a friend or relation, tiiey must be 

 carried in a close sedan chair : to 

 walk Mou'd be the height of vul- 

 garity. Even the country ladies, 

 who may not possess the luxury of 

 a cliair, rather than walk, suffer 

 thcmstlves to be sometimes rolled 

 about in a sort of covered wheel- 

 barrow. 'I'he wives and daughters, 

 however, of the lower class arc nei- 

 ther confined to the house, nor ex- 

 empt from hard and slavish labour, 

 many being obliged to work with an 

 infant upon their back, while the 

 husband, in all probability, is gam- 

 ing, or otherwise idling away his- 



tiine. 1 have frequently seen 



women assisting to drag a sort of 

 light plough, and the harrow. — 

 Nieuwhotf, in one of his prints, 

 taken from drawings supposed to be 

 made in China, yokes, if 1 mistake 

 not, a woman to the same plough 

 with an ass. Should this be the 



factj 



