i go Literary and Philosophical Society. 



in this age when women's rights are much talked about, it 

 is not without interest : 



' Since these propositions were first published I have 

 repeatedly considered the subject of the rights of women, 

 and I am perfectly unable to suggest any argument in sup- 

 port of the political superiority so generally arrogated to 

 the male sex which will not equally apply to any system of 

 despotism of man over man. The first of these Propositions 

 on Civil Government is just as applicable to women as 

 men. The fact is, that we behave to the female sex much 

 in the same manner as we behave to the poor. We first 

 keep their minds and thus their persons in subjection, we 

 educate women from infancy to marriage in such a way as 

 to debilitate both their corporeal and mental powers. All 

 the accomplishments we teach them are directed not to 

 their future benefit in life, but to the amusement of the 

 male sex ; and having for a series of years with much 

 assiduity, and sometimes at much expense, incapacitated 

 them for any serious occupation, we say they are not fit to 

 govern themselves, and arrogate the right of making them 

 our slaves through life. Thus we too frequently wed play- 

 things and not friends and companions, and we in our turn 

 are the dupes of cunning, and the victims of all the petty 

 passions as a just reward for the tyrannical maxims we are 

 at such pains to inculcate. I have read the writings of Mrs. 

 M. Graham, of Miss Wollstoncroft, of Mrs. Barbauld, of 

 Mrs. Montague, Miss Carter, Miss Seward, Mrs. Dobson, 

 Miss H. M. Williams, &c., in England. I have conversed 

 with Theroigne, with Madame Condorcet, Madame Robert, 

 Madame Lavoisier, &c., in Paris. What these women are 

 other women might become. I have often felt my own 

 inferiority, and often lamented the present iniquitous and 



