§ 1.

Equity knows no difference of sex. In its vocabulary the word man must be understood in a generic, and not in a specific sense. The law of equal freedom manifestly applies to the whole race—female as well as male. The same à priori reasoning which establishes that law for men (Chaps. III. and IV.), may be used with equal cogency on behalf of women. The Moral Sense, by virtue of which the masculine mind responds to that law, exists in the feminine mind as well. Hence the several rights deducible from that law must appertain equally to both sexes.

This might have been thought a self-evident truth, needing only to be stated to meet with universal acceptation. There are many, however, who either tacitly, or in so many words, express their dissent from it. For what reasons they do so, does not appear. They admit the axiom, that human happiness is the Divine will; from which axiom, what we call rights are primarily derived. And why the differences of bodily organization, and those trifling mental variations which distinguish female from male, should exclude one half of the race from the benefits of this ordination, remains to be shown. The onus of proof lies on those who affirm that such is the fact; and it would be perfectly in order to assume that the law of equal freedom comprehends both sexes, until the contrary has been demonstrated. But without taking advantage of this, suppose we go at once into the controversy.

Three positions only are open to us. It may be said that Edition: current; Page: [156] women have no rights at all—that their rights are not so great as those of men—or that they are equal to those of men.

Whoever maintains the first of these dogmas, that women have no rights at all, must show that the Creator intended women to be wholly at the mercy of men—their happiness, their liberties, their lives, at men’s disposal; or, in other words, that they were meant to be treated as creatures of an inferior order. Few will have the hardihood to assert this.

From the second proposition, that the rights of women are not so great as those of men, there immediately arise such queries as—If they are not so great, by how much are they less? What is the exact ratio between the legitimate claims of the two sexes? How shall we tell which rights are common to both, and where those of the male exceed those of the female? Who can show us a scale that will serve for the apportionment? Or, putting the question practically, it is required to determine by some logical method, whether the Turk is justified in plunging an offending Circassian into the Bosphorus? whether the rights of women were violated by that Athenian law, which allowed a citizen under certain circumstances to sell his daughter or sister? whether our own statute, which permits a man to beat his wife in moderation, and to imprison her in any room in his house, is morally defensible? whether it is equitable that a married woman should be incapable of holding property? whether a husband may justly take possession of his wife’s earnings against her will, as our law allows him to do?—and so forth. These, and a multitude of similar problems, present themselves for solution. Some principle rooted in the nature of things has to be found, by which they may be scientifically decided—decided, not on grounds of expediency, but in some definite, philosophical way. Does any one holding the doctrine that women’s rights are not so great as men’s, think he can find such a principle?

If not, there remains no alternative but to take up the third position—that the rights of women are equal with those of men.

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