sband and wife, the
executive part being in the husband; both have their privileges secured
to them by law and reason; but will any man infer from the husband being
invested with the executive power, that the wife is deprived of her
share, and that she has no remedy left but preces and lacrymae, or
an appeal to a supreme court of judicature? No less frivolous are the
arrangements that are drawn from the general appellations and terms
of husband and wife. A husband denotes several different sorts of
magistracy, according to the usages and customs of different climates
and countries. In some eastern nations it signifies a tyrant, with the
absolute power of life and death. In Turkey it denotes an arbitrary
governor, with power of perpetual imprisonment; in Italy it gives the
husband the power of poison and padlocks; in the countries of England,
France, and Holland, it has a quite different meaning, implying a free
and equal government, securing to the wife in certain cases the liberty
of change, and the property of pin-money and separate maintenance.
So that the arguments drawn from the terms of husband and wife are
fallacious, and by no means fit to support a tyrannical doctrine, as
that of absolute unlimited chastity and conjugal fidelity.

"The general exhortations to fidelity in wives are meant only for
rules in ordinary cases, but they naturally suppose three conditions
of ability, justice, and fidelity in the husband; such an unlimited,
unconditioned fidelity in the wife could never be supposed by reasonable
men. It seems a reflection upon the Church to charge her with doctrines
that countenance oppression.

"This doctrine of the original right of change is congruous to the law
of Nature, which is superior to all human laws, and for that I dare
appeal to all wives: It is much to the honour of our English wives that
they have never given up that fundamental point, and that though in
former ages they were muffled up in darkness and superstition, yet that
notion seemed engraven on their minds, and the impression so strong that
nothing could impair it.

"To assert the illegality of change, upon any pretence whatsoever, were
to cast odious colours upon the married state, to blacken the necessary
means of perpetuating families--such laws can never be supposed to have
been designed to defeat the very end of matrimony. I call them necessary
means, for in many cases what other means are left? Such a doctrine
wounds the hon