ood requires us to deprive the whole female sex of the right of
self-government. They have no voice in the formation of the laws which
dispose of their persons and property. When married, we despoil them
almost entirely of a legal existence, and deny them some of the most
essential rights of property. We treat all minors much in the same way,
depriving them of many personal and almost all political rights, and
that too though they may be far more competent to exercise them aright
than many adults. We, moreover, decide that a majority of one may make
laws for the whole community, no matter whether the numerical majority
have more wisdom or virtue than the minority or not. Our plea for all
this is, that the good of the whole is thereby most effectually
promoted. This plea, if made out, justifies the case. In England and
France they believe that the good of the whole requires that the right
of governing, instead of being restricted, to all adult males, as we
arbitrarily determine, should be confined to that portion of the male
population who hold a given amount of property. In Prussia and Russia,
they believe with equal confidence, that public security and happiness
demand that all power should be in the hands of the king. If they are
right in their opinion, they are right in their practice. The principle
that social and political organizations are designed for the general
good, of course requires they should be allowed to change, as the
progress of society may demand. It is very possible that the feudal
system may have been well adapted to the state of Europe in the middle
ages. The change in the condition of the world, however, has gradually
obliterated almost all its features. The villein has become the
independent farmer; the lord of the manor, the simple landlord; and the
sovereign leige, in whom, according to the fiction of the system, the
fee of the whole country vested, has become a constitutional monarch. It
may be that another series of changes may convert the tenant into an
owner, the lord into a rich commoner, and the monarch into a president.
Though these changes have resulted in giving the people the enjoyment of
a larger amount of their rights than they formerly possessed, it is not
hence to be inferred that they ought centuries ago to have been
introduced suddenly or by violence. Christianity "operates as
alterative." It was never designed to tear up the institutions of
society by the roots. It produces equal