instead of good, is immensely swelled by women's
contributions, and stimulated by their influence. Not that this is a
mistake likely to be made by women, where they have actually the
practical management of schemes of beneficence. It sometimes happens
that women who administer public charities--with that insight into
present fact, and especially into the minds and feelings of those
with whom they are in immediate contact, in which women generally
excel men--recognise in the clearest manner the demoralizing
influence of the alms given or the help afforded, and could give
lessons on the subject to many a male political economist. But women
who only give their money, and are not brought face to face with the
effects it produces, how can they be expected to foresee them? A
woman born to the present lot of women, and content with it, how
should she appreciate the value of self-dependence? She is not
self-dependent; she is not taught self-dependence; her destiny is to
receive everything from others, and why should what is good enough
for her be bad for the poor? Her familiar notions of good are of
blessings descending from a superior. She forgets that she is not
free, and that the poor are; that if what they need is given to them
unearned, they cannot be compelled to earn it: that everybody cannot
be taken care of by everybody, but there must be some motive to
induce people to take care of themselves; and that to be helped to
help themselves, if they are physically capable of it, is the only
charity which proves to be charity in the end.

These considerations show how usefully the part which women take in
the formation of general opinion, would be modified for the better by
that more enlarged instruction, and practical conversancy with the
things which their opinions influence, that would necessarily arise
from their social and political emancipation. But the improvement it
would work through the influence they exercise, each in her own
family, would be still more remarkable.

It is often said that in the classes most exposed to temptation, a
man's wife and children tend to keep him honest and respectable, both
by the wife's direct influence, and by the concern he feels for their
future welfare. This may be so, and no doubt often is so, with those
who are more weak than wicked; and this beneficial influence would be
preserved and strengthened under equal laws; it does not depend on
the woman's servitude, but is, on the cont