watch and see whether the
earth does not move.

In this present treatment of the subject, we have been more anxious to
assert broad principles than to work them out into the details of their
application. We only point out the plain fact: woman must be either
a subject or an equal; there is no other permanent ground. Every
concession to a supposed principle only involves the necessity of the
next concession for which that principle calls. Once yield the alphabet,
and we abandon the whole long theory of subjection and coverture; the
past is set aside, and we have nothing but abstractions to fall back
upon. Reasoning abstractly, it must be admitted that the argument has
been, thus far, entirely on the women's side, inasmuch as no man has yet
seriously tried to meet them with argument. It is an alarming feature of
this discussion, that it has reversed, very generally, the traditional
positions of the sexes: the women have had all the logic; and the most
intelligent men, when they have attempted the other side, have limited
themselves to satire and gossip. What rational woman, we ask, can be
convinced by the nonsense which is talked in ordinary society around
her,--as, that it is right to admit girls to common schools, and equally
right to exclude them from colleges,--that it is proper for a woman
to sing in public, but indelicate for her to speak in public,--that a
post-office box is an unexceptionable place to drop a bit of paper into,
but a ballot-box terribly dangerous? No cause in the world can keep
above water, sustained by such contradictions as these, too feeble and
slight to be dignified by the name of fallacies. Some persons profess to
think it impossible to reason with a woman, and they certainly show no
disposition to try the experiment.

But we must remember that all our American institutions are based on
consistency, or on nothing; all claim to be founded on the principles of
natural right, and when they quit those, they are lost. In all European
monarchies, it is the theory, that the mass of the people are children,
to be governed, not mature beings, to govern themselves. This is clearly
stated, and consistently applied. In the free states of this Union, we
have formally abandoned this theory for one half of the human race,
while for the other half it still flourishes in full force. The moment
the claims of woman are broached, the democrat becomes a monarchist.
What Americans commonly criticize in English st