to teachers and
employers, as the interests of their children require.

In most other cases, in a truly democratic state, each individual is
allowed to choose for himself, who shall take the position of his
superior. No woman is forced to obey any husband but the one she chooses
for herself; nor is she obliged to take a husband, if she prefers to
remain single. So every domestic, and every artisan or laborer, after
passing from parental control, can choose the employer to whom he is to
accord obedience, or, if he prefers to relinquish certain advantages, he
can remain without taking a subordinate place to any employer.

Each subject, also, has equal power with every other, to decide who
shall be his superior as a ruler. The weakest, the poorest, the most
illiterate, has the same opportunity to determine this question, as the
richest, the most learned, and the most exalted.

And the various privileges that wealth secures, are equally open to all
classes. Every man may aim at riches, unimpeded by any law or
institution which secures peculiar privileges to a favored class, at the
expense of another. Every law, and every institution, is tested by
examining whether it secures equal advantages to all; and, if the people
become convinced that any regulation sacrifices the good of the majority
to the interests of the smaller number, they have power to abolish it.

The institutions of monarchical and aristocratic nations are based on
precisely opposite principles. They secure, to certain small and favored
classes, advantages, which can be maintained, only by sacrificing the
interests of the great mass of the people. Thus, the throne and
aristocracy of England are supported by laws and customs, which burden
the lower classes with taxes, so enormous, as to deprive them of all the
luxuries, and of most of the comforts, of life. Poor dwellings, scanty
food, unhealthy employments, excessive labor, and entire destitution of
the means and time for education, are appointed for the lower classes,
that a few may live in palaces, and riot in every indulgence.

The tendencies of democratic institutions, in reference to the rights
and interests of the female sex, have been fully developed in the United
States; and it is in this aspect, that the subject is one of peculiar
interest to American women. In this Country, it is established, both by
opinion and by practice, that woman has an equal interest in all social
and civil concerns; and