Admitting This, It Is
Important To Enquire, What Is The Principle Common To Both, On Which
Their Mutual Welfare Depends,
And which is as certainly violated by
unfeeling rigour on one side, as by peevish rebellion on the other.
Several
Principles might be mentioned, claiming in part this
distinction, but none will answer all the conditions, except a right
sense of their entire and common dependence on the source of their
being and judge of their conduct, which is indeed the essence of
religion and morality. It is vain, in fact, to determine almost any
thing respecting such a creature as man, but by reasons of an eternal
nature, and referring to the laws of an invisible world. Every system
of an inferior kind, will be found inadequate in its application, and
unsatisfactory in its sanctions - calculated, it may be, to amuse the
philosopher in his closet, and attract the admiration of young and
inexperienced minds, but too weak to sustain the shock of human
passions, and too circumscribed to reach the heights of human hopes
and fears. The condition of women improves, undoubtedly, as a people
advances towards civilization; but there is a period in the process,
at which voluptuousness, more cruel than indifference, and often
maddened by jealousy, subjects her to greater degradation than her
original insignificance, and destroys all hope of her amelioration in
the tyranny of her own licentiousness. It is only where the principle
alluded to, is publicly recognised in the civil institutions of a
country, and conscientiously reverenced by the piety of its citizens,
that she attains the true dignity of her destiny in an equal
subordination, and vindicates the benevolence of the Deity in her
creation, by the increase of happiness she confers on her consort.
This cannot be looked for in a state of nature.
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