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 such critics 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 United States we have formally abandoned
this theory for one half of the human race, while for the other half it
flourishes with little change. The moment the claims of woman are broached,
the democrat becomes a monarchist. What Americans commonly criticise in
English statesmen, namely, that they habitually evade all arguments based
on natural right, and defend every legal wrong on the ground that it works
well in practice, is the precise defect in our habitual view of woman. The
perplexity must be resolved somehow. Most men admit that a strict adherence
to our own principles would place both sexes in precisely equal positions
before law and constitution, as well as in school and society. But each has
his special quibble to apply, showing that in this case we must abandon all
the general maxims to which we have pledged ourselves, and hold only by
precedent. Nay, he construes even precedent with the most ingenious rigor;
since the exclusion of women from all direct contact with affairs can be
made far more perfect in a republic than is possible in a monarchy, where
even sex is merged in rank, and the female patrician may have far more