John found daily fresh proofs of the infidelity and bad designs of
his deceased wife; amongst other things, one day looking over his
cabinet, he found the following paper:--

"It is evident that matrimony is founded upon an original contract,
whereby the wife makes over the right she has by the law of Nature
in favour of the husband, by which he acquires the property of all
her posterity. But, then, the obligation is mutual; and where the
contract is broken on one side it ceases to bind on the other.
Where there is a right there must be a power to maintain it and to
punish the offending party. This power I affirm to be that original
right, or rather that indispensable duty lodged in all wives in the
cases above mentioned. No wife is bound by any law to which herself
has not consented. All economical government is lodged originally
in the husband and wife, the executive part being in the husband;
both have their privileges secured to them by law and reason; but
will any man infer from the husband being invested with the
executive power, that the wife is deprived of her share, and that
she has no remedy left but preces and lacrymae, or an appeal to a
supreme court of judicature? No less frivolous are the arrangements
that are drawn from the general appellations and terms of husband
and wife. A husband denotes several different sorts of magistracy,
according to the usages and customs of different climates and
countries. In some eastern nations it signifies a tyrant, with the
absolute power of life and death. In Turkey it denotes an arbitrary
governor, with power of perpetual imprisonment; in Italy it gives
the husband the power of poison and padlocks; in the countries of
England, France, and Holland, it has a quite different meaning,
implying a free and equal government, securing to the wife in
certain cases the liberty of change, and the property of pin-money