for a woman of proper discernment, and of refined taste and liberal education, to consider herself, simply because of her sex, inferior to her own male relatives, or indeed to any one of the opposite sex, of the same intellectual powers, literary attainments, and position in society.  Nothing but the influence of a misdirected or perverted education, or the most extreme degradation and ignorance, can in any one induce the belief that woman is the inferior of man, merely because she is a woman.

No business firm could remain together in harmony for a single day, if it were understood that one of the partners assumed the position that he was superior to the other, who, prior to entering into the partnership, had been received in the same social circles, and who had brought into the business an equal proportion of funds and of business talent.  And doubly preposterous would the assumption be, if it were based on the fact that the assumer was the larger or physically stronger man; and, because possessed of more of the animal nature than his partner, it therefore became his right to dictate to and control the other.

Such an assumption as this is no more absurd, nor is the reasoning upon which it is based more illogical, than that which asserts that woman, because she is a woman, is therefore an inferior, to be ruled at the discretion of her husband or sons in her own home; and that she ought to be contented to be considered such, and to be so treated by her own nation and in her own family.  The carrying out of such an idea is more than absurd.  It is monstrous.  It is an imposition that has only been tolerated because the exactions are not in every case so bad as the system is capable of enforcing; and it is one from which every advocate of Christian liberty, to be consistent with his profession, should withdraw both countenance and toleration.

The history of woman’s wrongs has for ages been written in tears, often with her life-blood; and yet the volume has, in most instances, been concealed in her own bosom, notwithstanding its fearful weight.  But if, at any time, as sometimes happens, unable to keep it hidden longer, she unfolds the pages of her grief to others, what an outcry is raised against her!  The oppressed Italian peasant, the Russian serf, the Spanish or American black, all, if they are only of the male sex, may make their wrongs public, may even resist oppression to the death, and be applauded for so doing.  But let a woman speak so that she can be heard, no matter how great the outrages from which she has suffered, let her couch her timid complaint in ever such delicate language, and what a storm of invective is hurled at her!  The very act of complaining is declared—­by the advocates of her inferiority—­to be in itself unwifely, indecent.  “A woman’s voice has no business to be heard outside of her own house; nor there, if her lord decrees otherwise,” say they.  It is asserted that