"
TO
M. TALLEYRAND PERIGORD,
LATE BISHOP OF AUTUN.
Sir:--
Having read with great pleasure a pamphlet, which you have lately
published, on National Education, I dedicate this volume to you,
the first dedication that I have ever written, to induce you to
read it with attention; and, because I think that you will
understand me, which I do not suppose many pert witlings will, who
may ridicule the arguments they are unable to answer. But, sir, I
carry my respect for your understanding still farther: so far,
that I am confident you will not throw my work aside, and hastily
conclude that I am in the wrong because you did not view the
subject in the same light yourself. And pardon my frankness, but I
must observe, that you treated it in too cursory a manner,
contented to consider it as it had been considered formerly, when
the rights of man, not to advert to woman, were trampled on as
chimerical. I call upon you, therefore, now to weigh what I have
advanced respecting the rights of woman, and national education;
and I call with the firm tone of humanity. For my arguments, sir,
are dictated by a disinterested spirit: I plead for my sex, not
for myself. Independence I have long considered as the grand
blessing of life, the basis of every virtue; and independence I
will ever secure by contracting my wants, though I were to live on
a barren heath.
It is, then, an affection for the whole human race that makes my
pen dart rapidly along to support what I believe to be the cause of
virtue: and the same motive leads me earnestly to wish to see
woman placed in a station in which she would advance, instead of
retarding, the progress of those glorious principles that give a
substance to morality.
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