I may be told that a number of women are not slaves in
the marriage state. True, but they then become tyrants; for it is
not rational freedom, but a lawless kind of power, resembling the
authority exercised by the favourites of absolute monarchs, which
they obtain by debasing means. I do not, likewise, dream of
insinuating that either boys or girls are always slaves, I only
insist, that when they are obliged to submit to authority blindly,
their faculties are weakened, and their tempers rendered imperious
or abject. I also lament, that parents, indolently availing
themselves of a supposed privilege, damp the first faint glimmering
of reason rendering at the same time the duty, which they are so
anxious to enforce, an empty name; because they will not let it
rest on the only basis on which a duty can rest securely: for,
unless it be founded on knowledge, it cannot gain sufficient
strength to resist the squalls of passion, or the silent sapping of
self-love. But it is not the parents who have given the surest
proof of their affection for their children, (or, to speak more
properly, who by fulfilling their duty, have allowed a natural
parental affection to take root in their hearts, the child of
exercised sympathy and reason, and not the over-weening offspring
of selfish pride,) who most vehemently insist on their children
submitting to their will, merely because it is their will.
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