true, we ought to act as if we believed it, and not to ordain that
to be born a girl instead of a boy, any more than to be born black
instead of white, or a commoner instead of a nobleman, shall decide
the person's position through all life--shall interdict people from
all the more elevated social positions, and from all, except a few,
respectable occupations. Even were we to admit the utmost that is
ever pretended a to the superior fitness of men for all the
functions now reserve to them, the same argument applies which
forbids a legal qualification for Members of Parliament. If only
once in a dozen years the conditions of eligibility exclude a fit
person, there is a real loss, while the exclusion of thousands of
unfit persons is no gain; for if the constitution of the electoral
body disposes them to choose unfit persons, there are always plenty
of such persons to choose from. In all things of any difficulty and
importance, those who can do them well are fewer than the need,
even with the most unrestricted latitude of choice: and any
limitation of the field of selection deprives society of some
chances of being served by the competent, without ever saving it
from the incompetent. 

At present, in the more improved countries, the disabilities of
women are the only case, save one, in which laws and institutions
take persons at their birth, and ordain that they shall never in
all their lives be allowed to compete for certain things. The one
exception is that of royalty. Persons still are born to the
throne; no one, not of the reigning family, can ever occupy it, and
no one even of that family can, by any means but the course of
hereditary succession, attain it. All other dignities and social
advantages are open to the whole male sex: many indeed are only
attainable by wealth, but wealth may be striven for by anyone, and
is actually obtained by many men of the very humblest origin. The
difficulties, to the majority, are indeed insuperable without the
aid of fortunate accidents; but no male human being is under any
legal ban: neither law nor opinion superadd artificial obstacles to
the natural ones. Royalty, as I have said, is excepted: but in this
case everyone feels it to be an exception--an anomaly in the modern
world, in marked opposition to its customs and principles, and to
be justified only by extraordinary special expediences, which,
though individuals and nations differ in estimating their weight,
unquestionably do in fact exist. But in this exceptional case, in
which a high social function is, for important reasons, bestowed on
birth instead of being put up to competition, all free nations
contrive to adhere in substance to the principle from which they
nominally derogate; for they circumscribe this high function by
conditions avowedly intended to prevent the person to whom it
ostensibly belongs from really performing it; while the person by
whom it is performed, the responsible minister, does obtain the
post by a competition from which no full-grown citizen of the male
sex is legally excluded. The disabilities, therefore, to which
women are subject from the mere fact of their birth, are the
solitary examples of the kind in modern legislation. In no instance
except this, which comprehends half the human race, are the higher
social functions closed against anyone by a fatality of birth which
no exertions, and no change of circumstances, can overcome; for
even religious disabilities (besides that in England and in Europe
they have practically almost ceased to exist) do not close any
career to the disqualified person in case of conversion. 

The social subordination of women thus stands out an isolated fact
in modern social institutions; a solitary breach of what has become
their fundamental law; a single relic of an old world of thought
and practice exploded in everything else, but retained in the one
thing of most universal interest; as if a gigantic dolmen, or a
vast temple of Jupiter Olympius, occupied the site of St. Paul's
and received daily worship, while the surrounding Christian
churches were only resorted to on fasts and festivals. This entire
discrepancy between one social fact and all those which accompany
it, and the radical opposition between its nature and the
progressive movement which is the boast of the modern world, and
which has successively swept away everything else of an analogous
character, surely affords, to a conscientious observer of human
tendencies, serious matter for reflection. It raises a prima facie
presumption on the unfavourable side, far outweighing any which
custom and usage could in such circumstances create on the
favourable;and should at least suffice to make this, like the
choice between republicanism and royalty, a balanced question. 

The least that can be demanded is, that the question should not be
considered as prejudged by existing fact and existing opinion, but
open to discussion on its merits, as a question of justice and
expediency: the decision on this, as on any of the other social
arrangements of mankind, depending on what an enlightened estimate
of tendencies and consequences may show to be most advantageous to
humanity in general, without distinction of sex. And the discussion
must be a real discussion, descending to foundations, and not
resting satisfied with vague and general assertions. It will not
do, for instance to assert in general terms, that the experience of
mankind has pronounced in favour of the existing system. Experience
cannot possibly have decided between two courses, so long as there
has only been experience of one. If it be said that the doctrine of
the equality of the sexes rests only on theory, it must be
remembered that the contrary doctrine also has only theory to rest
upon. All that is proved in its favour by direct experience, is
that mankind have been able to exist under it, and to attain the
degree of improvement and prosperity which we now see; but whether
that prosperity has been attained sooner, or is now greater, than
it would have been under the other system, experience does not say.
on the other hand, experience does say, that every step in
improvement has been so invariably accompanied by a step made in
raising the social position of women, that historians and