It is vain to expect virtue from women till they are, in some
degree, independent of men; nay, it is vain to expect that
strength of natural affection, which would make them good wives
and mothers. Whilst they are absolutely dependent on their
husbands they will be cunning, mean, and selfish, and the men who
can be gratified by the fawning fondness of spaniel-like
affection, have not much delicacy, for love is not to be bought,
in any sense of the words, its silken wings are instantly
shrivelled up when any thing beside a return in kind is sought.
Yet whilst wealth enervates men; and women live, as it were, by
their personal charms, how can we expect them to discharge those
ennobling duties which equally require exertion and self-denial.
Hereditary property sophisticates the mind, and the unfortunate
victims to it, if I may so express myself, swathed from their
birth, seldom exert the locomotive faculty of body or mind; and,
thus viewing every thing through one medium, and that a false
one, they are unable to discern in what true merit and happiness
consist. False, indeed, must be the light when the drapery of
situation hides the man, and makes him stalk in masquerade,
dragging from one scene of dissipation to another the nerveless
limbs that hang with stupid listlessness, and rolling round the
vacant eye which plainly tells us that there is no mind at
home.
