1822 May 13

Economy etc

Q. Does the greatest happiness principle require that the female sex

should be excluded from a participation in this function?

A. /A. Not any more than males./ Yes: if /No: unless/ persons of the

female sex are not members of the community if their happiness forms no portion of

the universal happiness - their interest of the universal interest: or the state of

their minds such as to demonstate them to be irremediably incapable of taking

/incapacitated from giving/ the direction to their own conduct without detriment to

their own interest

As to intellectual aptitude, no reason can be assigned /has ever been

assigned/ why in respect of that branch of appropriate aptitude this half of the

species ought to be deemed inferior to the other. Of experience - of experience /of

experience as far as it goes/ as applied to the highest situation in the scale of

power operative power the decision is rather /more/ in favour rather of the female

sex than of the male. In no two male reigns was England as prosperous as in the two

female reigns of Elizabeth and Ann. As to Ann whatever was the cause it was more

prosperous than that of her immediate male predecessor, a man as unamiable as she was

amiable. In intellectual aptitude Elizabeth of England shewed herself in an

incontestable degree superior to her immediate successor and even to the nearest of

her male and adult predecessors. If Ann was weak she was not more so than her two

immediate successors both males. If Mary put men to death for what was called

religion so did her father, and so did her next male successor: if Queen Mary put men

to death for what was called religion, so did Chief Justice Hale, the saint and hero

of English lawyers, for what was called Witchcraft.

As to intellectual aptitude considered as applied to the field of

thought and action at large two points require to be considered, in the first place

among writers for example in how small a degree the superiority is on the side of the

male sex. in the next place how small the number of those of the female sex whom laws

and institutions have left unexcluded from the competition in comparison of those

whom they have excluded.

They might be unapt for exercise of supreme operative power or a

share in it, and yet not be so for exercise of constitutive power in relation to

supreme operative power. But they can not be unapt for exercise of supreme

constitutive power i.e. constitutive power with relation to supreme operative power,

and at the same time apt with relation to supreme operative power.