“If they haint no business with the law, the law haint no business with them,” says I warmly. “Of the three classes that haint no business with the law--lunatics, idiots, and wimmin--the lunatics and idiots have the best time of it,” says I, with a great rush of ideas into my brain that almost lifted up the border of my head-dress. “Let a idiot kill a man; ‘What of it?’ says the law; let a luny steal a sheep; again the law murmurs in a calm and gentle tone, ‘What of it? they haint no business with the law and the law haint no business with them.’ But let one of the third class, let a woman steal a sheep, does the law soothe her in these comfortin’ tones? No, it thunders to her, in awful accents, ‘You haint no business with the law, but the law has a good deal of business with you, vile female, start for State’s prisen; you haint nothin’ at all to do with the law, only to pay all the taxes it tells you to--embrace a license bill that is ruinin’ your husband--give up your innocent little children to a wicked father if it tells you to--and a few other little things, such as bein’ dragged off to prison by it--chained up for life, and hung, and et cetery.’” Josiah sot motionless--and in a rapped eloquence I went on in the allegory way. “‘Methought I once heard the words,’ sighs the female, ‘True government consists in the consent of the governed;’ did I dream them, or did the voice of a luny pour them into my ear?’ “‘Haint I told you,’ frouns the law on her, ‘that that don’t mean wimmin--have I got to explain to your weakened female comprehension again, the great fundymental truth, that wimmin haint included and mingled in the law books and statutes of the country only in a condemnin’ and punishin’ sense, as it were. Though I feel it to be bendin’ down my powerful manly dignity to elucidate the subject further, I will consent to remind you of the consolin’ fact, that though you wimmin are, from the tender softness of your natures, and the illogical weakness of your minds, unfit from ever havin’ any voice in makin’ the laws that govern you; you have the right, and nobody can ever deprive you of it, to be punished in a future world jest as hard as a man of the strongest intellect, and to be hung in this world jest as dead as a dead man; and what more can you ask for, you unreasonable female woman you?’ “Then groans the woman as the great fundymental truth rushes upon her-- “‘I can be hung by the political rope, but I can’t help twist it.’ “‘Jest so,’ says the law, ‘that rope takes noble and manly fingers, and fingers of principle to twist it, and not the weak unprincipled grasp of lunatics, idiots, and wimmin.’