The difference in our treatment of women has very materially changed their points of attraction. While we can see no beauty in a woman without enlightenment, and can find no full companionship in her without her knowledge of our world and its affairs, these qualities are not so much considered by you. The idea of a fitness to live together, as equals in everything, is not entertained, by either the one or the other of you, in these serious life contracts. Your women submit their dependence as a virtue, and it is accepted, as well as their gentleness,--so often assumed,--as a flattering offer to men’s vanity of power. There is seldom a marriage among you without the hidden satisfaction of a man with his new entrance into authority. Any subsequent development of individuality or independence of character in the women, must result in discord. We meet each other, in such contracts, on the common ground of equality. There are no political or domestic rights which both do not equally enjoy; consequently, women are not tempted into blandishments, and deceptions, for the conquests of men. Owing to their independence and helpfulness, the marriage proposal is never accepted as an extreme opportunity, leading them to take desperate chances, among conditions that are not promising to happiness. This, you have forced them to do, by closing all other doors against them. You may suspect that the admission of women amongst us, in the affairs of business and government, has coarsened them, and given them a character of what is known among you as masculinity. That is not so. Their amiability of manner, instead of being lost, is conveyed and multiplied among our business methods. All men, among the civilized nations of the earth, are softened by female association. Outside your regions of degradation, this has been invariably the case, and you have proofs of it already in the instances among you where women have taken a hand in affairs outside the household. When, by superior intelligence and force of character, they have made their way to success and fame among the pursuits of men, they have carried with them, in every case, that soft femininity of which they are naturally endowed. Your often expressed fears of hardening, or in some injuring them, by an admission to equal rights, is not entirely sincere. To keep on good terms with them, and to retain their approbation, you have been led to conceal from them many of your doubtful business and political methods, and you hesitate to admit them into these fields with you, not more from the dread of their contamination, than the exposure it would bring about of ways, which you have heretofore so carefully concealed. There is many a successful politician, or business man among you, who poses before his wife and lady friends as a hero of finance, or statesmanship, who could not do so, did they share with him a knowledge of the incidents and manipulations which brought about his success.