Page:Vindication Women's Rights (Wollstonecraft).djvu/263

Rh Beides, when poverty is more digraceful than even vice, is not morality cut to the quick? Still to avoid micontruction, though I conider that women in the common walks of life are called to fulfil the duties of wives and mothers, by religion and reaon, I cannot help lamenting that women of a uperiour cat have not a road open by which they can purue more extenive plans of uefulnes and independence. I may excite laughter, by dropping an hint, which I mean to purue, ome future time, for I really think that women ought to have repreentatives, intead of being arbitrarily governed without having any direct hare allowed them in the deliberations of govermentgovernment [sic].

But, as the whole ytem of repreentation is now, in this country, only a convenient handle for depotim, they need not complain, for they are as well repreented as a numerous clas of hard working mechanics, who pay for the upport of royalty when they can carcely top their children's mouths with bread. How are they repreented whoe very weat upports the plendid tud of an heir apparent, or varnihes the chariot of ome female favourite who looks down on hame? Taxes on the very necearies of life, enable an endles tribe of idle princes and princees to pas with tupid pomp before a gaping crowd, who almot worhip the very parade which cots them o dear. This is mere gothic grandeur, omething like the barbarous ueles parade of having entinels on horeback at Whitehall, which I could never view without a mixture of contempt and indignation. Rh