Page:Vindication Women's Rights (Wollstonecraft).djvu/275

Rh With repect to marriage, though after one and twenty a parent eems to have no right to withhold his conent on any account; yet twenty years of olicitude call for a turn, and the on ought, at leat, to promie not to marry for two or three years, hould the object of his choice not entirely meet with the approbation of his firt friend.

But, repect for parents is, generally peaking, a much more debaing principle; it is only a elfih repect for property. The father who is blindly obeyed, is obeyed from heer weaknes, or from motives that degrade the human character.

A great proportion of the miery that wanders, in hideous forms around the world, is allowed to rie from the negligence of parents; and till thee are the people who are mot tenacious of what they term a natural right, though it be ubverive of the birth-right of man, the right of acting according to the direction of his own reaon.

I have already very frequently had occasion to oberve, that vicious or indolent people are always eager to profit by enforcing arbitrary privileges; and, generally, in the ame proportion as they neglect the dicharge of the duties which alone render the privileges reaonable. This is at the bottom a dictate of common ene, or the intinct of elf-defence, peculiar to ignorant weaknes; reembling that intinct, which makes a fih muddy the water it wims in to alludeelude [sic] its enemy, intead of boldly facing it in the clear tream. From&ensp;