10. A Sex Noblesse

From all we have said, it will now be evident, one would think, to the most prejudiced reader that modern English Law, following obsequiously a deluded or apathetic stage of public opinion, has solved the problem of the division of rights and duties between the sexes, by conceding to woman all rights, and imposing on man all duties. It would not be difficult to show, were it worth while , that even the disabilities of women in past times have been grossly exaggerated by apostles of the feminist cultus who have, of course, taken a brief to prove the wickedness of “horrid man” to the poor downtrodden female. Such disabilities as really obtained were for the most part the necessary outcome of women’s position as non-combatants in a rude fighting age, and certainly did not originate, as is generally represented, in any deep- laid scheme of male devising. In return for a certain formal subjection, in some respects, they obtained not only the blessing of protection, then an important matter, but valuable privileges in other directions. An impartial student of history must admit that, however badly men have treated their fellow-men, they have always treated women with comparative generosity. The change from feudal to modern capitalist conditions, as regards the position of women, is characterised, however, not only by, at one and the same time, the abolition of every vestige of subordination or disability, but, in addition to that, by the extension of the old compensating privileges, which were the counterpart of the former, and by the further heaping up on the top of these of new privileges, the result having finally saddled us with the institution of that sex-noblesse the leading features of which we have sketched out in the foregoing pages.