It would have pleased the Doctor when he was upon this topic if he had known how exactly the value of women was fixed among the Afghauns, by whose laws twelve young women are given as a compensation for the slaughter of one man, six for cutting off a hand, an ear, or a nose; three for breaking a tooth, and one for a wound of the scalp.
By the laws of the Venetians as well as of certain Oriental people, the testimony of two women was made equivalent to that of one man. And in those of the Welsh King Hywel Dda, or Howel Dha, “the satisfaction for the murder of a woman, whether she be married or not, is half that of her brother,” which is upon the same standard of relative value. By the same laws a woman was not to be admitted as bail for a man, nor as witness against him.
He knew that a French Antiquarian (Claude Seissel) had derived the name of the Salic law from the Latin word Sal, comme une loy pleine de sel, c'est a dire pleine de sapience,1 and this the Doctor thought a far more rational etymology than what some one proposed either seriously or in sport, that the law was called Salique because the words Si aliquis and Si aliqua were of such frequent occurrence in it. “To be born a manchild,” says that learned author who first composed an Art of Rhetoric in the English tongue, “declares a courage, gravity and constancy. To be born a woman, declares weakness of spirit, neshenes of body and fickleness of mind.”2 Justin Martyr, after saying that the Demons by whom according to him the system of heathen mythology was composed, spake of Minerva as the first Intelligence and the daughter of Jupiter, makes this observation; “now this we consider most absurd, to carry about the image of Intelligence in a female form!” The Father said this as thinking with the great French comic poet that a woman never could be any thing more than a woman.
Car, voyez-vous, la femme est, comme on dit, mon maître,
Un certain animal difficile à connoître,
Et de qui la nature est fort encline au mal;
Et comme un animal est toujours animal.
Et ne sera jamais qu' animal, quand sa vie
Dureroit cent mille ans; aussi, sans repartie,
La femme est toujours femme, et jamais ne sera
Que femme, tant qu'entier le monde durera.
1 BRANTÔME.
2 WILSON.
A favourite anecdote with our Philosopher was of the Barbadoes Planters, one of whom agreed to exchange an English maid servant with the other for a bacon pig, weight for weight, four-pence per pound to be paid for the overplus, if the balance should be in favour of the pig, sixpence if it were on the Maid's side. But when they were weighed in the scales, Honour who was “extreme fat, lazy and good for nothing,” so far outweighed the pig, that the pig's owner repented of his improvident bargain, and refused to stand to it. Such a case Ligon observes, when he records this notable story, seldom happened; but the Doctor cited it as shewing what had been the relative value of women and pork in the West Indies. And observe, he would say, of white women, English, Christian women,—not of poor heathen blacks, who are considered as brutes, bought and sold like brutes, worked like brutes—and treated worse than any Government ought to permit even brutes to be treated.
However, that women were in some respects better than men, he did not deny. He doubted not but that Cannibals thought them so; for we know by the testimony of such Cannibals as happen to have tried both, that white men are considered better meat than negroes, and Englishmen than Frenchmen, and there could be little doubt that for the same reason, women would be preferred to men. Yet this was not the case with animals, as was proved by buck venison, ox beef, and wether mutton. The tallow of the female goat would not make as good candles as that of the male. Nature takes more pains in elaborating her nobler work; and that the male, as being the nobler, was that which Nature finished with greatest care must be evident, he thought, to any one who called to mind the difference between cock and hen birds, a difference discoverable even in the egg, the larger and finer eggs with a denser white, and a richer yolk, containing male chicks. Other and more curious observations had been made tending to the same conclusion, but he omitted them, as not perhaps suited for general conversation, and not exactly capable of the same degree of proof. It was enough to hint at them.
The great Ambrose Parey (the John Hunter and the Baron Larrey of the sixteenth century) has brought forward many instances wherein women have been changed into men, instances which are not fabulous: but he observes, “you shall find in no history, men that have degenerated into women; for nature always intends and goes from the imperfect to the more perfect, but never basely from the more perfect to the imperfect.” It was a rule in the Roman law, that when husband and wife overtaken by some common calamity perished at the same time, and it could not be ascertained which had lived the longest, the woman should be presumed to have expired the first, as being by nature the feeblest. And for the same reason if it had not been noted whether brother or sister being twins came first in the world, the legal conclusion was that the boy being the stronger was the first born.
And from all these facts he thought the writer must be a judicious person who published a poem entitled the Great Birth of Man, or Excellence of his creation over Woman.