Not only we, the latest seed of Time—
... not only we that prate
Of rights and wrongs, have loved the women well.
Nearly a century and a half ago an English lady, out of patience with the intolerable assumptions of the other sex, raised her voice in behalf of her own. In 1793 there was published in London a pamphlet entitled "Woman not Inferior to Man, or a Short and Modest Vindication of the Natural Right of the Fair Sex to a Perfect Equality of Power, Dignity and Esteem with the Men. By Sophia, a Person of Quality." The title-page has a quotation from Rowe's Fair Penitent:
How hard is the condition of our sex!
—Through every state of life the slave of man!
Wherefore are we
Born with souls, but to assert ourselves,
Shake off this wild obedience they exact,