The influence of
dissentients acting without cooperation, seems, under the present state
of things, inadequate. Standing severally alone, and having no
well-defined views; frowned on by conformists, and expostulated with
even by those who secretly sympathise with them; subject to petty
persecutions, and unable to trace any benefit produced by their example;
they are apt, one by one, to give up their attempts as hopeless. The
young convention-breaker eventually finds that he pays too heavily for
his nonconformity. Hating, for example, everything that bears about it
any remnant of servility, he determines, in the ardour of his
independence, that he will uncover to no one. But what he means simply
as a general protest, he finds that ladies interpret into a personal
disrespect. Though he sees that, from the days of chivalry downwards,
these marks of supreme consideration paid to the other sex have been but
a hypocritical counterpart to the actual subjection in which men have
held them--a pretended submission to compensate for a real domination;
and though he sees that when the true dignity of women is recognised,
the mock dignities given to them will be abolished, yet he does not like
to be thus misunderstood, and so hesitates in his practice.
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