Remarks on Kings, Nobles, Standing Armies, &c.
Wollstonecraft, Mary. “Remarks on Kings, Nobles, Standing Armies, &c.” an excerpt from A Vindication of the Rights of Woman and Review of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Boston 1792. In Massachusetts Magazine: Or Monthly Museum of Knowledge and Rational Entertainment. II.V (February 1793), 104-05, 112.
8vo.; sewn signatures; lacking wrappers. In a specially made cloth slipcase.
This issue of Massachusetts Magazine, a journal apparently paginated continuously throughout the year, includes pages 66-128, plus a cover printing a table of contents. Among these are an excerpt from A Vindication, edited together from chapter 1, paragraphs 19-24 and chapter 9, paragraphs 10-12, under the title “Remarks on Kings, Nobles, Standing Armies, &c.,” printed on pages 104-05, under the heading “Politicks.”
Also printed in this issue is a review of the Boston 1792 edition of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, published by Thomas and Andrews—the publishers of this magazine. Appearing on page 112, its first paragraph is devoted to a summary of Wollstonecraft’s view, that the “delicacies of a court, and the pride of nobility, have contributed in a great measure to that degradation of woman, which Mrs. Woolstonecraft [sic, throughout] so pathetically laments.” The reviewer continues to note that as America is a republic, not a monarchy, the same dangers do not exist here as in Europe, however “as their very appearance should be continually guarded against, those pages ar therefore valuable, which delineate the consumptive influences of monarchy and its appendages, a vicious noblesse, profligate army, and mischievous navy.” As to Wollstonecraft’s craft: he praises her “character of writers, especially her criticisms on Chesterfield, Gregory, Rousseau, Fordyce, Madam Genlis, &c.,” which “merit every attention. Many of them have hitherto been praised, and their sentiments adopted in female life, without a moment’s examination, whether they were right or wrong in their assertions.
She has probed them to the bottom, and some of them richly deserve her significant appellation of “cold hearted rascals.” It is true, we cannot commend every sentence which has fallen from the pen of this animated writer; nor do we conceive that all her schemes are practicable, or if practicable, beneficial: But among a few thinly scattered weeds, there are many durable trees, which united the beauties of Flora, with the firmness of the elm. Argonistik [agonistic?] feelings, maddened at the supposed inferiority of her sex, and correspondent energies of expression, are the characteristicks of Mrs. Woolstonecraft, as a woman and a writer.
Other articles of potential interest in this issue include installments of Judith Sargents Murray’s “The Gleaner” and “The Observer”; “Amusing Anecdotes from Helen Maria William’s Letters,” “Sketches of the Algonquins,” “Description of Dartmouth College,” and “Power of Female Beauty.”
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