All economical government is lodged originally in the husband and wife, the executive part being in the husband; both have their privileges secured to them by law and reason; but will any man infer from the husband being invested with the executive power, that the wife is deprived of her share, and that she has no remedy left but preces and lacrymae, or an appeal to a supreme court of judicature?
No less frivolous are the arrangements that are drawn from the general appellations and terms of husband and wife.

A husband denotes several different sorts of magistracy, according to the usages and customs of different climates and countries.

In some eastern nations it signifies a tyrant, with the absolute power of life and death.

In Turkey it denotes an arbitrary governor, with power of perpetual imprisonment; in Italy it gives the husband the power of poison and padlocks; in the countries of England, France, and Holland, it has a quite different meaning, implying a free and equal government, securing to the wife in certain cases the liberty of change, and the property of pin-money and separate maintenance.
So that the arguments drawn from the terms of husband and wife are fallacious, and by no means fit to support a tyrannical doctrine, as that of absolute unlimited chastity and conjugal fidelity.
"The general exhortations to fidelity in wives are meant only for rules in ordinary cases, but they naturally suppose three conditions of ability, justice, and fidelity in the husband; such an unlimited, unconditioned fidelity in the wife could never be supposed by reasonable men.

It seems a reflection upon the Church to charge her with doctrines that countenance oppression.
"This doctrine of the original right of change is congruous to the law of Nature, which is superior to all human laws, and for that I dare appeal to all wives: It is much to the honour of our English wives that they have never given up that fundamental point, and that though in former ages they were muffled up in darkness and superstition, yet that notion seemed engraven on their minds, and the impression so strong that nothing could impair it.
"To assert the illegality of change, upon any pretence whatsoever, were to cast odious colours upon the married state, to blacken the necessary means of perpetuating families--such laws can never be supposed to have been designed to defeat the very end of matrimony.