7.8. 8. Of public Continency.
So many are the imperfections that attend the loss of virtue in
women, and so greatly are their minds depraved when this principal guard
is removed, that in a popular state public incontinency may be
considered as the last of miseries, and as a certain forerunner of a
change in the constitution.
Hence it is that the sage legislators of republican states have ever
required of women a particular gravity of manners. They have proscribed
not only vice, but the very appearance of it. They have banished even
all commerce of gallantry — a commerce that produces idleness, that
renders the women corrupters, even before they are corrupted, that gives
a value to trifles, and debases things of importance: a commerce, in
fine, that makes people act entirely by the maxims of ridicule, in which
the women are so perfectly skilled.
