"The Subjection of Women" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mill John Stuart)

there are so many causes tending to make the feelings connected
with this subject the most intense and most deeply-rooted of those
which gather round and protect old institutions and custom, that we
need not wonder to find them as yet less undermined and loosened
than any of the rest by the progress the great modern spiritual and
social transition; nor suppose that the barbarisms to which men
cling longest must be less barbarisms than those which they earlier
shake off.

In every respect the burthen is hard on those who attack an almost
universal opinion. They must be very fortunate well as unusually
capable if they obtain a hearing at all. They have more difficulty
in obtaining a trial, than any other litigants have in getting a
verdict. If they do extort a hearing, they are subjected to a set
of logical requirements totally different from those exacted from
other people. In all other cases, burthen of proof is supposed to
lie with the affirmative. If a person is charged with a murder, it
rests with those who accuse him to give proof of his guilt, not
with himself to prove his innocence. If there is a difference of
opinion about the reality of an alleged historical event, in which
the feelings of men general are not much interested, as the Siege
of Troy example, those who maintain that the event took place
expected to produce their proofs, before those who take the other
side can be required to say anything; and at no time these required
to do more than show that the evidence produced by the others is of
no value. Again, in practical matters, the burthen of proof is
supposed to be with those who are against liberty; who contend for
any restriction or prohibition either any limitation of the general
freedom of human action or any disqualification or disparity of
privilege affecting one person or kind of persons, as compared with
others. The a priori presumption is in favour of freedom and
impartiality. It is held that there should be no restraint not
required by I general good, and that the law should be no respecter
of persons but should treat all alike, save where dissimilarity of
treatment is required by positive reasons, either of justice or of
policy. But of none of these rules of evidence will the benefit be
allowed to those who maintain the opinion I profess. It is useless
me to say that those who maintain the doctrine that men ha a right
to command and women are under an obligation obey, or that men are
fit for government and women unfit, on the affirmative side of the
question, and that they are bound to show positive evidence for the
assertions, or submit to their rejection. It is equally unavailing
for me to say that those who deny to women any freedom or privilege
rightly allow to men, having the double presumption against them
that they are opposing freedom and recommending partiality, must
held to the strictest proof of their case, and unless their success
be such as to exclude all doubt, the judgment ought to against
them. These would be thought good pleas in any common case; but
they will not be thought so in this instance.