In his response to Cobbett’s “A Kick for a Bite,” poet and politician John Swanwick, writing as “Citizen Snub,” offered a short defense of Slaves in Algiers. Because the play was a comedy, he insisted, Rowson was not asserting the superiority of women, but just trying to get a smile out of the audience. Calling Cobbett a “mad dog,” Swanwick challenges the assumption that women are inherently inferior:

In consequence of the customs and manners now prevalent in the world, there must be an essential distinction between the sexes, and man’s pride and arrogance make him the most ostensible character in our creation; but can you prove that a male education would not qualify a woman for all the duties of a man?

Courtesy of the American Antiquarian Society