 The right balancing of wealth is to be ensured by estates being equally divided among sons, and if there are none living, between the closest male relatives. She suggests no female inheritance, and the abolition of dowries, though unmarried women are to be supported by annuities provided by their brothers (Macaulay 1767, 37). Since this appears to deprive women of any economic power, and presumably excludes them from parliamentary representation, this feature of her proposals has been disappointing to feminists, and it has been claimed that she was no defender of women’s rights (Staves 1989). Her later works show that she was nevertheless sympathetic to women’s plight, and she might be excused, in a context in which women’s power was closely associated with luxury and aristocratic privilege, for sacrificing women’s apparent interests for the sake of equality.