Within the incisive “Polly Baker’s speech,” Benjamin Franklin satirizes the patriarchal structure of the judicial system that unfairly judges women. Franklin utilizes a sardonic persona of a “poor” 18th century women being “persecuted for the fifth time, for having a bastard child” who only wants her “fine remitted.” Through his judicious use of hyperbole and his persona’s rhetorical conditional statements, Franklin produces a sarcastic tone in Polly Baker’s speech and ridicules the “great men” who enforce the institutionalized bias against women under the rule of law.