in the canvass, and launching manifestoes against each other. While the family subsists, those who regard it as equal or (as some do) superior in value to the state will probably shrink from exposing it to such a strain. There are other objections, however, which, whatever their degree of force, will survive all changes in industrial, legal and conjugal institutions, and remain so as long as sex itself remains. The mixture of the sexes in political assemblies and elections will be liable to the same dangers which have been already indicated as likely to attend the mixture of the sexes in courts of justice dangers on which it is needless, and would be distasteful to dwell, but the existence of of which no unwillingness to refer to them on the part of theorists can annul.

The incompatibility of political duties with child-bearing is a subject on which so much poor wit has been expended that we touch it with reluctance. The incompatibility exists, however, and when we are told that the difficulty would be met by never electing women likely to become mothers, we must ask whether this would not entail the exclusion of the best women and those most fitted to represent the sentiments and interests of their sex.

Man, as the cultivator of the earth, has hitherto been and is still the great tax-payer. But if woman takes to cultivating the earth also, or to any equivalent industries, she will be equally a tax-payer, and any doubt as to her claim to a vote which might arise from the connection between taxation and representation will be removed.

The military objection to female suffrage has perhaps been pressed too far. Still it remains true that if the defence of the country is an essential part of a citizen's duty, men alone can be full citizens. The defence of Germany has recently afforded a striking illustration of the fact, which in other countries is somewhat masked by the disuse of the national force, and the almost exclusive employment of professional soldiers. The

argument that, though women do not give their own blood in defence of the country, they give the blood of their husbands, sons, and brothers, must be dismissed as for the purpose of the present argument little better than cant. That women, if invested with political power, would not be ready enough to vote for war is an allegation which no one acquainted with history could have made. and which, therefore, called for no elaborate confutation. The danger, as experience shows, is all the other way. The weak have always loved to wield the thunderbolt. No three contemporary rulers can be named who caused more bloodshed in their day than Maria Theresa, Catharine the second, and Madame de Pompadour. It is notorious that in the late American civil war the women on both sides were more passionately warlike than the men. Even among men the substitution of hired armies for the general duty of military service has greatly weakened the restraints on war, the male love of money notwithstanding.

But a still more serious doubt arises from the fact, as we believe it to be, that the supremacy of law rests at bottom on the force of the community compelling submission to the public will, while the force of the community resides in the male sex. The reason why the mass of mankind obey the law when it clashes with their individual will, is that they know that it will be upheld with a strong hand. No doubt this fundamental support is strengthened, while its coarseness is veiled, among the more civilized races by superinduced sentiments of expediency and reverence; but the fundamental support it still is, and it can no more be removed with impunity, than can the unsightly foundation of a beautiful and august edifice. Suppose women to become the lawgivers, would this connection between the law, and the force needed to sustain it, be always preserved? And if it were not always preserved, might not the supremacy of law be impaired or even cease? Suppose something which

men deemed very unjust to their sex to be carried by female votes, would the men execute the enactment against themselves? A lady in the United States proposed the other day that all outrages committed by men upon women should be punished like murder with death, forgetting, as was justly remarked at the time, that, apart from the question as to the comparative gravity of the crime, in cases of murder there was a dead body, whereas in cases of outrage there was, generally speaking, no proof but the woman's own statement, which experience did not warrant us in assuming to be invariably true. Supposing that under the exciting influence of some recent and aggravated case, the women were to carry such an enactment as this, and supposing a female jury to convict a prisoner contrary to the male sense of justice, would the men put him to death? Supposing the women by their votes to bring on a war of which the men did not approve, would the men obediently shoulder their muskets and march to their death at the bidding of the women? If not, the supremacy of law would surely be in peril, and the supremacy of law, essential as it is to the welfare of both sexes, is pre-eminently essential to the welfare of the weaker.

Public law has in great measure relieved women since the primitive and feudal times from the necessity of individual protection, and a corresponding amount of individual emancipation has followed or is following; but the sex, collectively, still requires the protection of male force upholding public law. Whether this will always be so, is a speculative question: it certainly is so now. As the question is not about the abstract capacity of women for politics, but about their capacity under their existing circumstances, and the possibility of their taking part in politics consistently with the unity and happiness of their families, it is need less to examine the lists of queens and female regents which are presented as proofs of the

fitness of women to reign. These lists are selections made under the influence of strong prepossession, not exhaustive enumerations on which an induction can be based. In English history, the female wielders of political power are Matilda, the mother, and Eleanor, the wife of Henry II.; Isabella, wife of Edward II.; Margaret of Anjou, Mary, Elizabeth, Henrietta Maria and Anne.* The personal characters of these ladies and the personal interest attaching to them are not in question. Mary was, no doubt, a good woman, led fatally astray as a ruler by her weak and bigoted submission to her priests. To the tempers of Margaret of Anjou and of Henrietta Maria, the country was indebted in no small degree for two civil wars. Anne dismissed the greatest of English ministers, and brought dishonour on the country under the influence partly of a favourite waiting-woman, partly of the fanatical clergy, and it is highly probable that had she lived much longer her weakness would have led to the return of the Stuarts and to another period of confusion. reputation of Elizabeth once stood high; but since the recent inquiries and revelations, she has been abandoned by her former worshippers; and it is difficult to say wheth

The

and

er the infirmities of the woman were more prejudicial to the policy of the ruler or the crimes and cruelties of the ruler to the character of the woman. The public service was starved even in the extremity of national peril and the best public servants left unrewarded, while largesses honour were heaped on Elizabeth's worthless lovers; we have a lady personally desiring that conspirators may be put to a death of protracted torture. On the other hand, it is probable that Eleanor the Queen of Edward I., the lady to whose memory the well-known crosses were erected by her husband, did much good in a feminine way; and it is certain that

great services were rendered to the public by Caroline, Queen of George II., who quietly guided her husband in his choice of ministers, without herself ever overstepping the domestic sphere. The name of Queen Victoria has been cited as that of a great female ruler, but those who cite it must surely be aware that the government of England is now constitutional, and that Queen Victoria's virtues have been those of a wife, a mother and a head of society. But all these are cases of rulers under the hereditary system, placed in power without any process injurious to the female character, and surrounded by councillors who would supply any lack of wisdom in the queen. The question that we now have to consider is what the character of a woman would be when she had forced her way through the processes of popular election into a representative assembly, and was there struggling with men for the prizes of political ambition? By what kind of women is it likely that such an ordeal would be triumphantly encountered-by the grave matrons and spinsters whom philosophy imagines welcomed and honoured as representatives by philosophic constituencies, or by dashing adventuresses whose ascendancy neither philosophy nor the grave matrons and spinsters would contemplate with satisfaction?

The tone of politics under the system of party Government is low, and is always becoming lower; faction, virulence and corruptiou prevail and increase; therefore, it is said, let us send the women into the political arena; they are free from political vices, and they will redeem the men. But it is because women have not hitherto gone into the political arena that they are free from * We are assured on somewhat partial authority, that among the native rulers in British India, the females are better than the males. In British India very likely because there British power protects

the native ruler against the revolutions which are the only corrections of his vices. A woman brought up in a Zenana cannot possibly be a good ruler, but she may be better than a hog or a tiger.

political vices. We have no good reason for assuming that, subjected to the same evil influences as men, who mix in politics, women could not contract the same bad habits. Such experience as we have had points decidedly the other way. Both in the Reign of Terror and in the rising of the Commune, the frenzy and atrocities of the women rivalled, if they did not surpass, those of the men. The female agitation against the Contagious Diseases Act in England has exhibited fullblown all the violence, narrowness and persecuting rancour of the worst male faction fight. When the Crusaders took a number of women with them to the siege of Acre, it might have been supposed that female gentleness would mitigate the ferocity of the war: the result was, that a number of Turks having been captured, the women begged that the prisoners might be delivered to them, not for the purpose of alleviating their lot, but for the purpose of cutting off their heads with knives. Grant that the moral nature of women is finer than that of men-though these vague comparisons are utterly worthlessstill, if it is equally excitable, or more so, it may be liable to equal or more violent pertur bations. The saying may be fulfilled, that the corruption of the best is the worst corruption. Men who have always stood aloof from politics are just as free from political vices as women. In highly educated communities a most powerful and salutary influence is at present exercised by women and by the society in which women reign upon the character of politicians as well as upon that of other men; and in those untainted circles an independent standard of honour and courtesy is maintained, which even the leaders of fighting factions cannot wholly disregard. We may be told that if party government makes politics unfit for women, party government ought to cease. Perhaps it ought, and not on that account only. But at present there is no prospect of its ceasing; and in the meantime it would hardly be wise to fling woman and the family, all that

into the gulf opened in our forum, unless we have good reason for believing that the gulf will be thereby closed.

Political influence may be really exercised without a vote, even in countries under the elective system; and has in fact been frequently exercised by writers and by leaders of society, who have hardly ever been seen at the polls. And in a broader sense who can doubt that female influence has been felt in all legislation relative to female interests for some time past—in fact, ever since women began to bestir themselves or to express any strong feelings on the subject? We have listened in the United States to the greatest orator of the Woman's Rights party. He protested in general terms that women in the present state of the laws were suffering the most monstrous injustice, which only female suffrage could remove. But when he came to specific facts, all that he had to say was, that in a particular case, for the details of which we were to take his authority, a lady had been improperly incarcerated in a lunatic asylum by a cruel husband. We afterwards identified the case, and satisfied ourselves that the speaker's account of it was rhetoric, and not history; but supposing that it had been history, this only proved that the the community in which it occurred might, with advantage, adopt the system of inspection which has been instituted with results perfectly satisfactory by male legislatures elsewhere. That the administration of the law is at present unfavourable to women-that a female suitor is less likely to gain her suit or a female prisoner more likely do be convicted than a male, will hardly be asserted. Female prisoners, perhaps, are more likely to escape, especially in capital cases. There was much truth in the remark that if the Californian murderess was hanged she would be the first victim to Woman's Rights.

That there are public functions connected rather with the Church than with the State,

It was necessary in touching on the chief points of this great subject to be succinct, and in being succinct it is difficult to avoid being dry, which, however, may not be the the most mischievous defect when a question involving the dearest interests of humanity is being pressed to an irrevocable solution under the influence of sentiment and rhetoric.

Sentiment has been avoided. All sensible women will desire, in the interest of their sex, that it shall be avoided, and that the voice of reason alone shall be heard. The question is not as to the value and dignity of woman in her present sphere, but whether she can with advantage, or without ruinous results to herself and humanity, exchange her present sphere for another.

In conclusion, we have only to remind those specially interested that they cannot have the advantages at once of their present position and one entirely different. The relation between the sexes at present is one not of equality but of mutual privilege. That woman has her privileges will hardly be denied: in the United States, where everything is exaggerated, they are carried so far, and their enforcement is said to be so often accompanied by a repudiation of the corresponding duties, that some of the male supporters of the present movement may be suspected of having mainly in view the emancipation of their own sex. But if equality is established, privilege cannot be retained. Woman may be man's helpmate, or she may be his competitor: both she cannot be. Nor is it possible that man should preserve his present chivalrous senti

ments towards woman when he finds himself daily jostling with her as his rival in the rude struggle for subsistence or in the still ruder conflicts of political ambition. Sentiment survives for a time the relations on which it is founded; but it does not survive long. It is therefore a serious question which

women have to decide; and they have reason to be careful how they allow a few members of their sex, under the influence of abnormal circumstances or inclinations, to compromise, as compromise they will, the position of the whole.

D

II. MARTHA AND HER CLOCK.

URING the last few years of my school life I lodged in a small, old-fashioned house, kept by an elderly unmarried woman : the only one remaining of what had once been a large family. Father, mother, and her two brothers were dead; her sisters had followed their husbands to distant parts, excepting the youngest, who was married to a doctor in the same town. So Martha was left alone in the old house, and managed to eke out a scanty income by letting some of the now unoccupied

rooms.

Yet she considered it no hardship that she could only afford herself a dinner on Sundays, for her wants were few, owing to the habits of strict economy to which her father had trained all his children, on principle, as well as in consideration of his narrow means.

Although in youth she had had but little schooling, yet the reflections of many solitary hours, joined to a quick understanding and the naturally serious tone of her character, combined to render her, at the time I made her acquaintance, a woman of much greater culture than is at all common in her class. I must allow she did not always speak quite gram

matically, although she was a great reader, and that chiefly of biographical and poetical works, on which she could generally give a correct and independent judgment; and, what is even more rare, could always distinguish between what was really good and what was worthless. To her, all the poet's creations were living, thinking beings, whose actions were not dependent on the fancy of the writer; and sometimes she would ponder for hours, scheming by what means so many beloved persons might have been rescued from a cruel fate.

Martha never found life a burden in her solitude, though at times a sense of the aimlessness of her outer existence would sadden her; she felt the want of some one for whom she might have worked and cared. In the absence of all nearer friends, her lodgers had the benefit of this praiseworthy impulse. I, among others, was the recipient of many little kindnesses and attentions at her hands. Flowers were her greatest delight, and it seemed to me symbolical of her contented and resigned mind, that white ones, and of those again the commoner kinds, were her chief favourites. It was to her always the first festival in the year when her sister's children brought her the first snowdrops and crocuses out of their garden; then a little