WOMAN SUFFRAGE AS AFFECTING THE FAMILY. 89 



ever been waged have "been religious wars ; and so notoriously is re- 

 ligion an engenderer of strife, that it is now scarcely good manners to 

 moot a religious question in private society, where politics are quite 

 freely and amicably discussed. If persons of genuine but different re- 

 ligious opinions can contrive to get on together in married life, they 

 would certainly not be likely to be severed by political differences, 

 however strongly their opinions might be held. But, however this 

 may be, my argument is that, in practice, such cases would very rarely 

 occur. When politics became a subject of interest alike for men and 

 women, it would very soon become a principal consideration in deter- 

 mining matrimonial alliances. Even now this is the case to some 

 extent, and it will no doubt become more and more so as the politi- 

 cal education of women advances. Mr. Smith's question, therefore, 

 "Would the harmony of most households bear the strain?" may be 

 answered by saying that in very few households would there be any 

 strain to bear ; while in most at least in those in which politics were 

 intelligently cultivated home-life, no longer the vapid thing it is so 

 often now, would acquire a new element of ^interest, and the family 

 would be held together by powerful sympathies that now lie unde- 

 veloped. 



Mr. Smith seems to think that, if women are only excluded from 

 the suffrage, the harmony of married life can never be endangered by 

 politics ; but this is to attribute to the mere right of voting a degree 

 of efficacy which I, for one, am not disposed to allow to it. If women 

 only come to take an interest in politics it matters not whether they 

 have the suffrage or not all the dancjer that can arise from the suf- 

 frage to married life will be already incurred. It is not the giving 

 of a vote every four or five years that constitutes the danger, if dan- 

 ger there be ; but the habitual mental attitude of husband and wife 

 toward each other. Those, therefore, who share Mr. Smith's appre- 

 hensions on the present subject, ought clearly to take their stand 

 against the suffrage movement very much higher up. They ought to 

 oppose every extension of female education w T hich may reasonably be 

 expected to lead women to take an interest in politics. The intelli- 

 gent study of history should, in the first place, be rigidly proscribed. 

 Political economy would be excluded as a matter of course ; and, 

 along with it, that large and increasing class of studies embraced un- 

 der the name " social." Every one of these, intelligently cultivated, 

 leads inevitably, where faculty is not wanting, to an interest in con- 

 temporary politics ; and if women are to be shut out from this field of 

 ideas, lest perchance they should adopt opinions which should not be 

 those of their future husbands, their education ought at once to be 

 truncated by this large segment. Mr. Smith, indeed, suggests that 

 women who are capable of discussing political questions " will find a 

 sphere in the press." Does he then suppose that there would be less 

 danger to the harmony of married life from women writing in the 



