646 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



natures and gifts, coequal but distinct, and incapable of identification 

 unless women can take what is now the work of men, and men can take 

 the work of mothers. Law, even in the most civilized states, rests at 

 bottom upon the force of the community, and the force of the com- 

 munity is male. Enactments made by those who had not power to 

 execute them would be futile. Would the men allow the women to 

 vote them into a war, say in defense of a romantic Queen of Naples, 

 or some other darling of female fancy ? Would they execute upon 

 themselves the severe laws which women are threatening to make 

 asrainst them in matters connected with the relations of the sexes ? 

 If they would, the tyranny of man must be a fable. But if decrees 

 were not carried into effect, and laws were not executed, the govern- 

 ment would fall. In domestic life, though a character at least as 

 high as the political is formed, political character is not formed. 

 What would be the condition of a nation in a dangerous crisis like 

 that of secession in the United States, or even the Irish crisis here, 

 if its policy were swayed to and fro by the emotions of the women ? 

 The advocates of women's suffrage hardly realize the fact that they 

 are turning government over into female hands ; yet in the United 

 States, where the franchise is personal, the female voters would at 

 once outnumber the male ; and in England it is well understood that 

 the limitation to widows and spinsters is merely put forward as a 

 mask. The next step would be a demand of eligibility to Parliament 

 and to political office, which is probably the personal aim of some 

 of the female leaders (one of whom, indeed, wanted to be a candidate 

 for the presidency), and could not consistently be refused. But could 

 women in office ever be made accountable like men ? A sex which 

 is not thoroughly justiciable can not be made thoroughly responsible ; 

 and, when women have interfered in politics, their want of a restrain- 

 ing sense of accountability has appeared. Henrietta Maria, by the 

 indulgence of her feelings, hurried her husband and the country into 

 a civil war, as Margaret of Anjou had done before her ; Marie An- 

 toinette, by a similar outbreak of passion, precipitated the French 

 Revolution ; and the Empress Eugenie, with fatal truth, called the 

 German War her own. That women can not take part in the defense 

 of the country is an argument which may have been pressed too far ; 

 yet they are hereby rendered untrustworthy counselors in questions 

 of peace and war. Some who know the Southern States well say that 

 if the women could have had their way there would very likely have 

 been a renewal of the civil war. The whole history of female govern- 

 ment leads to conclusions adverse to the change ; the reign of Elizabeth 

 herself, now that we know what she really was and did, as decisively 

 as the rest. 



Neither men nor women can plead natural right against the good 

 of the community ; the community is the ordinance of nature. Men 

 were not invested by nature with political liberty ; they won it by 



