THE RELATION OF THE SEXES TO GOVERNMENT. 725 



Between these extremes lies a territory in whicli each, case settles 

 itself. But it will ever remain true that, for the normal woman, 

 the home-life is both the easiest and the happiest. 



When we come to the question of government, we reach a field 

 in which the acts of men do not concern themselves alone, but 

 exercise an important influence on the lives of others. Is woman 

 by physical and mental constitution adapted to engage in the va- 

 rious duties and services required in the making and executing 

 laws, and in the enterprises which nations find necessary in order 

 to carry on their functions, and preserve themselves from internal 

 and external enemies ? 



It must be here premised that the progress of civilization has 

 thus far emphasized and not diminished the peculiarities of sex. 

 The civilized woman is more refined, more tender, more intelli- 

 gent, and more hysterical than her savage representative. Her 

 form is more different from that of the male, and her face more 

 expressive of her distinctive character. There is good reason to 

 believe that this development has been due to the increased im- 

 munity from the severity of the " struggle for existence " which 

 woman enjoys in civilized communities, and the greater opportu- 

 nity thus given her to develop her own especial excellences. 



• The first thought that strikes us in considering the woman-suf- 

 frage movement is, that it is a proposition to engage women once 

 more in that " struggle " from which civilization has enabled them 

 in great measure to escape ; and that its effect, if long continued 

 and fairly tried, will be to check the development of woman as 

 such, and to bring to bear on her influences of a kind different from 

 those which have been hitherto active. And it becomes an impar- 

 tial thinker to examine the question more closely, and see whether 

 investigation bears out these impressions or not. We inquire, then, 

 in the first place, is government a function adapted to the female 

 character, or within the scope of her natural powers ? We then 

 endeavor to discover whether her occupation of this field of action 

 is calculated to promote the mutual sex interest which has been 

 referred to above, and thus to subserve the natural evolution of 

 humanity. 



In endeavoring to answer the first question we are at once met 

 by the undoubted fact that woman is physically incapable of car- 

 rying into execution any law she may enact. She can not, there- 

 fore, be called on to serve in any executive capacity where law is 

 to be executed on adults. Now, service in the support of laws en- 

 acted by those who " rule by the consent of the governed " is a 

 sine qua non of the right to elect governors. It is a common 

 necessity to which all of the male sex are, during most of their 

 lives, liable to be called on to sustain. This consideration alone, 

 it appears to me, puts the propriety of female suffrage out of the 



