438 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



struggle, and an assertion at the sword's point, of principles, just in 

 themselves, but needing qualification to make them available as the 

 foundations of a polity, it is full of defects, to remedy which, so as to 

 make it the deliberate expression of public reason, clear of sectional 

 interest and passion, is now the great aim of political thought and 

 effort. Those to whose hands it is committed at this crisis are trus- 

 tees for posterity of a heritage bought by ages of effort and torrents 

 of blood ; and they are bound to allow neither their own ambition nor 

 that of any one else, if they can help it, to imperil the safety of their 

 trust. That women would be likely to vote for one set of aspirants to 

 political office rather than for the opposite set, would be a very bad 

 reason for withholding from them the suffrage even for a day ; but, 

 that they would probably overturn the institutions on which the hopes 

 of the world rest, is as good a reason as there can be for withholding 

 any thing from anybody. When free institutions are firmly estab- 

 lished in Europe, the question of female suffrage may perhaps be 

 raised wdth less j^eril, so far as political interests are concerned ; but, 

 to take a female vote on their fate at present, would be as suicidal as 

 it would have been to take a female vote on the issues between Charles 

 I. and the Parliament in the middle of the Civil War. 



So far as elective government has succeeded, women in general 

 have fully reaped the benefit of the improvements, moral and mate- 

 rial, which it has produced. They are mistaken if they imagine that 

 they fared better under the form of government which, in France and 

 elsewhere, if they had the power, their sentiment would lead them to 

 restore. They were not exempt from the misery and starvation 

 brought into every home by the ambitious wars and the general mis- 

 rule of the monarchies or even from the cruelty of their criminal laws. 

 Down to the last days of the monarchy in France women as well as 

 men were broken alive upon the wheel for theft. 



It is needless to say that any discussion of the relative excellence, 

 intellectual or moral, of the two moieties of humanity would be 

 equally barren and irrelevant. The only question is as to the proper 

 spheres of the man and woman ; and assuredly, by unsexing women, 

 we should do no homage to their sex. 



It is alleged that female influence would mitigate the violence of 

 party politics. But what ground have we, in reason or experience, 

 for believing that women, if introduced into the political arena, would 

 be less violent than men? Hitherto they have been free from po- 

 litical vices, because they have generally taken no part in politics, just 

 as home has been an asylum from political rancor, because j^olitical 

 division has not been introduced between man and wife. But the 

 chances are, that, being more excitable, and having, with more warmth 

 and generosity of temperament, less power of self-control, women 

 would, when once engaged in party struggles, be not less but more 

 violent than men. AH our experience, in fact, points this way. In 



