FEMALE SUFFRAGE, 441 



He has given us the means of judging of her speculative powers, and 

 even they, it is evident, were not extraordinarily high. 



That there are women eminently capable of understanding and 

 discussing political questions nobody will deny. These will find a 

 sphere in the press, through which many men exercise a power which 

 makes it a matter of indifference whether they have a vote or not. 

 But it by no means follows that it is expedient to put political power 

 into the hands of the whole sex ; much less that it is expedient to do 

 so at a moment when it is morally certain that they would use their 

 power to cancel a good deal of what has been done in their interest, as 

 well as in that of their partners, by the efforts of the last two hundred 

 years. 



Some supporters of the movement flatter themselves that women 

 would always vote for peace, and that female suffrage would conse- 

 quently be a short method of ridding the world of war and standing 

 armies. Such experience as we have hardly w^arrants this anticipation. 

 Female sovereigns, as a rule, have not been eminently pacific. It 

 would be difficult to find four contemporary male rulers who made 

 more wars than Catherine II. of Russia, Maria Theresa, Madame 

 de Pompadour (who ruled France in the name of her lover), and 

 the Termagant, as Carlyle calls her, of Spain. It is widely be- 

 lieved that the late Empress of the French, inspired by her Jesuits, 

 was a principal mover in the attack on Germany. Those who know 

 the Southern States say that the women there are far more ready to 

 renew the Civil War than the men. The most effective check on war 

 is, to use the American phrase, that every one should do his own fight- 

 ing. But this check cannot be applied to women, who will be com- 

 paratively irresponsible in voting for war. A woman, in fact, can 

 never be a full citizen in countries where, as in Germany, it is part of 

 a citizen's duty to bear arms. 



Finally, it is said that there are certain specific grievances under 

 which women labor, and which call for immediate redress, but of which 

 redress cannot be had unless women are empowered to extort it from 

 their husbands and brothers at the polls. Of course, if there is 

 wrong, and wrong to half humanity, which cannot be righted in any 

 other way, we must at once accept female suffrage, whatever perils 

 it may entail. 



In the United States the grievance of which most is heard is the 

 tyrannical stringency of the marriage tie, which, it is alleged, gives a 

 man property in a woman, and unduly interferes with the freedom 

 and genuineness of affection. Some of the language used is more 

 startling than this, and if reproduced might unfairly prejudice the 

 case. But male Legislatures in the United States have already carried 

 the liberty of divorce so far, that the next step would be the total 

 abolition of marriage and the destruction of the family. The women 

 themselves have now, it is said, begun to draw back. They have 



