POLITICAL RIGHTS AND DUTIES OF WOMEN. 87 



to the acquirement, possession, and disposal of their property 

 old laws that had their origin in the barbaric spirit that made 

 woman the slave of man, and, it nmst be confessed, which found 

 no little sanction in that dogma of our accredited Christianity, 

 which taught, too plainly to be misunderstood, that woman was 

 as much below man in the scale of being as man was below the 

 angels, her paramount duty being to be subject to him. But all 

 this barbarism, Christian and un-Christian, has been swept away, 

 and that too not by woman's suffrage, actual or prospective, nor 

 by woman's petition or any political agitation prompted by her, 

 but by man's own sense of equity and right. 



No, women are not an oppressed class, least so in the United 

 States, in England, in any country whose people have inherited 

 the Teutonic sentiment which in the ancient Germany described 

 by Tacitus made women counselors and advisers in the affairs 

 of war, government, and business, as well as in matters purely 

 domestic. Women are a privileged class. 



When I say, and say after much careful thought, that women 

 in this country are a privileged class, I have not in my mind those 

 courtesies and civilities that have become established customs in 

 all good society. I do not mean the respect which prompts all 

 well-bred men to lift their hats to every woman of their acquaint- 

 ance whom they pass in the street, that starts to his feet even the 

 aged citizen when a robust girl gets into a horse-car or a thronged 

 public meeting, even when the occasion of it may be to affect an 

 election in which only men are concerned. All these are graceful 

 offices for men to render, pleasant attentions for women to receive ; 

 but they are trivial, and to magnify them into substantial equiva- 

 lents for political disfranchisement is to add insult to injury. 



Let me make a brief inventory of some of the more substantial 

 immunities and exemptions which women as women possess and 

 enjoy, which mitigate for them the stress and strain of life, which 

 affect their character, happiness, and destiny, as the usages and 

 etiquette of social intercourse do not and can not, which, if not a 

 compensation for political privileges, and for that excess of burden 

 that maternity bears in caring for the perpetuation of the race, is 

 a generous attempt on the part of men to make for their mates 

 and yoke-fellows an easier pathway through a rugged world. To 

 most of these exemptions and immunities the sex have become so 

 accustomed that they are rather regarded as a part of the order of 

 Nature than as a conventionality dictated by a generous senti- 

 ment. 



III. Women are exempted from the perils, wounds, and deaths 

 incident to war. 



When we study man through his long history, we are com- 

 pelled to confess that he is a fighting animal. Whatever other 



