478 
The u Woman's Rights' ” Question [OClober, 
hunt for prey, while the male was left to nurse the young, — 
the position of the species in the great and constant struggle 
for existence would be very decidedly altered for the worse. 
We must conclude, therefore, that the attempt to alter the 
present relations of the sexes is not a rebellion against some 
arbitrary law instituted by a despot or a majority, — not an 
attempt to break the yoke of a mere convention ; it is a 
struggle against Nature ; a war undertaken to reverse the 
very conditions under which not man alone, but all mam- 
malian species have reached their present development. 
Sentimental speakers and writers have commented on the 
well-known faCt that even a very young boy will, to his 
utmost ability, defend his sister or female playmate, and 
have expressed a hope that this habit — the result of early 
training — would wear out, the female no longer needing and 
the male no longer offering protection. Alas ! is the very 
same habit in the ape, the lion, or the bison the result of a 
mistaken training, or of an Old-World convention, to he 
laid aside in these enlightened days ? What would be the 
position of a family of young lions if both their parents 
went forth to hunt ? Yet very similar v/ill be that of children 
if their mother, as well as their father, goes out to the daily 
toils of a profession, leaving them perhaps to themselves,— 
perhaps to the care of ignorant and unprincipled hirelings. 
The results of mothers withdrawn from domestic duties, and 
spending their days in industrial pursuits, have been suffi- 
ciently exemplified in our manufacturing towns. Here, in the 
very highest interests of the race, it has been found neces- 
sary to check and limit female labour, which ought never to 
have been introduced. Had this precaution been taken a 
man would have been able to earn as much as he and his 
wife jointly have been able to realise under the factory 
system. But what reason have we to expeCt that the intro- 
duction of female labour into professional spheres will prove 
a greater boon either to the aspirants themselves or to the 
nation than it has been in the factory and the workshop ? 
A friend, of original habits of thought, points out* that upon 
man alone was laid the penalty of labour as upon woman 
the sorrow of child-bearing. This is in faCt the very same 
lesson, clothed in theological language, which we learn from 
biology. Among the lower animals, who, as compared with 
man, may be called the proletariatef of creation, both sexes 
indeed seem merely or mainly to exist in order to perpetuate 
* Genesis iii., 16, 17. 
f As applied to the human species we consider this term eminently foolish. 
The man who benefits his race in no other way will probably injure it by 
leaving posterity like himself. 
