It is a part of the necessary theory of republican government, that every
class and race shall be judged by its highest types, not its lowest. The
proposition of the French revolutionary statesman, to begin the work of
purifying the world by arresting all the cowards and knaves, is liable to
the objection that it would find victims in every circle. Republican
government begins at the other end, and assumes that the community
generally has good intentions at least, and some common sense, however
it may be with individuals. Take the very quality which the newspapers so
often deny to women,--the quality of steadiness. "In fact, men's great
objection to the entrance of the female mind into politics is drawn from a
suspicion of its unsteadiness on matters in which the feelings could by
any possibility be enlisted." Thus says the New York "Nation." Let us
consider this implied charge against women, and consider it not by
generalizing from a single instance,--"just like a woman," as the editors
would doubtless say, if a woman had done it,--but by observing whole
classes of that sex, taken together.
These classes need some care in selection, for the plain reason that there
are comparatively few circles in which women have yet been allowed enough
freedom of scope, or have acted sufficiently on the same plane with men, to
furnish a fair estimate of their probable action, were they enfranchised.
Still there occur to me three such classes,--the anti-slavery women, the
Quaker women, and the women who conduct philanthropic operations in our
large cities. If the alleged unsteadiness of women is to be felt in public
affairs, it would have been felt in these organizations. Has it been so
felt?
Of the anti-slavery movement I can personally testify--and I have heard the
same point fully recognized among my elders, such as Garrison, Phillips,
and Quincy--that the women contributed their full share, if not more than
their share, to the steadiness of that movement, even in times when the
feelings were most excited, as, for instance, in fugitive-slave cases. Who
that has seen mobs practically put down, and mayors cowed into decency, by
the silent dignity of those rows of women who sat, with their knitting,
more imperturbable than the men, can read without a smile these doubts of
the "steadiness" of that sex? Again, among Quaker women, I have asked the
opinion of prominent Friends, as of John G. Whittier, whether it has been
the experience of that body that women were more flighty and unsteady
than men in their official action; and have been uniformly answered in the
negative. And finally, as to benevolent organizations, a good test is given
in the fact,--first pointed out, I believe, by that eminently practical
philanthropist, Rev. Augustus Woodbury of Providence,--that the whole
tendency has been, during the last twenty years, to put the management,
even the financial control, of our benevolent societies, more and more into
the hands of women, and that there has never been the slightest reason to
reverse this policy. Ask the secretaries of the various boards of State
Charities, or the officers of the Social Science Associations, if they have
found reason to complain of the want of steadfast qualities in the "weaker
sex." Why is it that the legislation of Massachusetts has assigned the
class requiring the steadiest of all supervision--the imprisoned
convicts--to "five commissioners of prisons, two of whom shall be women"?
These are the points which it would be worthy of our journals to consider,
instead of hastily generalizing from single instances. Let us appeal from
the typical woman of the editorial picture,--fickle, unsteady,
foolish,--to the nobler conception of womanhood which the poet Wordsworth
found fulfilled in his own household:--
"A being breathing thoughtful breath,
A traveller betwixt life and death;
_The reason firm, the temperate will;
Endurance, foresight, strength and skill;_
A perfect woman, nobly planned
To warn, to comfort, to command,
And yet a spirit still, and bright
With something of an angel light."