The best way to avert such a struggle is to open the eyes of the
thoughtlessly conventional people to the weakness of their position in a
mere contest of recrimination. Hitherto they have assumed that they
have the advantage of coming into the field without a stain on their
characters to combat libertines who have no character at all. They
conceive it to be their duty to throw mud; and they feel that even if
the enemy can find any mud to throw, none of it will stick. They are
mistaken. There will be plenty of that sort of ammunition in the other
camp; and most of it will stick very hard indeed. The moral is, do not
throw any. If we can imagine Shelley and Queen Victoria arguing out
their differences in another world, we may be sure that the Queen has
long ago found that she cannot settle the question by classing Shelley
with George IV. as a bad man; and Shelley is not likely to have called
her vile names on the general ground that as the economic dependence of
women makes marriage a money bargain in which the man is the purchaser
and the woman the purchased, there is no essential difference between
a married woman and the woman of the streets. Unfortunately, all the
people whose methods of controversy are represented by our popular
newspapers are not Queen Victorias and Shelleys. A great mass of them,
when their prejudices are challenged, have no other impulse than to call
the challenger names, and, when the crowd seems to be on their side, to
maltreat him personally or hand him over to the law, if he is vulnerable
to it. Therefore I cannot say that I have any certainty that the
marriage question will be dealt with decently and tolerantly. But dealt
with it will be, decently or indecently; for the present state of things
in England is too strained and mischievous to last. Europe and America
have left us a century behind in this matter.