elocutionist. Yet one thing at least you might acquire for yourself,—a
thing that lies at the foundation of all good speaking,—the complete and
thorough enunciation of every syllable. So great is the delight, to my
ear at least, of a perfectly distinct and clear-cut utterance, that I
fear I should rather listen for an hour to the merest nonsense, so
uttered, than to the very wisdom of angels if given in a confused or
nasal or slovenly way. If you wish to know what I mean by a clear and
satisfactory utterance, go to the next woman suffrage convention, and
hear Miss Eastman.
As to your employment of language, the great aim is to be simple, and,
in a measure, conversational, and then let eloquence come of itself. If
most people talked as well in public as in private, public meetings
would be more interesting. To acquire a conversational tone, there is
good sense in Edward Hale’s suggestion, that every person who is called
on to speak,—let us say, at a public dinner,—instead of standing up and
talking about his surprise at being called on, should simply make his
last remark to his neighbor at the table the starting-point for what he
says to the whole company. He will thus make sure of a perfectly natural
key, to begin with; and can go on from this quiet “As I was just saying
to Mr. Smith,” to discuss the gravest question of Church or State. It
breaks the ice for him, like the remark upon the weather by which we
open our interview with the person whom we have longed for years to
meet. Beginning in this way at the level of the earth’s surface, we can
join hands and rise to the clouds. Begin in the clouds,—as some of my
most esteemed friends are wont to do,—and you have to sit down before
reaching the earth.
And, to come last to what is first in importance, I am taking it for
granted that you have something to say, and a strong desire to say it.
Perhaps you can say it better for writing it out in full beforehand.
But, whether you do this or not, remember that the more simple and
consecutive your thought, the easier it will be both to keep it in mind
and to utter it. The more orderly your plan, the less likely you will be
to “get bewildered,” or to “lose the thread.” Think it out so clearly
that the successive parts lead to one another, and then there will be
little strain upon your memory. For each point you make, provide at
least one good argument and one good illustration, and you can, after a
little practice, safely leave the rest to the suggestion of the moment.
But so much as this you must have, to be secure. Methods of preparation
of course vary extremely; yet I suppose the secret of the composure of
an experienced speaker to lie usually in this, that he has made sure
beforehand of a sufficient number of good points to carry him through,
even if nothing good should occur to him on the spot. Thus wise people,
in going on a fishing-excursion, take with them not merely their
fishing-tackle, but a few fish; and then, if they are not sure of their
luck, they will be sure of their chowder.
These are some of the simple hints that might be given, in answer to
inquiring friends. I can remember when they would have saved me some
anguish of spirit; and they may be of some use to others now. I write,
then, not to induce any one to talk for the sake of talking,—Heaven
forbid!—but that those who are longing to say something should not fancy
the obstacles insurmountable, when they are really slight.
PRINCIPLES OF GOVERNMENT.
“That liberty, or freedom, consists in having an actual share in the
appointment of those who frame the laws, and who are to be the guardians
of every man’s life, property, and peace; for the all of one man is as
dear to him as the all of another, and the poor man has an equal right,
but more need, to have representatives in the legislature than the rich
one. That they who have no voice nor vote in the electing of
representatives do not enjoy liberty, but are absolutely enslaved to
those who have votes, and to their representatives; for to be enslaved
is to have governors whom other men have set over us, and be subject to
laws made by the representatives of others, without having had
representatives of our own to give consent in our behalf.”—BENJAMIN
FRANKLIN, _in Sparks’s Franklin_, ii. 372.
LXXII.
WE THE PEOPLE.
I remember, that, when I went to school, I used to look with wonder on
the title of a newspaper of those days which was often in the hands of
one of the older scholars. I remember nothing else about the newspaper,
or about the boy, except that the title of the sheet he used to unfold
was “We the People;” and that he derived from it his school nickname, by
a characteristic boyish parody, and was usually mentioned as “Us the
Folks.”
Probably all that was taught in that school, in regard to American
history, was not of so much value as the permanent fixing of this phrase
in our memories. It seemed very natural, in later years, to come upon my
old friend “Us the Folks,” reproduced in almost every charter of our
national government, as thus:—
“WE THE PEOPLE of the United States, in order to form a more
perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity,
provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and
secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do
ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of
America.”—_United States Constitution, Preamble._
“WE THE PEOPLE of Maine do agree,” etc.—_Constitution of Maine._
“All government of right originates from THE PEOPLE, is founded in
their consent, and instituted for the general good.”—_Constitution
of New Hampshire._
“The body politic is formed by a voluntary association of
individuals; it is a social compact, by which THE WHOLE PEOPLE
covenants with each citizen, and each citizen with the whole people,
that all shall be governed by certain laws for the common
good.”—_Constitution of Massachusetts._
“WE THE PEOPLE of the State of Rhode Island and Providence
Plantations ... do ordain and establish this constitution of
government.”—_Constitution of Rhode Island._
“THE PEOPLE of Connecticut do, in order more effectually to
define, secure, and perpetuate the liberties, rights, and
privileges which they have derived from their ancestors, hereby
ordain and establish the following constitution and form of civil
government.”—_Constitution of Connecticut._
And so on through the constitutions of almost every State in the Union.
Our government is, as Lincoln said, “a government of the people, by the
people, and for the people.” There is no escaping it. To question this
is to deny the foundations of the American government. Granted that
those who framed these provisions may not have understood the full
extent of the principles they announced. No matter: they gave us those
principles; and, having them, we must apply them.
Now, women may be voters or not, citizens or not; but that they are a
part of the people, no one has denied in Christendom—however it may be
in Japan, where, as Mrs. Leonowens tells us, the census of population
takes in only men, and the women and children are left to be inferred.
“WE THE PEOPLE,” then, includes women. Be the superstructure what it
may, the foundation of the government clearly provides a place for them:
it is impossible to state the national theory in such a way that it
shall not include them. It is impossible to deny the natural right of
women to vote, except on grounds which exclude all natural right. Dr.
Bushnell, in annihilating, as he thinks, the claims of women to the
ballot, annihilates the rights of the community as a whole, male or
female. He may not be consistent enough to allow this, but Mr. Wasson
is. That keen destructive strikes at the foundation of the building, and
aims to demolish “We the people” altogether.
The fundamental charters are on our side. There are certain statute
limitations which may prove greater or less. But these are temporary and
trivial things, always to be interpreted, often to be modified, by
reference to the principles of the Constitution. For instance, when a
constitutional convention is to be held, or new conditions of suffrage
to be created, the whole people should vote upon the matter, including
those not hitherto enfranchised. This is the view insisted on, a few
years since, by that eminent jurist, William Beach Lawrence. He
maintained, in a letter to Charles Sumner and in opposition to his own
party, that if the question of “negro suffrage” in the Southern States
of the Union were put to vote, the colored people themselves had a
natural right to vote on the question. The same is true of women. It
should never be forgotten by advocates of woman suffrage, that, the
deeper their reasonings go, the stronger foundation they find; and that
we have always a solid fulcrum for our lever in that phrase of our
charters, “We the people.”
LXXIII.
THE USE OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.
When young people begin to study geometry, they expect to begin with
hard reasoning on the very first page. To their surprise, they find that
the first few pages are not occupied by reasoning, but by a few simple,
easy, and rather commonplace sentences, called “axioms,” which are
really a set of pegs on which all the reasoning is hung. Pupils are not
expected to go back in every demonstration, and prove the axioms. If
Almira Jones happens to be doing a problem at the blackboard on
examination-day, at the high school, and remarks in the course of her
demonstration that “things which are equal to the same thing are equal
to one another,” and if a sharp questioner jumps up, and says, “How do
you know it?” she simply lays down her bit of chalk, and says
fearlessly, “That is an axiom,” and the teacher sustains her. Some
things must be taken for granted.
The same service rendered by axioms in the geometry is supplied, in
regard to government, by the simple principles of the Declaration of
Independence. Right or wrong, they are taken for granted. Inasmuch as
all the legislation of the country is supposed to be based in them,—they
stating the theory of our government, while the Constitution itself only
puts into organic shape the application,—we must all begin with them. It
is a great convenience, and saves great trouble in all reforms. To the
Abolitionists, for instance, what an inestimable labor-saving machine
was the Declaration of Independence! Let them have that, and they asked
no more. Even the brilliant lawyer Rufus Choate, when confronted with
its plain provisions, could only sneer at them as “glittering
generalities,” which was equivalent to throwing down his brief, and
throwing up his case. It was an admission, that, if you were so foolish
as to insist on applying the first principles of the government, it was
all over with him.
Now, the whole doctrine of woman suffrage follows so directly from these
same political axioms, that they are especially convenient for women to
have in the house. When the Declaration of Independence enumerates as
among “self-evident” truths the fact of governments “deriving their just
powers from the consent of the governed,” then that point may be
considered as settled. In this school-examination of maturer life, in
this grown-up geometry-class, the student is not to be called upon by
the committee to prove that. She may rightfully lay down her
demonstrating chalk, and say, “That is an axiom. You admit that
yourselves.”
It is a great convenience. We cannot always be going back, like a Hindoo
history, to the foundations of the world. Some things may be taken for
granted. How this simple axiom sweeps away, for instance, the cobweb
speculations as to whether voting is a natural right, or a privilege
delegated by society! No matter which. Take it which way you please.
That is an abstract question; but the practical question is a very
simple one. “Governments owe their just powers to the consent of the
governed.” Either that axiom is false, or, whenever women as a class
refuse their consent to the present exclusively masculine government, it
can no longer claim just powers. The remedy then may be rightly
demanded, which the Declaration of Independence goes on to state:
“Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it
is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a
new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing
its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect
their safety and happiness.”
This is the use of the Declaration of Independence. Women, as a class,
may not be quite ready to use it. It is the business of this book to
help make them ready. But, so far as they are ready, these plain
provisions are the axioms of their political faith. If the axioms mean
any thing for men, they mean something for women. If men deride the
axioms, it is a concession, like that of Rufus Choate, that these
fundamental principles are very much in their way. But, so long as the
sentences stand in that document, they can be made useful. If men try to
get away from the arguments of women by saying, “But suppose we have
nothing in our theory of government which requires us to grant your
demand?” then women can answer, as the straightforward Traddles answered
Uriah Heep, “But you have, you know: therefore, if you please, we won’t
suppose any such thing.”
LXXIV.
THE TRADITIONS OF THE FATHERS.
It is fortunate for reformers that our fathers were clear-headed men. If
they did not foresee all the applications of their own principles,—and
who does?—they at least stated those principles very distinctly. This is
a great convenience to us who preach, in season and out of season, on
the texts they gave. Thus we are constantly told, “You are mistaken in
thinking that the fathers of the Republic, when they proclaimed
‘taxation without representation,’ referred to individual rights. They
were speaking only of national rights. They fought for national
independence, not for personal rights at all.”
It is in order to refute this sort of reasoning that women very often
need to read American history afresh. They will soon be satisfied that
such reasoning may be met with a plain, distinct denial. It is contrary
to the facts. The plain truth is, that our fathers not only did not make
national independence their exclusive aim, but they did not make it an
aim at all until the war had actually begun. “I verily believe,” wrote
the brave Dr. Warren, “that the night preceding the barbarous outrages
committed by the soldiery at Lexington, Concord, etc., there were not
fifty people in the whole colony that ever expected any blood would be
shed in the contest between us and Great Britain.”
What was it, then, that had kept the colonists in a turmoil for years?
Let us see.
On Monday, the 6th of March, 1775, the “freeholders and other
inhabitants of Boston” met in town-meeting at Faneuil Hall, Samuel Adams
being moderator. The committee appointed, the year before, to appoint an
orator “to perpetuate the memory of the horrid massacre perpetrated on
the evening of the 5th of March, 1770, by a party of soldiers,” reported
that they had selected Joseph Warren, Esq. The meeting confirmed this,
and adjourned to meet at the Old South at half-past eleven, Faneuil Hall
being too small. At the appointed hour, the church was crowded. The
pulpit was draped in black. Forty British officers, in uniform, sat in
the front pews or on the gallery-stairs. So great was the crowd, that
Warren, in his orator’s robe, entered the pulpit by a ladder through the
window. He stood there before the representatives of royalty, and in
defiance of the “Regulating Act,” one of whose objects was to suppress
meetings for any such purpose. What doctrines did he stand there to
proclaim?
Richard Frothingham in his admirable “Life of Warren”[14] states the
following as the fundamental proposition of this celebrated address:—
Footnote 14:
p. 430.
“That personal freedom is the right of every man, and that property,
or an exclusive right to dispose of what he has honestly acquired by
his own labor, necessarily arises therefrom, are truths which
common-sense has placed beyond the reach of contradiction; and no
man or body of men can, without being guilty of flagrant injustice,
claim a right to dispose of the persons or acquisitions of any other
man, or body of men, unless it can be proved that such a right had
arisen from some compact between the parties in which it has been
explicitly and freely granted.”
“The orator then traced,” says Frothingham, “the rise and progress of
the aggressions on the natural right of the colonists to enjoy personal
freedom and representative government.” Not a word in behalf of national
independence: on the contrary, he said, “An independence on Great
Britain is not our aim. No: our wish is that Britain and the colonies
may, like the oak and ivy, grow and increase together.” What he
protested against was the taking of individual property without granting
the owner a voice in it, personally or through some authorized
representative. And—observe!—this authorization must not be a merely
negative or vaguely understood thing: it must be attested by “some
compact between the parties in which it has been explicitly and freely
granted.” Any thing short of this was “a wicked policy,” under whose
influence the American had begun to behold the Briton as a ruffian,
ready “first to take his property, and next, what is dearer to every
virtuous man, the liberty of his country.” The loss of the country’s
liberty was thus staked as a result, a deduction, a corollary; the
original offence lay in the violation of the natural right of each to
control his own personal freedom and personal property, or else, if
these must be subordinated to the public good, to have at least a voice
in the matter. This, and nothing else than this, was the principle of
those who fought the Revolution, according to the statement of their
first eminent martyr.
And it was for announcing these great doctrines, and for sealing them,
three months later, with his blood, that it was said of him, on the
fifth of March following, “We will erect a monument to thee in each of
our grateful hearts, and to the latest ages will teach our tender
infants to lisp the name of Warren with veneration and applause.” That
the opinions he expressed were the opinions current among the people, is
proved by the general use of the cry “ Liberty and Property” among all
classes, at the time of the Stamp Act; a cry which puzzles the young
student, until he sees that the Revolution really began with personal
rights, and only slowly reached the demand for national independence.
“Liberty and Property” was just as distinctly the claim of Joseph Warren
as it is the claim of those women who now refuse to pay taxes because
they believe in the principles of the American Revolution.
LXXV.
SOME OLD-FASHIONED PRINCIPLES.
There has been an effort, lately, to show that when our fathers said,
“Taxation without representation is tyranny,” they referred not to
personal liberties, but to the freedom of a state from foreign power. It
is fortunate that this criticism has been made, for it has led to a more
careful examination of passages; and this has made it clear, beyond
dispute, that the Revolutionary patriots carried their statements more
into detail than is generally supposed, and affirmed their principles
for individuals, not merely for the state as a whole.
In that celebrated pamphlet by James Otis, for instance, published as
early as 1764, “The Rights of the Colonies Vindicated,” he thus clearly
lays down the rights of the individual as to taxation:—
“The very act of taxing, exercised over those who are not
represented, appears to me to be depriving them of one of their most
essential rights as freemen; and, if continued, seems to be, in
effect, an entire disfranchisement of every civil right. For what
one civil right is worth a rush, after a man’s property is subject
to be taken from him at pleasure, without his consent? If a man is
not his own assessor, in person or by deputy, his liberty is gone,
or he is entirely at the mercy of others.”[15]
Footnote 15:
Otis: Rights of the Colonies, p. 58.
This fine statement has already done duty for liberty, in another
contest; for it was quoted by Mr. Sumner in his speech of March 7, 1866,
with this commentary:—
“Stronger words for universal suffrage could not be employed. His
argument is, that, if men are taxed without being represented, they
are deprived of essential rights; and the continuance of this
deprivation despoils them of every civil right, thus making the
latter depend upon the right of suffrage, which by a neologism of
our day is known as a political right instead of a civil right.
Then, to give point to this argument, the patriot insists that in
determining taxation, ‘every man must be his own assessor, in person
or by deputy,’ without which his liberty is entirely at the mercy of
others. Here, again, in a different form, is the original
thunderbolt, ‘Taxation without representation is tyranny;’ and the
claim is made not merely for communities, but for ‘every man.’”
In a similar way wrote Benjamin Franklin, some six years after, in that
remarkable sheet found among his papers, and called “Declaration of
those Rights of the Commonalty of Great Britain, without which they
cannot be free.” The leading propositions were these three:—
“That every man of the commonalty (excepting infants, insane
persons, and criminals) is of common right and by the laws of God a
freeman, and entitled to the free enjoyment of liberty. That
liberty, or freedom, consists in having an actual share in the
appointment of those who frame the laws, and who are to be the
guardians of every man’s life, property, and peace; for the all of
one man is as dear to him as the all of another; and the poor man
has an equal right, but more need, to have representatives in the
legislature than the rich one. That they who have no voice nor vote
in the electing of representatives do not enjoy liberty, but are
absolutely enslaved to those who have votes, and to their
representatives; for to be enslaved is to have governors whom other
men have set over us, and be subject to laws made by the
representatives of others, without having had representatives of our
own to give consent in our behalf.”[16]
Footnote 16:
Sparks’s Franklin, ii. 372.
In quoting these words of Dr. Franklin, his latest biographer feels
moved to add, “These principles, so familiar to us now and so obviously
just, were startling and incredible novelties in 1770, abhorrent to
nearly all Englishmen, and to great numbers of Americans.” Their fair
application is still abhorrent to a great many; or else, not willing
quite to deny the theory, they limit the application by some such device
as “virtual representation.” Here, again, James Otis is ready for them;
and Charles Sumner is ready to quote Otis, as thus:—
“No such phrase as virtual representation was ever known in law or
constitution. It is altogether a subtlety and illusion, wholly
unfounded and absurd. We must not be cheated by any such phantom, or
any other fiction of law or politics, or any monkish trick of deceit
or blasphemy.”
These are the sharp words used by the patriot Otis, speaking of those
who were trying to convince American citizens that they were virtually
represented in Parliament. Sumner applied the same principle to the
freedmen: it is now applied to women. “Taxation without representation
is tyranny.” “Virtual representation is altogether a subtlety and
illusion, wholly unfounded and absurd.” No ingenuity, no evasion, can
give any escape from these plain principles. Either you must revoke the
maxims of the American Revolution, or you must enfranchise woman. Stuart
Mill well says in his autobiography, “The interest of woman is included
in that of man exactly as much (and no more) as that of subjects in that
of kings.”
LXXVI.
FOUNDED ON A ROCK.