us to the simple principles of “right,” on which alone the agitation can
be solidly founded. The ground once taken by many, that women as women
would be sure to act on a far higher political plane than men as men, is
now urged less than formerly: the very mistakes and excesses of the
agitation itself have partially disproved it. No cause can safely
sustain itself on the hypothesis that all its advocates are saints and
sages; but a cause that is based on a principle rests on a rock.
If there is any one who is recognized as a fair exponent of our national
principles, it is our martyr-president Abraham Lincoln; whom Lowell
calls, in his noble Commemoration Ode at Cambridge,—
“New birth of our new soil, the first American.”
What President Lincoln’s political principle was, we know. On his
journey to Washington for his first inauguration, he said, “I have never
had a feeling that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the
Declaration of Independence.” To find out what was his view of those
sentiments, we must go back several years earlier, and consider that
remarkable letter of his to the Boston Republicans who had invited him
to join them in celebrating Jefferson’s birthday, in April, 1859. It was
well called by Charles Sumner “a gem in political literature;” and it
seems to me almost as admirable, in its way, as the Gettysburg address.
“The principles of Jefferson are the definitions and axioms of free
society. And yet they are denied and evaded with no small show of
success. One dashingly calls them ‘glittering generalities.’ Another
bluntly styles them ‘self-evident lies.’ And others insidiously
argue that they apply only to ‘superior races.’”
“These expressions, differing in form, are identical in object and
effect,—the subverting the principles of free government, and
restoring those of classification, caste, and legitimacy. They would
delight a convocation of crowned heads plotting against the people.
They are the vanguard, the sappers and miners of returning
despotism. We must repulse them, or they will subjugate us.”
“All honor to Jefferson!—the man who, in the concrete pressure of a
struggle for national independence by a single people, had the
coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely
revolutionary document _an abstract truth applicable to all men and
all times_, and so to embalm it there that to-day and in all coming
days it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the harbingers of
re-appearing tyranny and oppression.”
The special “abstract truth” to which President Lincoln thus attaches a
value so great, and which he pronounces “applicable to all men and all
times,” is evidently the assertion of the Declaration that governments
derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, following the
assertion that all men are born free and equal; that is, as some one has
interpreted it, equally men. I do not see how any person but a dreamy
recluse can deny that the strength of our republic rests on these
principles; which are so thoroughly embedded in the average American
mind that they take in it, to some extent, the place occupied in the
average English mind by the emotion of personal loyalty to a certain
reigning family. But it is impossible to defend these principles
logically, as Senator Hoar has well pointed out, without recognizing
that they are as applicable to women as to men. If this is the case, the
claim of women rests on a right,—indeed, upon the same right which is
the foundation of all our institutions.
The encouraging fact in the present condition of the whole matter is,
not that we get more votes here or there for this or that form of woman
suffrage—for experience has shown that there are great ups and downs in
that respect; and States that at one time seemed nearest to woman
suffrage, as Maine and Kansas, now seem quite apathetic. But the real
encouragement is, that the logical ground is more and more conceded; and
the point now usually made is, not that the Jeffersonian maxim excludes
women, but that “the consent of the governed” is substantially given by
the general consent of women. That this argument has a certain
plausibility, may be conceded; but it is equally clear that the minority
of women, those who do wish to vote, includes on the whole the natural
leaders,—those who are foremost in activity of mind, in literature, in
art, in good works of charity. It is, therefore, pretty sure that they
only predict the opinions of the rest, who will follow them in time.
And, even while waiting, it is a fair question whether the “governed”
have not the right to give their votes when they wish, even if the
majority of them prefer to stay away from the polls. We do not repeal
our naturalization laws, although only the minority of our foreign-born
inhabitants as yet take the pains to become naturalized.
LXXVII.
“THE GOOD OF THE GOVERNED.”
In Paris, some years ago, I was for a time a resident in a cultivated
French family, where the father was non-committal in politics, the
mother and son were republicans, and the daughter was a Bonapartist.
Asking the mother why the young lady thus held to a different creed from
the rest, I was told that she had made up her mind that the streets of
Paris were kept cleaner under the empire than since its disappearance:
hence her imperialism.
I have heard American men advocate the French empire at home and abroad,
without offering reasons so good as those of the lively French maiden.
But I always think of her remark when the question is seriously asked,
as Mr. Parkman, for instance, gravely puts it in his late rejoinder in
“The North American Review,”—“The real issue is this: Is the object of
government the good of the governed, or is it not?” Taken in a general
sense, there is probably no disposition to discuss this conundrum, for
the simple reason that nobody dissents from it. But the important point
is: What does “the good of the governed” mean? Does it merely mean
better street-cleaning, or something more essential?
There is nothing new in the distinction. Ever since De Tocqueville wrote
his “Democracy in America,” forty years ago, this precise point has been
under active discussion. That acute writer himself recurs to it again
and again. Every government, he points out, nominally seeks the good of
the people, and rests on their will at last. But there is this
difference: A monarchy organizes better, does its work better, cleans
the streets better. Nevertheless De Tocqueville, a monarchist, sees this
advantage in a republic, that when all this is done by the people for
themselves, although the work done may be less perfect, yet the people
themselves are more enlightened, better satisfied, and, in the end,
their good is better served. Thus in one place he quotes a “a writer of
talent” who complains of the want of administrative perfection in the
United States, and says, “We are indebted to centralization, that
admirable invention of a great man, for the uniform order and method
which prevails alike in all the municipal budgets (of France) from the
largest town to the humblest commune.” But, says De Tocqueville,—
“Whatever may be my admiration of this result, when I see the
communes (municipalities) of France, with their excellent system of
accounts, plunged in the grossest ignorance of their true interests,
and abandoned to so incorrigible an apathy that they seem to
vegetate rather than to live; when, on the other hand, I observe the
activity, the information, and the spirit of enterprise which keeps
society in perpetual labor, in these American townships, whose
budgets are drawn up with small method and with still less
uniformity,—I am struck by the spectacle; _for, to my mind, the end
of a good government is to insure the welfare of a people_, and not
to establish order and regularity in the midst of its misery and its
distress.”[17]
Footnote 17:
Reeves’s translation, London, 1838, vol. i. p. 97, note.
The Italics are my own; but it will be seen that he uses a phrase almost
identical with Mr. Parkman’s, and that he uses it to show that there is
something to be looked at beyond good laws,—namely, the beneficial
effect of self-government. In another place he comes back to the subject
again:—
“It is incontestable that the people frequently conducts public
business very ill; but it is impossible that the lower order should
take a part in public business without extending the circle of their
ideas, and without quitting the ordinary routine of their mental
acquirements; the humblest individual who is called upon to
co-operate in the government of society acquires a certain degree of
self-respect; and, as he possesses authority, he can command the
services of minds much more enlightened than his own. He is
canvassed by a multitude of applicants, who seek to deceive him in a
thousand different ways, but who instruct him by their deceit....
Democracy does not confer the most skilful kind of government upon
the people; but it produces that which the most skilful governments
are frequently unable to awaken, namely, an all-pervading and
restless activity, a superabundant force, and an energy which is
inseparable from it, and which may, under favorable circumstances,
beget the most amazing benefits. These are the true advantages of
democracy.”[18]
Footnote 18:
Ibid., vol. ii. pp. 74, 75.
These passages and others like them are worth careful study. They
clearly point out the two different standards by which we may criticise
all political systems. One class of thinkers, of whom Froude is the most
conspicuous, holds that the “good of the people” means good laws and
good administration, and that, if these are only provided, it makes no
sort of difference whether they themselves make the laws, or whether
some Cæsar or Louis Napoleon provides them. All the traditions of the
early and later Federalists point this way. But it has always seemed to
me a theory of government essentially incompatible with American
institutions. If we could once get our people saturated with it, they
would soon be at the mercy of some Louis Napoleon of their own.
When President Lincoln claimed, following Theodore Parker, that ours was
not merely a government for the people, but of the people and by the
people as well, he recognized the other side of the matter,—that it is
not only important what laws we have, but who makes the laws; and that
“the end of a good government is to insure the welfare of a people,” in
this far wider sense. That advantage which the French writer admits in
democracy, that it develops force, energy, and self-respect, is as
essentially a part of “the good of the governed,” as is any perfection
in the details of government. And it is precisely these advantages which
we expect that women, sooner or later, are to share. For them, as for
men, “the good of the governed” is not genuine unless it is that kind of
good which belongs to the self-governed.
LXXVIII.
RULING AT SECOND-HAND.
“Women ruled all; and ministers of state
Were at the doors of women forced to wait,—
Women, who’ve oft as sovereigns graced the land,
But never governed well at second-hand.”
So wrote in the last century the bitter satirist Charles Churchill, and
this verse will do something to keep alive his name. He touches the very
kernel of the matter, and all history is on his side. The Salic Law
excluded women from the throne of France,—“the kingdom of France being
too noble to be governed by a woman,” as it said. Accordingly the
history of France shows one long line of royal mistresses ruling in
secret for mischief; while more liberal England points to the reigns of
Elizabeth and Anne and Victoria, to show how usefully a woman may sit
upon a throne.
It was one of the merits of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, that she always
pointed out this distinction. “Any woman can have influence,” she said,
“in some way. She need only to be a good cook or a good scold, to secure
that. Woman should not merely have a share in the power of man,—for of
that omnipotent Nature will not suffer her to be defrauded,—but it
should be a _chartered_ power, too fully recognized to be abused.” We
have got to meet, at any rate, this fact of feminine influence in the
world. Demosthenes said that the measures which a statesman had
meditated for a year might be overturned in a day by a woman. How
infinitely more sensible, then, to train the woman herself in
statesmanship, and give her open responsibility as well as concealed
power!
The same principle of demoralizing subordination runs through the whole
position of women. Many a husband makes of his wife a doll, dresses her
in fine clothes, gives or withholds money according to his whims, and
laughs or frowns if she asks any questions about his business. If only a
petted slave, she naturally develops the vices of a slave; and when she
wants more money for more fine clothes, and finds her husband out of
humor, she coaxes, cheats, and lies. Many a woman half ruins her husband
by her extravagance, simply because he has never told her frankly what
his income is, or treated her, in money matters, like a rational being.
Bankruptcy, perhaps, brings both to their senses; and thenceforward the
husband discovers that his wife is a woman, not a child. But, for want
of this, whole families and generations of women are trained to
deception. I knew an instance where a fashionable dressmaker in New York
urged an economical young girl, about to be married, to buy of her a
costly _trousseau_ or wedding outfit. “But I have not the money,” said
the maiden. “No matter,” said the complaisant tempter: “I will wait four
years, and send in the bill to your husband by degrees. Many ladies do
it.” Fancy the position of a pure young girl, wishing innocently to make
herself beautiful in the eyes of her husband, and persuaded to go into
his house with a trick like this upon her conscience! Yet it grows
directly out of the whole theory of life which is preached to many
women,—that all they seek must be won by indirect manœuvres, and not by
straightforward living.
It is a mistaken system. Once recognize woman as born to be the equal,
not inferior, of man, and she accepts as a right her share of the family
income, of political power, and of all else that is capable of
distribution. As it is, we are in danger of forgetting that woman, in
mind as in body, was born to be upright. The women of Charles
Reade—never by any possibility moving in a straight line where it is
possible to find a crooked one—are distorted women; and Nature is no
more responsible for them than for the figures produced by tight lacing
and by high-heeled boots. These physical deformities acquire a charm,
when the taste adjusts itself to them; and so do those pretty tricks and
those interminable lies. But after all, to make a noble woman, you must
give a noble training.
LXXIX.
“TOO MANY VOTERS ALREADY.”
Curiously enough, the commonest argument against woman suffrage does not
now take the form of an attack on women, but on men. Formerly we were
told that women, as women, were incapable of voting; that they had not,
as old Theophilus Parsons wrote in 1780, “a sufficient acquired
discretion;” or that they had not physical strength enough; or that they
were too delicate and angelic to vote. Now these remarks are waived, and
the argument is: Women are certainly unfit for suffrage, since even men
are unfit. It is something to have women at last recognized as
politically equal to men, even if it be only in the fact of unfitness.
A spasm of re-action is just now passing over the minds of many men,
especially among educated Americans, against universal suffrage.
Possibly it is a re-action from that too great confidence in mere
numbers which at one time prevailed. All human governments are as yet
very imperfect; and, unless we view them reasonably, they are all
worthless. We try them by unjust or whimsical tests. I do not see that
anybody who objects to universal suffrage has any working theory to
suggest as a substitute: the only plan he even implies is usually that
he himself and his friends, and those whom he thinks worthy, should make
the laws, or decide who should make them. From this I should utterly
dissent: I should far rather be governed by the community, as a whole,
than by my ablest friend and his ablest friends; for, if the whole
community governs, I know it will not govern very much, and that the
tendency will be towards personal freedom by common consent. But if my
particular friend once begins to govern me, or I him, the love of power
would be in danger of growing very much. It may be that he could be
safely trusted with such authority, but I am very sure that I could not.
We shall never get much beyond that pithy question of Jefferson’s, “It
is said that man cannot govern himself: how, then, can he govern
another?” There is absolutely no test by which we can determine, on any
large scale, who are fit to exercise suffrage, and who are not. John
Brown would exclude John Smith; and John Smith would wish to keep out
John Brown, especially if he had inconvenient views, like him of
Harper’s Ferry. The safeguard of scientific legislation may be in the
heads of a cultivated few, but the safeguard of personal freedom is
commonly in the hands of the uncultivated many. The most moderate
republican thinker might find himself under the supervision of
Bismarck’s police at any moment, should he visit Berlin; and how easily
he might himself fall into the Bismarck way of thinking, is apparent
when we consider that the excellent Dr. Joseph P. Thompson, writing from
Germany, is understood gravely to recommend the exclusion of German
communists from the ports of the United States. When we consider how
easily the first principles of liberty might thus be sacrificed by the
wise few, let us be grateful that we are protected by the presence of
the multitude.
Whenever the vote goes against us, we are apt to think that there must
be something wrong in the moral nature of the voters. It would be better
to see if their votes cannot teach us something,—if the fact of our
defeat does not show that we left out something, or failed to see some
fact which our opponents saw. There could not be a plainer case of this
than in recent Massachusetts elections. Many good men regarded it as a
hopeless proof of ignorance or depravity in the masses, that more than a
hundred thousand voters sustained General Butler for governor. For one,
I regard that candidate as a demagogue, no doubt; but can anybody in
Massachusetts now help seeing that the instinct which led that large
mass of men to his support was in great measure a true one? Every act of
the Republican legislatures since assembled has been influenced by that
vague protest in behalf of State reform and economy which General Butler
represented. He complicated it with other issues, very likely, and
swelled the number of his supporters by unscrupulous means. It may have
been very fortunate that he did not succeed; but it is fortunate that he
tried, and that he found supporters. In this remarkable instance we see
how the very dangers and excesses of popular suffrage work for good.
For myself, I do not see how we can have too many voters. I am very
sure, that, in the long-run, voting tends to educate and enlighten men,
to make them more accessible to able leadership, to give them a feeling
of personal self-respect and independence. This is true not merely of
Americans and Protestants, but of the foreign-born and the Roman
Catholic; since experience shows that the political control and
interference of the priesthood are exceedingly over-rated. I believe
that the poor and the ignorant eminently need the ballot, first for
self-respect, and then for self-protection; and, if so, why do not women
need it for precisely the same reasons?
SUFFRAGE.
“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
trick of law and politics.”—JAMES OTIS, _quoted by_ CHARLES SUMNER _in
speech March_ 7, 1866.
LXXX.
DRAWING THE LINE.
When in Dickens’s “Nicholas Nickleby” the coal-heaver calls at the
fashionable barber’s to be shaved, the barber declines that service. The
coal-heaver pleads that he saw a baker being shaved there the day
before. But the barber points out to him that it is necessary to draw
the line somewhere, and he draws it at bakers.
It is, doubtless, an inconvenience, in respect to woman suffrage, that
so many people have their own theories as to drawing the line, and
deciding who shall vote. Each has his hobby; and as the opportunity for
applying it to men has passed by, each wishes to catch at the last
remaining chance, and apply it to women. One believes in drawing an
educational line; another, in a property qualification; another, in new
restrictions on naturalization; another, in distinctions of race; and
each wishes to keep women, for a time, as the only remaining victims for
his experiment.
Fortunately the answer to all these objections, on behalf of woman
suffrage, is very brief and simple. It is no more the business of its
advocates to decide upon the best abstract basis for suffrage, than it
is to decide upon the best system of education, or of labor, or of
marriage. Its business is to equalize, in all these directions; nothing
more. When that is done, there will be plenty still left to do, without
doubt; but it will not involve the rights of women, as such. Simply to
strike out the word “male” from the statute,—that is our present work.
“What is sauce for the goose”—but the proverb is somewhat musty. These
educational and property restrictions may be of value; but, wherever
they are already removed from the men, they must be removed from women
also. Enfranchise them equally, and then begin afresh, if you please, to
legislate for the whole human race. What we protest against is that you
should have let down the bars for one sex, and should at once become
conscientiously convinced that they should be put up again for the
other.
When it was, proposed to apply an educational qualification at the South
after the war, the Southern white loyalists all objected to it. If you
make it universal, they said, it cuts off many of the whites. If you
apply it to the blacks alone, it is manifestly unjust. The case is the
same with women in regard to men. As woman needs the ballot primarily to
protect herself, it is manifestly unjust to restrict the suffrage for
her, when man has it without restriction. If she needs protection, then
she needs it all the more from being poor, or ignorant, or Irish, or
black. If we do not see this, the freedwomen of the South did. There is
nothing like personal wrong to teach people logic.
We hear a great deal said in dismay, and sometimes even by old
abolitionists, about “increasing the number of ignorant voters.” In
Massachusetts, there is an educational restriction for men, such as it
is; in Rhode Island, a property qualification is required for voting on
certain questions. Personally, I believe with “Warrington,” that, if
ignorant voting be bad, ignorant nonvoting is worse; and that the
enfranchised “masses,” which have a legitimate outlet for their
political opinions, are far less dangerous than disfranchised masses,
which must rely on mobs and strikes. I will go farther, and say that I
believe our Republic is, on the whole, in less danger from its poor men,
who have got to stay in it and bring up their children, than from its
rich men, who have always Paris and Dresden to fall back upon. As to a
property qualification, there is no dispute that Rhode Island—the only
New England State which has one—is the only State where votes are
publicly bought and sold on any large scale. I do not see that even a
poll-tax or registry-tax is of any use as a safeguard; for, if men are
to be bought, the tax merely offers a more indirect and palatable form
in which to pay the price. Many a man consents to have his poll-tax paid
by his party or his candidate, when he would reject the direct offer of
a dollar-bill.