1st, There are a great many women who will never be mothers and
housekeepers; and, if there were not, suffrage is no more
incompatible with maternity and housekeeping than it is with
mercantile life and the club-room.
2d, If it hardens women, it will harden men; and the politics which
are not fit for her are not fit for him, nor will they become so
till her presence gives men a motive to purify them.
3d, At the worst, competition could only go so far, that a man
_and_ a woman would earn as little together as the man now does
alone. This would be better than the present condition of things;
for they would then be equal partners, and no longer master and
slave. Both would work, and neither need pine.
These answers, whether logical or not, have practically silenced the
objections. We hear no more of _this_ nonsense. But, on the other hand,
a respectable daily says, "As to the abstract right of a woman to vote
because she is a human being and pays taxes, there is no such abstract
right in any human being, male or female: the extent of the elective
franchise is, and must ever be, limited by considerations of
expediency."
Then a distinguished review goes on to say, "that while the question of
suffrage stands where it now does, so unsettled that every Congress and
Parliament discuss it anew, we are glad that any thing should prevent
the discussion as to conferring on woman a duty, the grounds of which
are very vague and undetermined so far as regards men;" and a critic of
Rosa Bonheur's magnificent pictures advises the "sad sisterhood of
women's-rights advocates to visit the exhibition, and sigh to think how
much one silent woman's hand outvalues for their cause the pathos and
the jeers of their unlovely platform."
Such remarks as these are easily met. To the first objector, who
declares, although the professed advocate of a republican government,
that _there is no such thing_ as any abstract right to vote, we reply,
that in this particular discussion we don't care about _abstract
rights_: what we want is our _own share_ of the tangible acknowledged
right which human governments confer. If in England this right depends
on a property qualification, then we claim that there the property
qualification shall endow woman as well as man with the right of
suffrage. If in America it depends upon an inalienable right to life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, then we demand that our
government recognize woman as so endowed, and receive her vote.
To the reviewer we say also, If the grounds of suffrage are vague and
undetermined in _theory_, they may remain so, so far as our interference
is concerned. What we ask to share is the steady right to vote, which
has been actually granted, and never disputed, since our government was
founded; and sufficiently pressed, we might add, that, if there is ever
any chance of limiting the right of suffrage, we shall do all we can to
secure its dependence on a certain amount of education, in preference to
a certain amount of wealth.
As to the art critic, we thank him for calling us the "sad sisterhood."
We should be sorry to be otherwise, when pleading for women _before_
men; sorry to find matter for jesting in those purlieus of St. Giles and
Five Points and the Black Sea, beating up remorselessly against these
very doors, which lie at the very heart of our effort. As to the matter
of going to see the Horse Fair and the Highland Cattle, it will probably
be found to be a fact, that, in every city where those great pictures
have been exhibited, "_women's-rights women_" have been their _earliest_
visitors; and, standing before the canvas, have thanked God, with an
earnestness the art critic never dreamt of, for that silent woman's
hand, that glorious woman's life. It was not necessary for him to remind
us of what Solomon had said so much better three thousand years ago;
namely, that "speech is silvern, and silence is golden." Nathless,
silver is still current in all markets; and, God willing, we are not
ashamed to use it.
We intend to claim, in words, the right of suffrage; and why?
Turning from that wretched estimate of woman, and of man's duty toward
woman, which the law-books have just offered us, we claim the right of
suffrage, because only through its possession can women protect
themselves; only through its exercise can both sexes have equality of
right and power before the law. Whenever this happened, character would
get its legitimate influence; and it is just possible that men might
become rational and virtuous in private, if association with women
compelled them to _seem so_ in public.
It is noticeable, that every man disclaims at his own hearth, and in the
presence of women, whatever there is of disgraceful appertaining to
political or other public meetings. _Somebody_ must be responsible for
these things; and yet, if we are to believe witnesses, nobody ever does
them. The bare fact of association must take all the blame.
The laws already existing prove conclusively to woman herself, that she
has never had a real representative. What she seeks is to utter her own
convictions, so that they shall redeem and save, not merely her own sex
but the race.
That the right of suffrage would be a protection to women, we see from
this fact, that it would at once put an end to three classes of laws:--