The moment woman began to exercise this right, I think we should see
moral significance streaming from every statute. We should no longer
hear that seduction was to be sued as "loss of service:" it would become
loss of honor to _more_ than one. We should no longer hear that consent
or temptation excused it: we should find that God demanded chastity of
both sexes, and had made man the guardian of his own virtue. We should
find, that, if its punishment admitted of degrees, it should be
_heaviest_ where a man committed it in defiance or abuse of a positive
trust.
Let us look at a single decision in the light of these principles. Let
us take the case of Harris _versus_ Butler, reported in the notes to
Davis's Prize Essay.
A man named Harris had apprenticed his daughter to a milliner named
Butler, paying as an entrance-fee a sum equivalent to a hundred and
fifty dollars. After a short time, the girl was seduced by her
mistress's husband. She became seriously ill, and was returned to her
father, who lost not only his hundred and fifty dollars, but all the
benefits of her apprenticeship, and was obliged to provide her with
board, medicine, and nursing.
Why the father became liable for the care of his child under such
circumstances does not appear. Common sense would suggest that the court
might have required this at the hands of the Butlers; but,
unfortunately, law has very little to do with common sense.
The father brought an action against Butler: but the defence urged, that
he could only sue for "loss of service;" that her "services" were not
his after she was apprenticed to Mrs. Butler; that Mrs. Butler and her
husband were "one person in law;" and that, if Butler chose to deprive
himself of her services for his own ends, the law had no remonstrance to
make, no redress to afford.
The prosecution urged, that the "care of morals" was one of the duties
involved in the very system of apprenticeship; but the court denied the
claim, unless it were distinctly set forth on the articles signed.
This is but one case out of hundreds accessible to you all. The moment
woman becomes a law-maker, such records will be wiped out of your life.
They may make a certain sort of show in your law-books; but what have
the unbending laws of God to do with this "one person in law," this plea
for "loss of service"? At the eternal bar, no man will dare to echo that
plea, no judge rehearse that verdict. Such law rests not in the "bosom
of God;" its voice chimes not in keeping with the harmony of his
countless spheres.
You object to seeing women in Parliament. English lords tell us that
delicate matters have to be discussed there, with which women would
hardly care to meddle. The natural growth of society opens the area of
all proprieties. Delicate matters come to be discussed in most
households; and it is reasonable to suppose that they would be more
delicately and rationally discussed if they were sometimes _publicly_
met. It is my opinion, that no subject is fit for discussion at all that
cannot be discussed between men and women. It is separating the sexes in
such cases, that opens the way to indecency. All great themes of human
thought and human virtue, men and women ought to be trained to consider
seriously together; and where better than in the Congress or the
Parliament? Think only of the debate which I have quoted on the New
Divorce Bill! Could such a scene have taken place in the presence of
women? Recur to the trial of Queen Caroline; or to that of the Duke of
York, when accused of conniving at the corrupt sale of military
commissions by his mistress, Mrs. Clarke.
Under date of Feb. 16, 1809, Freemantle writes: "The scene which is
going on in the House of Commons is so disgusting, and at the same time
so alarming, that I hardly know how to describe it to you. Of course,
while this ferment lasts (and God knows when it is to end), no attention
will be paid to the business of the country."
In these instances, high-bred men showed a taste for low scandal;
battening day after day on the same loathsome details, which the
presence of a single woman must have checked. Here was a woman, too,
this very Mrs. Clarke, somewhat debased and hardened, who had never a
seat in Parliament, who had never dreamed of exercising the right of
suffrage, yet was quite equal, as the evidence showed, to any political
venality, striving in her way to outdo the very jobbers of Downing
Street itself! Why _should_ elections be scenes of tumult, or
parliaments free fields for imbecile improprieties? Why should not a
peeress feel herself as properly placed among her peers as the Queen
seated at her Council?
We are not likely to withdraw our claim while it is sustained by such a
man as John Stuart Mill, who, in his late essay on "Political
Representation," advises this extension of the suffrage: "All
householders, without distinction of sex," he says, "might be adopted
into the constituency, on proving to the registrar's officer that they
have fifty pounds a year, and can read, write, and calculate."
"The almost despotic power of husbands over wives," Mr. Mill adds in his
"Essay on Liberty," "needs not to be enlarged upon here, because nothing
more is needed for the complete removal of the evil than that wives
should have the same rights, and should receive the protection of the
law in the same manner, as all other persons; and because, on this
subject, the defenders of established injustice do not avail themselves
of the plea of liberty, but stand forth openly as the champions of
power."
The dedication of this "Essay on Liberty" ought to be preserved in these
pages; for it is full of historic significance:--
"To the beloved and deplored memory of her who was the inspirer,
and in part the author, of all that has been best in my writings;
the friend and wife, whose exalted sense of truth and right was my
strongest excitement, and whose approbation was my chief reward,--I
dedicate this volume.
"Like all that I have written for many years, it belongs as much to
her as to me; but the work, as it stands, has had, in a very
insufficient degree, the inestimable advantage of her revision;
some of the most important portions having been reserved for a more
careful re-examination, which they are now never destined to
receive. Were I but capable of interpreting to the world one-half
the great thoughts and noble feelings which are buried in her
grave, I should be the medium of a greater benefit to it than is
ever likely to arise from any thing that I can write, unprompted
and unassisted by her all but unrivalled wisdom."
I said that this dedication ought, for many reasons, to be preserved in
these pages. What is better fitted than such a tribute to check the
jeering scepticism of the crowd as to the ability and purity of the sex?
What could lay a better foundation for a better estimate on the part of
the law? Necker, in his report to the French Government, publicly
awarded to his wife the credit of the recent retrenchment in the
expenses of the Government; Bowditch dedicated his translation of the
"Mécanique Céleste" to the wife who aided him to prepare, and by her
self-denial opened a way for him to publish it: but where, in the
records of the past, shall we find such a tribute offered by such a man,
as honorable in itself to the first political economist of our time as
it is a gracious adornment to the name of the woman he loved? Does it
not promise in itself the dawning of a brighter future for woman, when
no "sad sisterhood" shall be needed either to proclaim woman's rights or
redress her wrongs?[39]
About two years since (1858), the Stockholm "Aftonblad," a Swedish
newspaper, stated that "the authorities of the old university-town of
Upsal had granted the right of suffrage to fifty women owning real
estate, and to thirty-one doing business on their own account. The
representative that their votes assisted in electing was to sit in the
House of Burgesses."
This is the way the matter is to begin. By and by, the interests of
labor and trade will force the authorities of Bristol and Manchester,
Newcastle and Plymouth, to do the same thing; and, after women have gone
on for some twenty years electing members of Parliament, no one of us
will be surprised to find some women sitting in that body. "But,"
objects somebody, "if that ever happens, we shall have women on juries,
women pleading at the bar, women as attorneys, and so on." And this is
exactly what we want. Women are very much _needed_ on juries, and
_female_ criminals will never be tried by their peers until they are
there. It is very seldom that a criminal case in which women are
implicated is brought forward, when women could not be of immense
service in clearing up evidence, and showing to the male jurors on the
panel the absurdity or impossibility of some of the statements. The
recent instance of Miss Shedden, who took up, at a moment's notice, a
case which five well-feed lawyers of distinction declared themselves
unprepared to defend, might be quoted in confirmation of our view. Mr.
Russell said at the Liverpool Assizes lately, in a case which involved
some peculiar evidence, "The evidence of women is, in some respects,
superior to that of men. Their power of judging of minute details is
better; and when there are more than two facts, and something be
wanting, their intuitions supply the deficiency." And precisely the
qualities which fit them to give evidence, fit them to sift and test it.
Women often have occasion to smile, sometimes sadly, sometimes
mischievously, at the verdicts passed upon their own sex. If women were
to enter into the practice of law, or become law-makers, an immense
change would take place in all that relates to it. Absurd technicalities
would be swept off its papers. One hundred words would no longer do duty
for one. Simple, common-sense forms of expression would take the place
of obsolete Latin and Norman-French. Daylight would be let into
indictments, and flaws would soon be hard to find. No woman ever
existed, whose patience would stand, in cases where meaning and law are
evident, the absurd delays of chancery courts, or the still absurder
"filing of objections," or "defining of terms," with which lawyers amuse
a jury, and which Sir Leicester Dedlock, we are told, considered as the
bulwarks of the English Constitution. This impatience of woman might not
be very valuable, if she were to legislate alone; but, controlled by
man's conservative caution, it will be of the greatest service.
We are perpetually met by the opposition extended to _any thing_ that is
new. It ought to be our object, therefore, to show, that for woman to
claim and possess the right of suffrage is by no means a new thing. It
is easy to show from the records of most nations, that women held and
exercised political power so long as power was supposed to inhere
_chiefly_ in property, and so long as women, either single or in
association, possessed property not represented by men. Thus the
suppression of religious houses in England put an end to the
representation of abbesses. "Truly, we think more of money than of
love," said one of the St. Simoniens: "we have more consideration for
bags of dollars than human dignity. We emancipate women in proportion as
they are property-holders; but, in proportion as they are women, our
laws declare them inferior to us." It was only when the republican idea
had crept to a certain extent into monarchical governments themselves,
that women gradually dropped a recognized public influence which had
depended on rank and wealth. What men have to do is, not to reconcile
themselves to a woman's right to vote,--a right acknowledged hundreds of
years ago, which is still covertly acknowledged when woman means
property,--but to reconcile themselves to the idea that woman is a human
being, and that _humanity_ has a right to vote. Wherever governments
decide that every individual has a right to life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness, they must admit the right of the individual woman
to vote, or deny the fact of her humanity. There is the dilemma. In
support of this statement, I should have shown you, that in France, as
early as the reign of Louis XIV., the political rights of property were
respected in the persons of women. At the present day, the remains of
the old feudal and communal system still secure a kind of political
influence to certain women in the provinces, and often confer upon their
husbands a right of franchise. In the reign of Louis XIV., the women who
hawked and vended fish took up the business of the "insolvent
fishmongers," and managed so well, that they acquired wealth, married
their children into the first families, and finally became an estate of
the realm.
"Les Dames de la Halle," or "Dames of the Market," as they are called,
have a corporate existence; and, if corporations have no souls, they
ordinarily possess _franchises_! They have their queen, their laws, and
a language peculiar to themselves. They take part in revolutions, and
send deputations to the foot of the throne. Nor am I alluding now to
long-past feudal or re-actionary crises. Louis Napoleon treats them as
civilly as he does the clergy. When he was married, and when the young
prince was born, they went to the Tuileries in their court-dress. Their
princesses--and we are told that their blood-royal claims the higher
privilege of beauty also--their princesses took the front rank in the
procession, and offered bouquets to their imperial majesties. In
response, Louis Napoleon gave to them what he gives to all
corporations,--a very diplomatic speech.
I have told you what was granted at Upsal in 1858. It is a curious fact,
that, just at the moment when this question of suffrage was first
agitated by the women of the United States assembled in convention at
Seneca Falls in 1848, Pauline Roland and Madame Moniot publicly claimed
their civil rights in Paris. Pauline went herself to the ballot, and,
when her vote was refused, published a protest after the fashion of our
tax-payers. Very absurd English society found woman's first demand for
the suffrage; yet what Englishmen refuse contemptuously to _give to_
woman, certain men of the mean sort, yet calling themselves respectable,
have not been ashamed in that very country to _borrow of_ her. Even
"Blackwood" helps out our argument, when it says, in November, 1854, "I
believe, Eusebius, I speak of a notorious fact, when I say, that it is
less than a century since, for election purposes, parties were
unblushingly married in cases where _women_ conveyed a right of freedom,
a political franchise to their husbands, and parted, after the election,
by shaking hands over a tombstone, as an act of dissolution of the
contract, under cover of the words, 'Until death do us part.'"[40] The
men who looked calmly on this profane and absurd fraud may well dread
the moral influence of woman on elections. As to the historical argument
for England, ladies of birth and quality, we are told, sat in council
with the Saxon Witas. The Abbess Hilda _presided_ in an ecclesiastical
council. "In Wightfred's great council at Benconceld in 694," says
Gurdon in his "Antiquities of Parliament," "the abbesses sat and
deliberated; and five of them signed decrees of that council, with the
king and bishops:" and that illuminated prebendary of Sarum, old Thomas
Fuller, thus further chronicles the same event:--
"A great council (for so it is titled) was held at Becanceld
(supposed to be Beckingham in Kent) by Withred, King of Kent, and
Bertuald, Archbishop of Britain, so called therein (understand, him
of Canterbury), wherein many things were concluded in favor of the
church. Five Kentish abbesses--namely, Mildred, Ethelred, Æte,
Wilnolde, Heresinde--were not only present, but subscribed their
names and crosses to the constitutions concluded therein; and we
may observe, that their subscriptions are not only placed before
and above all presbyters, but also above that of Botred, a bishop
present in this great council. It seems it was the courtesy of
England to allow the upper hand to the weaker sex, as in their
sitting, so in their subscription."
King Edgar's charter to the Abbey of Crowland, in 961, was with consent
of the nobles and _abbesses_ who signed that charter. In Henry the
Third's and King Edward the First's time, four abbesses were summoned to
Parliament; namely, of Shaftesbury, of Winchester, of Berking, and of
Wilton. In the thirty-fifth year of Edward the Third, were summoned--by
writ of Parliament, to sit in person or by their proxies--Mary, Countess
of Norfolk; Alienor, Countess of Ormond; Anna Despenser; Philippa,
Countess of March; Johanna Fitzwater; Agneta, Countess of Pembroke; Mary
de St. Paul; Mary de Roos; Matilda, Countess of Oxford; Catharine,
Countess of Athol.
As to the offices which women can hold in Great Britain, we have already
quoted something from Mr. Higginson, in speaking of the prohibitions of
the law. Lady Packington's estate has probably, by this time, passed
into male hands: so _she_ elects no more members of Parliament. Those
who have read the plea of Lady Alice Lille, when she was forbidden to
speak by attorney, will find no great difficulty in imagining that a
woman could manage a government debate.
Such women as have purchased or inherited East-India stock have always
had the privilege of voting at the meetings of the company, and so have
assisted to govern that unhappy country. In the provincial English
towns, if I may judge from the indirect testimony of novels and
newspapers, women appear to attend all stockholders' meetings; certainly
those held by the banks. In the United States, they are notified, _but
not expected to attend_; a cool kind of insult, which I wish some women
might astonish them by retaliating. If any bank were established by, or
had a majority of, female stockholders, it would be quite easy to notify
men, without expecting _them_ to attend; and the alternative of trusting
their own property to the judgment of _women_ might possibly open the
eyes of men to the absurdity of the present custom.
As we withdraw our eyes from the past, it is natural to inquire, What
late changes have taken place in Great Britain? and what is the strength
of the reform tendency? I have often said, yet I must repeat it here,
that nothing has ever promised such noble usefulness for woman, nothing
has ever occurred to change the popular estimate of her character, in
the same degree as the formation of that _out-of-door Parliament_,--the
Association for the Advancement of Social Science. It offers a position
of entire equality to woman. It encourages her to express herself in the
presence and with the sympathy of the wisest men, and gives her an
opportunity to speak to the actual Parliament through her own influence
exerted on its best members. It has been well said (I think, by Mrs.
Mill), that the very best opportunities of education will be opened to
woman in vain, until she is practically invited to turn them to account.
Here, in this association, is her first practical invitation in Great
Britain. God grant that she may understand the responsibility it
involves, and bear it well! But the formation of this association in
1857 was preceded by other steps. It was on the 13th of February, 1851,
that a petition of women, agreed to by a public meeting at Sheffield,
and claiming the elective franchise, was laid before the House of Lords
by the Earl of Carlisle; and, in July of the same year, Mrs. Mill's
admirable article on the "Enfranchisement of Women," now become
commonplace on account of the extensive and thorough use that has been
made of it, appeared in the "Westminster."
The examination of Florence Nightingale before a commission of inquiry
bore witness no less to the surpassing ability of the woman than to the
increasing value of such ability to all governments. In connection with
it, one could not but smile at the distress felt by certain journals
over a single mistake on the part of the lady as to the proper title of
a subordinate officer.
In the month of March, 1856, the "London Times" published a petition to
both Houses of Parliament in behalf of an amendment of the English
property-laws. This petition was signed by many women whose names are
well known and dear to us,--by the late Anna Jameson, so well known to
the world as an accomplished critic in literature and art; by the wife
and sister of the poet Browning,--Elizabeth Browning, herself the first
poet among women, so far; by Bessie Raynor Parkes and Matilda Hayes, the
editors of the "Englishwoman's Journal," the establishment of which of
itself constitutes an era in the progress of human thought; by Barbara
Bodichon, the well-known artist; by Harriet Martineau, distinguished in
political economy; by Mary Howitt, the womanly story-teller and
ballad-maker; and Mrs. Gaskell, the author of "Mary Barton." The
petition was supported in the House of Lords by Lord Brougham, and in
the House of Commons by Sir Erskine Perry.
After the close of the session in April, 1857, a dinner was offered to
Lord Brougham in acknowledgment of the distinguished ardor with which he
had pressed this bill,--the Married Woman's Property Act of 1857. This
bill did not apply to Ireland or Scotland, nor to pre-existing
contracts; that is, to marriages solemnized before the first day of
January, 1858. It was not passed; but a clause for the protection of the
earnings and savings of married women was introduced into the New
Divorce Bill, and has already proved a blessing to hundreds. This
clause, however, operates _only_ in cases of desertion,--a charge easily
evaded.[41]
The New Divorce Bill passed in 1858: the Divorce and Matrimonial Causes
Act Amendment Bill passed in July, 1858; and since then, the Divorce
Court Bill in August, 1859; both of these last having been made
necessary by the first change in the law. It was in April, 1858, that
Mr. Buckle delivered his lecture on "Civilization;" an important
contribution to that estimate of woman, which is beginning to act
powerfully on all legislation. The Law-Amendment Society also published
a report, urging a thorough reform of the law.
In connection with the reforms effected in the mother-country, it may be
well to state, that similar reforms are being effected in Canada.
Legislators there turn for their precedents to England; but there can be
no doubt that the agitation in the United States largely contributes
towards these changes.
A Married Woman's Property Act passed the Council in May, 1858; but as
these changes are still in progress, and a progress much interrupted by
political fluctuations, it seems hardly worth while to enter into their
details.
In one respect, the statutes of Canada are marked by a singular
inconsistency. They record the only instance, within my knowledge, in
which a government distinctly _forbids_ women to vote; and almost the
only instance of a government _conferring_ that right, even to a limited
extent. In the twelfth year of Victoria, the Canadian Government passed
a statute in these words: "No woman is or _shall be_ entitled to vote at
any election for any electoral division whatever." What spasm of
autocratic terror, what momentary rebellion against their liege lady,
inspired this act, we are left uninformed. For the most part, in all
countries, women wait to be told that they _may vote_; and their
ineligibility is decided by the introduction of the word "male," or the
popular construction of the word "citizen," which, it is quite evident,
does not mean a woman. But it was in Canada also that a distinct
electoral privilege was conferred by intention in 1850; an intention,
however, which indicated no enlargement of views, nor desire of reform,
nor recognition of woman at her human value: it was simply an intention
on the part of the Protestants to secure a little more political power.
Not _humane_, then, but interested motives dictated the omission of the
word "male" in that section of the statutes which provides for the
election of school trustees. It was desired thus to bring the influence
of female property-holders and Protestants to check the Roman-Catholic
demand for separate schools. Three things made it easy for Canadian
women to vote under this provision:--
1st, The great degree of individual independence seen everywhere in
English-born women, as compared with American.
2d, The respect felt, in all countries where distinctions of rank exist,
for the mere property-holder.
3d, The political excitement of the local Protestant Church, which
sustained them to the uttermost.
They have voted for ten years; and a four-years' residence among them
was sufficient to convince me, that no greater derangement to society
would occur if the full right were conferred. In connection with English
government and English colonies, I ought to speak of the government of
Pitcairn's Island. It was the mutinous crew of his majesty's ship
"Bounty" that settled Pitcairn's Island. Adams, the boatswain, was the
father of the little community, and drew up the simple code of laws by
which the islanders are still governed. On Christmas Day, a magistrate
and councillor are elected for the ensuing year; men and women over
sixteen being allowed to vote. The women assist in the cultivation of
the ground, and take no inconsiderable share in the municipal debates.
The fate of this experiment is not yet decided; so I have thought it
worth while to preserve the statement. You will have already seen, that
in England, as elsewhere, so long as the right of suffrage depended upon
possession of property, upon hard pieces of eight, or broad acres of
land, there was no dispute of woman's privilege. It is no new thing for
woman to vote in England: it is a very _old_ thing. It is only a
question whether she shall vote upon the ground of her humanity.