"I do not see," he says, "that any thing prevents widows, having
large property, from voting, notwithstanding it has never been the
case either here or in England. Perhaps it was thought unbecoming
for women to press into tumultuous assemblies.... Perhaps it was
thought, that, as all those who vote for taxes must bear the tax,
none would be imposed, except for the public good.
"For both the widow and the single woman," he continues, "I have
the highest respect; and would, at any time, give my consent to
secure to them the franchise, though I do not think it would
increase their security.
"The Committee of Taxation," he adds, "are regularly chosen by the
freeholders and housekeepers; and, in the choice of them, you have as
legal a right to vote as any person."
Mr. Lee thinks, that, in a few minutes' conversation, he could "content"
his sister upon the subject; but eighty years have passed away, and the
question is still unsettled.
What he calls a "woman's security" is proved to be no security, even in
the small matter of money; for men are constantly imposing taxes, the
burden of which _they_ are never to bear. As I have shown, in treating
of labor, what position women hold toward the State in the matter of
employment, I will not repeat the statement here. Let these pages bear
no other burden than that of woman's civil rights,--"woman's rights,"--a
phrase which we _all_ hate; which soils the lips that use it; which
women speak with such unction as a slave might clank his chains!
Soil the lips? Not because it is a phrase which stirs the ridicule and
the contempt of the weak-minded; not because _you_ consider it only the
second term of the Bloomer equation: but because the necessity to use it
shows how little has yet been done; shows that men still dwell on
distinctions of sex, in preference to identities of duty; that women are
play-things still in the popular estimate,--creatures of the nursery and
the drawing-room, but not angels of God, joint-heirs of immortality.
We have not laid a secure foundation for any statement on this subject,
unless we have made it clear that "woman's rights" are identical with
"human rights;" that what men do for women, they do in far _wider_
measure for themselves; that no father, brother, or husband can have all
the privileges ordained for him of God, till mother and sister and wife
are set free to secure them according to instinctive individual bias.
The subject would have no interest for me, if it were but a selfish
clamor of one class for advantages over another; but it does interest
me,--interest beyond all earthly debate,--because, in its evolution,
there unfolds also the highest interest of our common humanity.
That public opinion has been somewhat conquered, the reception given to
women in the lyceum is alone sufficient to show. When a woman of good
social standing struggles with convention on the one hand, and womanly
affection on the other, she still stands _on the platform_ somewhat as
she _did at the stake_; but, on the other hand, the awakening public
interest has nurtured a class of women who owe all that they have and
are to the platform itself.
With no oppressive restrictions in their circumstances,--endowed with
strong good sense and a vigorous talent,--they have won their way to the
public esteem; and are stronger and healthier than most women, only
because they have had an object for life and thought to grasp.
What will most help women in the matter of labor, and, through labor, to
their "civil rights," is a new conception of the dignity of labor on the
part of the educated classes, men as well as women.
Harriet Hosmer comes back from Rome to queen it over our men; Rosa
Bonheur drives a tandem of Flemish horses through a square of canvas,
and over the very necks of her critics: but we want women who shall turn
the trades into fine arts. Do you smile at the expression? It is
legitimate. France has already answered my demand. A finer statue than
the "Moses" of Michael Angelo would be one womanly model of patient
thoroughness. A finer picture than the glowing pencils of Titian and
Claude ever fused into a canvas would be the prospective elevation of
manual labor.
The fine arts are already obedient to woman's will. To _what_ woman is
it reserved to make the useful arts pay tribute? Dependent upon the
"right to labor," as we have already seen, is "woman's civil equality."
If all the fields of human labor are thrown absolutely open (and you
admit that they ought to be); if women enter and grow wealthy therein;
if every second woman, for instance, were an intelligent
property-holder,--is it credible that she, or her husband for her, would
remain contented in her present minority? Would she not want a seat in
the legislature to protect her property, a vote to control
appropriations and taxes? There are no revolutionists like the
industrial classes.
It was the discontent of merchants and artisans which hunted Charles
Stuart to the block, and paved the way for English freedom. It was the
discontent of trade, a long-entertained moral disgust, culminating in
indignant contempt at a Stamp Act, which secured American
_independence_,--I wish we could say, American _freedom_ as well.
Create, then, a class of wealthy working women, you who are ambitious of
a female franchise, and society will be forced to give you your desire.
Wendell Phillips says, that, when woman is once brought to the
ballot-box, men will cry out, "Educate her!" in self-preservation. If
this be true (and I am not sure that it is; for a great many popular
elections are at this moment carried in the Middle and Southern States,
to come no nearer home, by the _un_educated class, partly by the
dram-shops indeed),--if this _be_ true, however, it is a "poor rule
which does not work both ways;" and we may go farther than Mr. Phillips,
and say, he will also cry out, "Give her something to do!" that she may
understand the interests of property, and be qualified to plead for
them. Mr. Phillips plants himself upon the right of suffrage, and _goes
back_ to secure education and free labor, for State reasons. He has
every right to do it; but, on the other hand, _we_ may rest upon our
undoubted right to education, and go _forward_, with safe, strong steps,
to claim the right of suffrage. When a majority of women find the means
of thorough education open, then a much greater number will seek actual
employment, and immediately the interests of property will compel them
to clamor for suffrage. Do not misunderstand me. It is not a nation of
paid underlings, of ever so intelligent clerks and apprentices, men or
women, that will control the springs of government, and overthrow
institutions as well as prejudices, if they stand in their way: it is
the heads of firms, the movers in great undertakings, the proprietors of
mills, the builders of ships, the contractors for supplies, persons
conversant with large interests, and quick to see their jeopardy, which,
as women no less than men, must secure the elective right.
How I should rejoice to see a large Lowell mill wholly owned and managed
by women! What is to make it possible?--only, that the unoccupied women
of wealth and rank, at this moment in the Commonwealth, should combine
to build or buy such a mill. Suppose it _well_ managed, representing
ultimately a million of dollars: do you believe it would long remain
without political power? Just as the testy trade of Upsal demanded the
franchise for its eighty-one women, so would the Lowell mill.
Every year, these ten years, our sturdy friend Dr. Hunt has sent up her
protest to the city assessors. She has not quite had the heart, as I
wish some woman had, to let them sell her household goods over her head,
for non-payment of taxes; but the City Government sits as serene and
patient under her inflictions as if she had never spoken. Her protests
probably go back to the pulp of the paper-mill; and, but for the
newspaper, we should never know that they were written. But five
thousand female property-holders, calling their own caucus, and storming
the City Hall with well-concerted words, would compel any government to
listen; would compel committees to sit, and departments to act. Let it
be your first duty, then, to add to the number of intelligent female
workers.
Last summer, I heard one of our friends say, that the reason that men
did not wish women to enter medical societies, and receive medical
diplomas, was, that they were unwilling to be detected in their own
double-dealing and malpractice. I should not be willing to indorse a
statement so broadly made. Mean men may justify it: but the men I have
known, the men who have been at once my inspiration and my
strength,--these men were not mean; yet among them even the bravest
doubted, at first, as to the expediency of our discussion.
These men have felt a tender reverence for moral purity in woman. They
have seen laborers of the lower class fall as if smitten by a
pestilence. They had not faith to save the world at such a cost. From
the malpractice and guilty dread of mean men, then; from the sensitive
horror of the noblest, let us learn, at least, that the duty woman owes
the State is a _moral_ duty. A full understanding of this will give her
courage to press her claims. It is the power of conscience and love
which she is to bring to bear on the ballot-box, and which is to mould,
with her aid, questions and interests hitherto untouched by any higher
impulse than the love of gain.
I cannot leave this statement of human rights, without claiming for
woman one right of which men very commonly deprive her; in behalf of
which society makes no clamor, and about which the most radical
reformers say very little. I mean woman's right to find man in his
proper place, as counsellor and friend.
As _father_, to find him interested, equally with his wife, in the
spiritual custody and training of his daughters; giving thus some
portion of each day to imbuing young womanly souls with manly strength.
As _brother_, to find in him wise respect for womanhood, and helpful
free communion.
As _husband_, to find him, unless there is manifest interposition of
Providence, always at the head of his family, always the support and
counsellor of his wife, as she in turn is to be his; making his love her
shelter, his strength her dependence, his experience her guide, his
manliness the complement of her womanliness.
As a _son_, to find him always anxious and ready to minister, provident
to think, patient to bear, and willing to act; never shirking, from
idleness, the duty which an active mother does not shrink from bending,
perhaps _breaking_, beneath.
Society sets man free from every conceivable family duty, without a
word. On the other hand, it binds women down to them with cords of iron,
and is pitiless if a single one be snapped. I do not ask society to
require less of woman, but _more_ of man. There is an immense amount of
cant, intentional and unintentional, talked upon this subject. Last
January, I heard one of our wisest and best public teachers speak upon
the constitution of the family; and, when he had spoken whole pages of
solid sense, he said this foolish thing,--that the life of the family
rested in the mother; that, when _she_ died, the children must scatter,
the father could not hold them alone, but that the father might be
faithless or dissipated, might abide in foreign countries, might wander
for years a stranger, and still the family sacredness be unbroken. I do
not believe it. I protest against such a view of the family, as a great
public evil, and one which no public teacher should strengthen by any
heedless or sentimental words.
No man has a right to ask any woman to be his wife, who means to
sacrifice her life to his own love of business or pleasure or vagrancy;
who does not mean to stand strong at her side till death. I speak for
the heart of all womanhood when I say, that no good woman would ever
accept such an offer, if she supposed she were to be idly left to fulfil
its duties alone. If God had intended to rear women independent of manly
influence, he would never have constituted the family. It is because
every woman needs every man that its laws are absolute. If the physical
legitimacy of the family depend upon the mother, the spiritual
legitimacy depends upon the holy faithfulness of the father. When death
or sickness or imperative duty takes her beloved ones from her, God
sends to woman the Comforter, who helps her to bear and do her double
duty. Yet even this angel is born of a voiceless sorrow. It was in
recognition of this human need, as much as of the divine love, that
Theodore Parker was accustomed to pray to Him who is _both_ Father and
Mother.
Do you object, that, under the present constitution of society, man
cannot find time for this fidelity? When woman becomes an active worker,
adding to the resources of the household, man is set free from a portion
of his care. The future offers him ample time; the present, more than
he uses. I wish I could see him as anxious to make acquaintance with his
own young children as with the gay society of his neighborhood.
The actual guardianship of society is now thrown into woman's hands. It
does not belong to her: it belongs to men _and_ women.[46]
Individual men shrink from the idea of being "governed by their wives."
From traditional indolence, however, and that sentimental respect which
does not permit a man to sit in a woman's presence, the "world" has
certainly come to be governed by "_its_ wife." Worst of all, nobody
punishes it even by a sneer.
The historical development of woman's social progress corresponds to the
logical statement upon which I have insisted.
Nearly two centuries ago, Mary Astell would have established a college
for women; but the bigotry of Bishop Burnet defeated her plans. The
niece of a beneficed clergyman, she had not the courage to press her
schemes against the open opposition of the church. Many other efforts,
like hers, to secure and make use of education, led the way to a
recognition of a decided bias in the individual: so when, a century
later, Mary Wollstonecraft was born, the way was open for the assertion
of the right to labor. This assertion is hardly indicated in her most
celebrated work; but it gives pungency and effect to the dreariest pages
of her novels.
In Australia, when a female child is born, the natives break her
finger-joints; an artificial distinction, which _they_ seem to think
more decisive and enduring than God's own limit of sex.
Mary Wollstonecraft saw, that civilized society, enslaved by tradition
and custom, imposed conditions quite as arbitrary, and, to all practical
purposes, broke _every_ joint in a woman's body; leaving her helpless,
to depend on the strength and skill and affection of man.
A passionate and thriftless father, who spent more than three daughters
could earn, and whom she nevertheless protected to her dying day, did
not give her a very high idea of the security of such dependence. The
response to her appeal was heard in a myriad of distinguished voices,
and seen in the consecutive, chosen, and persevering labors of Harriet
Martineau in political economy, of Anna Jameson in artistic criticism,
of Mary Carpenter in the reformation of criminals, of Florence
Nightingale in sanitary reform, of Caroline Chisholm in emigration, of
Mrs. Griffith in marine botany (a special study, which she may almost be
said to have created), of Janet Taylor in practical philanthropy among
seamen, and nautical astronomy.
This selection of duty shows the advance of the movement. Formerly a
woman might be literary in a general sense: now she had the oversight of
the field, and might choose the place and kind of her work.
All this prepared the way for the advent of Margaret Fuller, and brought
about the condition of which she was the exponent. She caught the rumor
which floated in subtle discord all around her. Her quick insight
detected every true and living germ of thought in the confused social
deposits and exhalations. Out of the discord, she wrought a quaint and
scholarly music; out of the refuse, she enriched a fragrant garden: and
this song, this outgrowth, had an essential music and beauty, and were
caught at once to the popular heart.
That the division of labor was already taking place, was obvious enough
to her: so she claimed, in advance, the right of suffrage. Society was
already prepared to make this claim, but only discovered its readiness
as it listened to her enthusiastic song. Like Deborah, our friend struck
her cymbals; and, when the heart of the people shouted consent, they
"made her a judge over them."
Although it was doubtless owing to many older causes, it seemed as if
her statement of the "great lawsuit" in 1844 led to the first Woman's
Convention at Seneca Falls in 1848; and, in 1850, the National
Woman's-rights Association began the yearly work in which it has ever
since persevered.
Man, as well as woman, has been forced to respect this work, moved by
the moral destitution in the lowest, and the profane inanity in the
highest, ranks of life, which is the result of our social depravity.
_Profane inanity_, I repeat; for every helpless woman is a living,
intolerable blasphemy against the Most High. Not more a blasphemy than
every helpless man; but society neither expects, defends, nor provides
for, helpless _men_. It is only the helpless woman who is expected and
approved.
Often do we hear it said, that no law forbids American women to _work_.
Neither, it has been responded, is there any _law_ which forbids Chinese
women to _walk_; but the careful ligatures, so closely pressed by
unsuspecting mothers about those tender feet, do not do their work more
surely than the inevitable restrictions of society.
In summing up this constantly accruing list of influences and changes, I
must again direct your attention to the fact, that, from the earliest
dawn of modern civilization, women have been, in some nations at least,
invested with political power.
The mock-marriage, by which the woman's entailed suffrage served a
fraudulent purpose; the abbesses called to Parliament in right of
abbey-lands, the permission accorded to the eighty-one women of Upsal,
the position of the French "Dames de la Halle," the female stockholders
in the East-India Company, that one persistent female property-holder in
Nova Scotia, the fifty-dollar proclamation-money in New Jersey,--all
indicate that there never _has_ been, and never _will_ be, any serious
difficulty about woman's voting in any age or any country where the
right to vote depends upon the possession of property, and where she
herself professes to desire it.
Understand, then, that the abstract right to vote is not the question
for you to consider: that was settled some hundreds of years ago.
The practical question for American men to put to themselves is, whether
their own democratic experiment is a failure. Will you go back to the
property basis for your own franchise? or do you still profess to
believe, that man--as man, as child of God--has a right to reign, which
does not depend upon broad doubloons or broad acres? And, if man has
this right upon a simple human ground, how can you deny it to woman?
Will you say that she is not human,--that she has no soul?
Even Mahomet did better than that. Some one once asked him if the
marriage-tie were immortal, and if a husband might claim his wife in the
next world:--
"If the man be the superior being," he replied, "he can claim his
wife or not, as he chooses; but, if the woman be the superior, the
decision must rest with her."
And what Mahomet thus prophesied of the world to come is clearly true of
the world that is. There is no such thing as cheating either God or
humanity.
Let him who aspires to rule _make himself superior_ in understanding and
moral purpose, and he _will_ rule.
No possibilities, visible or invisible, need daunt him; but, let him be
false by one hair's breadth, and he carries his doom in his own bosom as
certainly as the flawed crystal at the approach of frost.
You are, then, to base your demand for woman's civil rights upon her
simple humanity,--the value of the soul itself.
If you deny this foundation for her, you deny it for yourselves, and the
Declaration of Independence is only an impertinent pretence.
It may not be easy to push this truth home, and force your friends and
neighbors to consider it; but, once convinced in your own minds, you
cannot escape from the responsibility.
Wendell Phillips once told us of an old catechism, printed, I think, at
Venice in 1563, which contained the following question and answer:--
_Q._ How shall I show my obedience to God?
_A._ By never doing any thing which is disagreeable to my neighbor.
Is it possible that this catechism is still in general use?
Fashionable morality is of so loose a sort, that to do any thing
disagreeable to one's neighbor is still, in the estimation of most
people, the unpardonable sin. People who are capable of hesitating on
that account need not be greatly anxious about their responsibility.
Our cause does not need them; resting, not on timid self-deceivers, but
on immutable truth, and the hallowed recognition of woman herself.