“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.

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.”

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.”

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:—

“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.

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]

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]

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.”

Gov. Long’s letter on woman suffrage is of peculiar value, as recalling 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,—

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.

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]

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]

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.

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 manoeuvres, 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.

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?