In our day, innovations march with so rapid
a stride that they quite take away one's breath. The fantastical project of
yesterday, which was mentioned only to be ridiculed, is to‑day the
audacious reform, and will be tomorrow the accomplished fact. Such has been the
history of the agitation for "women's rights," as they are
sophistically called in this country. A few years ago this movement was the
especial hobby of a few old women of both sexes, who made themselves the
laughing stock of all sane people by the annual ventilation of their crotchet.
Their only recruits were a few of the unfortunates whom nature or fortune had
debarred from those triumphs and enjoyments which are the natural ambition of
the sex, and who adopted this agitation as the most feasible mode of expressing
their spitefulness against their successful competitors. Today the movement has
assumed such dimensions that it challenges the attention of every thoughtful
mind.
If
we understand the claims of the Women's Rights women they are in substance two:
that the legislation, at least, of society shall disregard all the natural
distinctions of the sexes, and award the same specific rights and franchises to
both in every respect; and that woman while in the married state shall be
released from every species of conjugal subordination. The assimilation of the
garments of the two sexes, their competition in the same industries and
professions, and their common access to the same amusements and recreations, are
social changes which the "strong-minded" expect to work, each one for
herself, when once the obstructions of law are removed from the other points.
One
result of the reflection which we have been able to give this movement, is the
conviction that it will prevail in the so-called "United States." This
is foreshadowed by the frantic lust for innovation which has seized the body of
the people like an epidemic. It is enough with them to condemn any institution,
that it was bequeathed us by our forefathers; because it is not the invention of
this age, it is wrong, of course. In their eyes no experience proves anything,
save the experience which they have had themselves. They do not suppose that our
fathers were wise enough to interpret and record the lessons of former
experiences. That certain things did not succeed in our forefathers' hands is no
proof that they will not succeed in our, hands; for we are "cute," we
live in an enlightened age, and understand how to manage things successfully.
The philosophy of the Yankee mind, is precisely that of the Yankee girl who,
when she asked for leave to marry at seventeen, was dissuaded by her mother that
she "had married very early and had seen the folly of it." "Yes;
but, Mamma," replied the daughter, "I want to see the folly of it for
myself." Your Yankee philosopher is too self‑sufficient to be
cautioned from the past. He does not know history; he would not believe its
conclusions if he did; he has no use for its lights, having enough
"subjective" light of his own. To such a people the fact that a given
experiment is too absurd to have been ever tried before, is an irresistible
fascination: it is a chance not to be neglected.
The symptoms of approaching success which
already exist are such as may well cheer the advocates of the new revolution.
They who a few years ago counted their adherents by scores, now have tens of
thousands. They are represented by their own press. They have received the
support of at least one religious journal, which presumes to call itself
Christian and is, the organ of a numerous denomination—the New York Independent.
They receive the obsequious homage of the demagogues of the day. They
have already engrafted a part of their ideas upon some State constitutions.
Their apostles are invited to lecture before "Christian Associations"
(of that peculiar kind which enumerate billiard and card-tables among the means
of grace), and before the United States Congress. And last, a kindred cause,
that of indiscriminate divorces, is making such progress in many of the States
that it will soon be able to lend a strong helping‑hand to its sister. Now
it is by just such steps that Radicalism grew from its despised infancy in this
country. It was just thus that Abolitionism grew. It is thus that all things
grow on the American soil which ripen their harvests of evil.
The advocates of these "women's
rights" may be expected to win the day, because the premises from which
they argue their revolution have been irrevocably admitted by the bulk of the
people. Now this popular mind may not be consciously or intentionally consistent
and logical. It may jump to many conclusions without much analysis of the steps
by which they are reached. It may deliberately harbor the most express purpose
to be guilty of any logical inconsistency, however outrageous, in pursuing its
supposed interests; and may have its mind ever so clearly made up to eat its own
words and principles whenever its convenience prompts that measure. But still
the Creator has made man, in spite of himself, a logical animal; and
consequences will work themselves out, whether he designs it or not, to those
results which the premises dictate. History will write out the corollaries of
the theorems whether the projectors wish to stop for them or not.—Now, false
principles are already firmly planted from which the whole "Women's
Rights" claim must follow. If we look at the coarser, more concrete, and
popular form in which the consequence is drawn, we find the argument for the
popular, Radical mind perfectly unanswerable. "It has been decided that all
negro men have a right to vote: is not a Yankee white woman with her `smartness'
and education as good as a stupid, ignorant, Southern black?" We should
like to see the answer to that logic from that premise which a Northern Radical
mind could be made to appreciate. An unanswerable point thus perpetually made
upon the mind of the public, will impinge at last.
Or if we examine the argument in its more
exact and logical form, we shall find it, after the established (false) premises
are granted, equally conclusive for the educated. The very axioms of American
politics now are, that "all men are by nature equal," that all are
inalienably "entitled to liberty and the pursuit of happiness," and
that "the only just foundation of government is in the consent of the
governed." There was a sense in which our fathers propounded these
statements; but it is not the one in which they are now held by Americans. Our
recent doctors of political science have retained these formularies of words as
convenient masks under which to circulate a set. of totally different, and
indeed antagonistic notions; and tile y have succeeded perfectly. The new
meanings of which the "Whigs" of 1776 never dreamed are now the
current once. Those wise statesmen meant to teach that all men are morally equal
in the sense of the Golden Rule: that while individual traits, rights, and
duties vary widely in the different orders of political society these different
rights all have some moral basis; that the inferior has the same moral title
(that of a common humanity and common relation to a benignant Heavenly Father)
to have his rights,‑the rights of an inferior‑duly respected, which
the superior has to claim that his very different rights shall be respected. The
modern version is that there are no superiors or inferiors in society that there
is a mechanical equality; that all have
specifically all the same rights; and that any other constitution is against
natural justice. Next: when our wise fathers said that liberty is an
inalienable, natural right, they meant by each one's liberty the privilege to do
such things as he, with his particular relations, ought to have a moral title to
do; the particular things having righteous, natural limitations in every case,
and much narrower limits in some cases than in others. Radical America now means
by natural liberty each one's privilege to do what he chooses to do. By the
consent of the governed our forefathers meant each Sovereign Commonwealth's
consenting to the constitution under which it should be governed: they meant
that it was unjust for Britain to govern America without America's consent.
Which part of the human beings living in a given American State should
constitute the State potentially, the populus whose franchise it was to express
the will of the commonwealth for all that was in their eyes wholly another
question, to 'be wisely decided in different States according to the structure
which Providence had given them. By "the consent of the governed" it
would appear that Radicalism means it is entirely just for Yankeedom to govern
Virginia against Virginia's consent, and that it is not just to govern any
individual human being without letting him vote for his governors. The utter
inconsistency of the two parts of this creed. is not ours to reconcile. It is
certain that both parts (consistent or not) are firmly held as the American
creed. The version given to the maxim as to individual rights is universally
this: that natural justice requires that suffrage shall be coextensive with
allegiance, except where the right has been forfeited by some crime (such as
that Which the men of 1861 committed in presuming to act on the principles of
the men of 1776). To these errors the American people tire too deeply committed
to evade any of their logical applications. For the sake of these dogmas they
have destroyed one Federal and eleven other State constitutions, have committed
a half million of murders, and (dearest of all) have spent some seven thousand
millions of dollars. Repudiate these maxims now'. 'Never! This would be to
dishonor the ghosts of all the slaughtered Union Savers, to shame the sacrifices
of all the "Trooly Lo'il" during the glorious four years, to dim the
very crown of martyrdom upon the 'brow of the "late lamented," and
worst of all, to outrage the manes of all those departed dollars.
Now then, when Mistress Amazons Narragansett
steps forward, and having vindicated her claim to have belonged always to the
true Israel of the "Unconditional Unionists," demands a simple and
obvious application of these honored maxims to her own case, how can site be
gainsaid? Hitherto the State has governed her without asking her. consent at the
ballot-box. This is self-evidently against the immortal truth that "all
just government is founded on the consent of the governed." The State has
restrained her natural liberty of doing as she chose, compelling her to pay a
great many dollars in taxes which she would rather have chosen to expend in
crinoline, and forbidding her to do a great many other little acts, such as
bigamy, etc., which might have been her preference (and therefore her natural
right); and all this without even saving the State's credit and manners by
asking her consent at the polls to the laws made for her. And last: the State
has committed the crowning outrage and inconsistency of not letting her be a man
because God made her a woman! What an outrage this to be committed on so
frivolous a pretext! Be consoled, Mistress Amazona; it is simply impossible that
such abuses can stand much longer in tile full light of this reforming age.
"The school-mistress, is abroad." That mighty tide of progress which
has already swept away the Constitution, and slavery, and State's rights, and
the force of contracts public and private, with all such rubbish, will soon
dissolve your grievance also. Has not the Radical version of the political
gospel said, "All men are by nature mechanically equal?" And
"man," Mistress Amazona (as you wall know when you acquire the virile right of learning Latin) here
means, not vir, but home; the species irrespective of sex. It means that a woman
has a natural right to do all the particular things that a man does (if she
can), to sit on juries and shave her beard, to serve in the army and ride
astraddle, to preach sermons and sing bass.
But seriously, a woman is a human being, and
a grown woman is an adult. She is treated, and must be treated, by all
governments as a citizen owing allegiance and subject to law. On those
principles, which are the first principles of Radicalism, it is impossible to
deny her right to vote and to participate in all the franchises of men. Her
exclusion is a glaring instance of "class legislation"‑that
odious thing which Radicalism so strongly condemns as contrary to equality. To
subject women to these disabilities is even a more glaring injustice than was
the exclusion of the negro from American citizenship because he was "guilty
of a skin"; for here the exclusion from natural rights is grounded on the
sole fact that woman is "guilty
;of a sex." And especially are all those laws unnatural and inexcusable
iniquities which subject the person or property of the wife to any marital
authority. What is such marriage but a species of (white) domestic slavery? Nor
is it any excuse to say that in America no woman enters the married state save
at her own option; for to that state the most commanding instincts of woman's
being impel her; and it is but a mocking tyranny to impose this slavery on the
married state of woman, and tell her then that ,she need not submit to the yoke
if she chooses to avoid it by sacrificing the chief instincts of her being. Why,
it may be even said to the galley-slave that he need not be a slave, provided
lie is willing to disregard that other primal instinct, the love of life:
suicide will set him free!
Such
.is the logic of the Women's Rights party, from Radical premises. Its prospect
of triumph is greatly increased by this, that its Northern opponents (the only
ones who have any power to oppose) have disabled themselves from meeting it by
their furious Abolitionism. The premises of that doctrine, to which they are so
irrevocably committed, now shut their mouths. It is vain for the rabid
negrophilist, Dr. Horace Bushnell, to write a book at this date against Women's
Rights as the "Reform against Nature." He cannot consistently oppose it; he has himself naturalized the
false principles from which that "reform" will flow. The true
principles from which its folly might have been evinced, the principles held by
us "Rebels," he has trampled down with the armed heel, and drowned in
blood and buried under mountains of obloquy and odium and slander. He
cannot resort to those sound premises. To meet the argument of these aspiring
Amazons fairly, one must teach, with Moses, the Apostle Paul, John Hampden,
Washington, George Mason, John C. Calhoun, and all that contemptible rabble of
"old fogies," that political society is composed of "superiors,
inferiors, and equals"; that while all these bear an equitable moral
relation to each other, they have very different natural rights and duties; that
just government is not founded on the consent of the individuals governed, but
,on the ordinance of God, and hence a share in the ruling franchise is not a
natural right at all, but a privilege
to be bestowed according to a wise discretion on a limited class having
qualification to use it for the good of the whole; that the integers out of
which the State is constituted are not individuals, but families represented in
their parental heads; that every human being is born under authority (parental
and civic) instead of being born "free" in the licentious sense, that
liberty is each one's privilege of doing what he chooses; that subordination,
and not that license, is the natural state of all men; and that without such
equitable distribution of different duties and rights among the classes
naturally differing in condition, and subordination of some to others, and of
all to the law, society is as impossible as is the existence of a house without
distinction between the foundation stone and the capstones. No words are needed
to show hence that should either the voice of God or .of sound experience
require woman to be placed for the good of the whole society in a subordinate
sphere, there can be no natural injustice in doing so. But these old truths,
with their sound and beneficent applications, have been .scornfully repudiated
by Abolitionism and Radicalism. The
North cannot, will not, avow and appeal to them, because that would be to
confess that the injured South was all the time right in its opposition to
Abolition; and the conquerors will rather let all perish than thus humble their
pride to the poor conquered victims.
It
may be inferred again that the present movement for women's rights will
certainly prevail from the history of its only opponent. Northern conservatism.
This is a party which never conserves anything. Its history has been that it
demurs to each aggression of the progressive party, and aims to save its credit
by a respectable amount of growling, but always acquiesces at last in the
innovation. What was the resisted novelty of yesterday is today .one of the
accepted principles of conservatism; it is now conservative only in affecting to
resist the next innovation, which will tomorrow be forced upon its timidity and
will be succeeded by some third revolution; to be denounced and then adopted in
its turn. American conservatism is merely the shadow that follows Radicalism as
it moves forward towards perdition. It remains behind it, but never retards it,
and always advances near its leader. This pretended salt bath utterly lost its
savor: wherewith shall it be salted? Its impotency is not hard, indeed, to
explain. It .is worthless because it is the conservatism of expediency only, and
not of sturdy principle. It intends to risk nothing serious for the sake of the
truth, and has no idea of being guilty of the folly of martyrdom. It always when
about to enter a protest very blandly informs the wild beast whose path it
essays to stop, that its "bark is worse than its bite," and that it
only means to save its manners by enacting its decent role of resistance: The
only practical purpose which it now subserves in American politics is to give
enough exercise to Radicalism to keep it "in wind," and to prevent its
becoming pursy and lazy ,from having nothing to whip. no doubt, after a few
years, when women's suffrage shall have become an accomplished fact,
conservatism will tacitly admit it into its creed, and thenceforward plume
itself upon its wise firmness in opposing with similar weapons the extreme of
baby suffrage; and when that too shall have been won, it will be heard declaring
that the integrity of the American Constitution requires at least the refusal of
suffrage to asses. There it will assume, with great dignity, it, final position.
Indeed, as De Tocqueville predicted,
innovations in the direction of extensions of suffrage will always be successful
in America, because of the selfish timidity of her public men. It is the nature
of ultra democracy to make all its politicians time servers; its natural spawn
is the brood of narrow, truckling, cowardly worshippers of the vox populi, and
of present expediency. Their polar star is always found in the answer to the
question, "Which will be the more popular?” As soon as any agitation of
this kind goes far enough to indicate a possibility of success, their resistance
ends. Each of them begins to argue thus in his private mind: "The proposed
revolution is of course preposterous, but it will be best for me to leave
opposition to it to others. For if it succeeds, the newly enfranchised will not
fail to remember the opponents of their claim at future elections, and to reward
those who were their friends in the hour of need." Again: it has now become
a regular trick of American demagogues in power to manufacture new classes of
voters to sustain them in office. It is presumed that the gratitude of the newly
enfranchised will be sufficient to make them vote the ticket of their
benefactors. But as gratitude is a very flimsy sort of fabric among Radicals,
and soon worn threadbare, such a reliance only lasts a short time, and requires
to be speedily replaced. The marvelous invention of negro suffrage (excogitated
for this sole purpose) sufficed to give Radicalism a new
four years lease of life; but
the grateful allegiance of the freedmen to their pretended liberators. is waxing
very thin; and hence the same expedient must be repeated, in the form of
creating a few millions of female votes. The designing have an active, selfish
motive for pushing the measure; but its opponents will without fail be paralyzed
in their resistance by their wonted cowardice; so that success is sure.
This expectation is greatly confirmed by a
review of the history of past innovations. They have all been carried against
the better judgment of the class in the country to whom the Constitution
committed the power of deciding for or against them. In 1829‑1830, the
State of Virginia took. her first departure from the old principle of
freeholders' suffrage. In 1851 she completed that revolution (as well as
introduced sundry other Radical features) by extending the right to vote
indiscriminately to all white males. In both instances it was hard to find a
freeholder, not a demagogue, who could avow a hearty preference for the changes.
They were carried against the convictions of the voters by the influences which
have been above described. It is most probable that the same thing was true in every State
which adopted universal suffrage. The coercive measures of the Federal
Government were undoubtedly precipitated against the convictions of the majority
of the Northern people. So the war was transmuted into an Abolition measure
under the same circumstances. And last: negro suffrage was undoubtedly
introduced against the better judgment of nearly all by the selfish arts of the
demagogues; and as there was neither party nor statesman that had the nerve to
head the almost universal opposition, the decision went by default. Nor will
there be, under any future circumstances, either leader or party that will risk
the odium of a movement to take away suffrage from the incompetent hands of the
blacks, however clearly it may appear that they are using it for the ruin of
themselves and the country. Thus it is the destiny of the Yankee people to
commit a species of political Hari‑kari with its own unwilling hands. The
crowning element of despair is in the enforced consolidation of the Government.
There are no reserved rights of States. The mad innovation which is adopted by a
majority of them is enforced upon all; so that no place of refuge is left in the
whole land where the right principles and usages might
find sanctuary, and abide as a
wholesome example and recuperative power for reform.
What then, in the next place, will be the
effect of this fundamental change when it shall be established? The obvious
answer is, that it will destroy Christianity and civilization in America. Some
who see the mischievousness of the movement express the hope that it will, even
if nominally successful, be kept within narrow limits by the very force of its
own absurdity. They "reckon without their host." There is a Satanic
ingenuity in these Radical measures which secures the infection of the reluctant
dissentients as surely as of the hot advocates. The women now sensible and
modest who heartily deprecate the whole folly, will be dragged into the vortex,
with the assent of their now indignant husbands. The instruments of this
deplorable result will be the (so‑called) conservative candidates for
office. They will effect it by this plea, that ignorant, impudent, Radical women
will vote, and vote wrong; whence it becomes a necessity for the modest and
virtuous women, for their country's sake, to sacrifice their repugnance and
counterpoise these mischievous votes in the spirit of disinterested
self-sacrifice. Now a woman can never resist an appeal to the principle of
generous devotion; her glory is to crucify herself in the cause of duty and of
zeal. This plea will be successful. But when the virtuous have once tasted the
dangerous intoxication of political excitement and of power, even they will be
absorbed; they will learn to do con amore what
was first done as a painful duty, and all the baleful influences of political
life will be diffused throughout the sex.
What those influences will be may be learned
by every one who reverences the Christian Scriptures, from this fact, that the
theory of "Women's Rights" is sheer infidelity. It directly impugns
the authority and the justice of these Scriptures. They speak in no uncertain
tones. "The husband is the head of the wife" (Eph. v. 23).
"Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands, as to the Lord" (v.
22). "The man is not for the woman, but the woman for the man" (I.
Cor. ii. 9). "Let the woman learn in silence, with all subjection: but I
suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in
silence: for Adam was first formed, then Eve: and Adam was not deceived, but the
woman being deceived was in the transgression" (I. Tim. 2: 11‑14).
They are to be "discreet, chaste, keepers at home,
good, obedient to their own husbands," etc. (Titus ii. 5). How
utterly opposed is all this to the levelling doctrine of your Radical. Women are
here consigned to a social subordination, and expressly excluded from ruling
offices, on grounds of their sex, and a divine ordination based by God upon a
transaction which happened nearly six thousand years ago! The woman's sphere is
expressly assigned her within her home, and she is taught that the assumption of
publicity is an outrage against that nature with which she is endowed. Now the
politics which denounce all this as a natural injustice and self-evident folly
cannot be expected to reverence these Scriptures; they must and will flout their
whole authority. We must then make up our minds in accepting Women's Rights to
surrender our Bibles, and have an atheistic Government. And especially must we
expect to have, presiding over every home and rearing every group of future
citizens, that most abhorrent of all phenomena, an infidel woman; for of course
that sex, having received the precious boon of their enfranchisement only by
means of the overthrow
of the Bible, must be foremost in trampling upon this their old oppressor
and enemy. Its restoration to authority is necessarily their
"re-enslavement," to speak the language of their party.
Second: these new excitements and
temptations will utterly corrupt the character and delicacy of American women.
It is indignantly asked, "Why should politics corrupt the morals of women
more than of the `lords of creation'?" Suppose now we reply: American
politics have corrupted the morals of the men? Suppose we argue that the retort
is so true and just and the result has actually gone to so deplorable an extent,
that were the female side of our social organization as corrupt as the male side
has already become, American society would crumble into ruin by its own
putrescence? It is better to save half the fabric than to lose all. And
especially is it better to save the purity of the mothers who are, under God, to
form the characters of our future citizens, and of the wives who are to restrain
and elevate them, whatever else we endanger. Is it argued that since women are
now confessedly purer than men, their entrance into politics must tend to purify
politics? We reply again that the women .of the present were reared and attained
this comparative purity under the Bible system. Adopt the infidel plan, and we
shall corrupt our women without purifying our politics. What shall save us then?
But there is another reply to this retort.
Political excitements will corrupt women tenfold more than men; and this, not
because women are naturally inferior to men, but because they are naturally
adapted to a wholly different sphere. When we point to the fact that they are
naturally more emotional and less calculating, more impulsive and less
self-contained, that they have a quicker tact but less logic, that their social
nature makes them more liable to the contagion of epidemic passions, and that
the duties of their sex make it physically impossible for them to acquire the
knowledge in a foreign sphere necessary for political duties, we do not
depreciate woman; we only say that nature has adapted her to one thing and
disqualified her for the other. The violet would wither in that full glare of
midsummer in which the sunflower thrives: this does not argue that the violet is
the meaner flower. The vine, left to stand alone, would be hurled prone in the
mire by the first blasts of that history. In the case of the Amorites there was
also this wise wind which strengthens the grasp of the sturdy oak upon its bed:
still the oak may yield no fruit so precious as the cluster of the vine. But the
vine cannot be an oak; it must be itself, dependent, clinging, but more precious
than that on which it leans or it must perish. When anything, animate or
inanimate, is used for a function to which it is not adapted, that foreign use
must endamage it, and the more the farther that function is from its own sphere.
So it will be found (and it is no disparagement to woman to say it) that the
very traits which fit her to be the angel of a virtuous home unfit her to meet
the agitations of political life, even as safely as does the more rugged man.
The hot glare of publicity and .passion will speedily deflower her delicacy and
sweetness. Those temptations, which her Maker did not form her to bear, will
debauch her heart, developing a character as much more repulsive than that of
the debauched man as the fall has been greater. The politicating woman, unsexed
and denaturalized, shorn of the true glory of her femininity, will appear to men
as a feeble hybrid mannikin, with all the defects and none of the strength of
the male. Instead of being the dear object of his chivalrous affection, she
becomes his importunate rival, despised without being feared.
This suggests a third consequence, which
some of the advocates of the movement even already are bold enough to
foreshadow. "Women's Rights" ,mean the abolition of all permanent
marriage ties. We are told that Mrs. Cady Stanton avowed this result,
proclaiming it at the invitation of the Young Men's Christian
Association of New York. She holds that woman's bondage is not truly
dissolved until the marriage bond is annulled. She is thoroughly consistent.
Some hoodwinked advocates of her revolution may be blind to the sequence; but it
is inevitable. It must follow by this cause, if for no other. that the unsexed
politicating woman can never inspire in man that true affection on which
marriage should be founded. Men will doubtless be still sensual; but it is
simply impossible that they can desire them for the pure and sacred sphere of
the wife. Let every woman ask herself: will she choose for the lord of her
affections an unsexed effeminate man? No more can man be drawn to the masculine
woman. The mutual attraction of the two complementary halves is gone forever.
The abolition of marriage would follow again by another cause. The divergent
interests and the rival independence of the two equal wills would be
irreconcilable with domestic government, or union, or peace. Shall the children
of this monstrous no-union be held responsible to two variant co-ordinate and
supreme wills at once? Heaven pity the children! Shall the two parties to this
perpetual co-partnership have neither the power to secure the performance of the
mutual duties nor to dissolve it? It is a self-contradiction, an impossible
absurdity. Such a co-partnership of equals with independent interests must be
separable at will, as all other such co-partnerships are. The only relation
between the sexes which will remain will ,be a cohabitation continuing so long
as the convenience or caprice of both parties may suggest; and this, with most,
will amount to a vagrant concubinage.
But now, what will be the character of the
children reared under such a domestic organization as this? If human experience
has established anything at all, it is the truth of that principle announced by
the Hebrew prophet when he declared that the great aim of God in ordaining a
permanent marriage tie between one man and one woman was "that He might
seek a godly seed." God's ordinance, the only effective human ordinance for
checking and curbing the first tendencies to evil, is domestic, parental
government. When the family shall no longer have a head, and the great
foundation for the subordination of children in the mother's example is gone;
when the mother shall have found another
sphere than her home for her energies; when she shall have exchanged the sweet
charities of domestic love and sympathy for the fierce passions of the hustings;
when families shall be disrupted at the caprice of either party, and the
children scattered as foundlings from their hearthstone requires no wisdom to
see that a race of sons will be reared nearer akin to devils than to men. In the
hands ,of such a bastard progeny, without discipline, without homes, without a
God, the last remains of social order will speedily perish, and society will be
overwhelmed in savage anarchy.
Last: it would not be hard to show, did space permit, that this movement on the part of these women is as suicidal as it is mischievous. Its certain result will be the re-enslavement of women, not under the Scriptural bonds of marriage, but under the yoke of literal corporeal force. The woman who will calmly review the condition of her sex in other ages and countries will feel that her wisdom is to "let well enough alone." Physically, the female is the "weaker vessel." This world is a hard and selfish scene where the weaker goes to the wall. Under all other civilizations and all other religions than ours woman has experienced this fate to the full; her condition has been that of a slave to the male‑sometimes a petted slave. but yet a slave. In Christian and European society alone has she ever attained the place of man's social equal, and received the homage and honor due from magnanimity to her sex and her feebleness. And her enviable lot among us has resulted from two causes: the Christian religion and the legislation founded upon it by feudal chivalry. How insane then is it for her to spurn these two bulwarks of defense, to defy and repudiate the divine authority of that Bible which has been her redemption, and to revolutionize the whole spirit of the English common law touching woman's sphere and rights`' She is thus spurning the only protectors her sex has ever found, and provoking a contest in which she must inevitably be overwhelmed. Casting away that dependence and femininity which are her true strength, the "strong-minded woman" persists in thrusting herself into competition with man as his equal. But for contest she is not his equal; the male is the stronger animal. As man's rival, she is a pitiful inferior, a sorry she-mannikin. It is when she brings her wealth of affection, her self-devotion, her sympathy, her tact, her grace, her subtle intuition, her attractions, her appealing weakness, and places them in the scale with man's rugged strength and plodding endurance, with his steady logic, his hardihood and muscle. and his exemption from the disabling infirmities of her sex, that he delights to admit her full equality and to do glad homage to her as the crown of his kind. All this vantage-ground the "Women's Rights women" madly throw away, and provoke that collision for which nature itself has disqualified them. They insist upon taking precisely a man's chances: well, they will meet precisely the fate of a weak man among strong ones. A recent incident on a railroad train justly illustrates the result. :A solitary female entered a car where every seat was occupied, and the conductor closed the door upon her and departed. She looked in vain for a seat, and at last appealed to an elderly man near her to know if he would not "surrender his seat to a lady." He, it seems, was somewhat a humorist, and answered: "I will surrender it cheerfully, Madam as I always do, but will beg leave first to ask a civil question. Are you an advocate of the modern theory of women's rights?” Bridling up with intense energy, she replied, "Yes, sir, emphatically; I let you know that it is my glory to be devoted to that noble cause." "Very well, Madam'' said he, "then the case is altered: You may stand up like the' rest of us men, until you can bet a seat for yourself." This was exact poetic justice; and it foreshadows precisely the fate of their unnatural pretensions. Men will treat them as they treat each other; it will be "every man for himself, and the devil take hindmost." There will be of course a Semiramis or a Queen Bess here and there who will hold her own; but the general rule will be that the "weaker vessels" will succumb; and the society which will emerge from this experiment will present woman in the position which she has always held among savages, that of domestic drudge to the stronger animal. Instead of being what the Bible makes her, one with her husband, queen of his home, reigning with the gentle sceptre of love over her modest, secluded domain, and in its pure and sacred retirement performing the noblest work done on this earth, that of moulding infant minds to honor and piety, she will reappear from this ill-starred competition defeated and despised, tolerated only to satiate the passion, to amuse the idleness, to do the drudgery, and to receive the curses and blows of her barbarized masters. Thus will be consummated that destiny to which so many gloomy prognostics point as the allotment of the North American continent: to be the accursed field for the final illustration of the harvest of perdition, .grown from the seeding of the dragon's teeth of infidel Radicalism. God gave the people of this land great and magnificent blessings, and opportunities and responsibilities. They might and should have made it the glory of all lands. But they have betrayed their trust: they have abused every gift: above all have they insulted him by flaunting in his face an impudent, atheistic, God-defying theory of pretended human rights and human perfectibility which attempts to deny man's subordination, his dependence, his fall and native depravity, his need of divine grace. It invites mankind to adopt material civilization and sensual advantage as their divinity. It assumes to be able to perfect man's condition by its political, literary, and mechanical skill, despising that Gospel of Christ which is man's only adequate remedy. It crowns its impiety by laying its defiling hands upon the very forms of that Christianity, while with the mock affection of a Judas it attempts to make it a captive to the sordid ends of Mammon and sense. Must not God be avenged on such a nation as this? His vengeance will be to give them the fruit of their own hands, and let them be filled with their own devices. He will set apart this fair land by a sort of dread consecration to the purpose of giving a lesson concerning this godless philosophy, so impressive as to instruct and warn all future generations. As the dull and pestilential waves of the Dead Sea have been to every subsequent age the memento of the sin of Sodom, so the dreary tides of anarchy and barbarism which will overwhelm the boastful devices of infidel democracy will be the caution of all future legislators. And thus "women's rights" will assist America "to fulfil her great mission," that of being the "scarecrow" of the nations.
