Читать книгу History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III - Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton - Страница 11
ОглавлениеMrs. Mott never seemed more hopeful for the triumph of our principles than on this occasion. She expressed great satisfaction in the number of young women who for the first time that day graced our platform.[40] Though in her eighty-sixth year, her enthusiasm in the cause for which she had so long labored seemed still unabated, and her eye sparkled with humor as of yore while giving some amusing reminiscences of encounters with opponents in the early days. Always apt in biblical quotations she had proved herself a worthy antagonist of the clergy on our platform. She had slain many Abimelechs with short texts of Scripture, whose defeat was the more humiliating because received at the hand of a woman. As she recounted in her happiest vein the triumphs of her coadjutors she was received with the heartiest manifestations of delight by her auditors. She took a lively interest in the discussion of the resolutions that had been presented by the chairman of the committee, Matilda Joslyn Gage:
Resolved, That a government of the people, by the people and for the people is yet to be realized; for that which is formed, administered and controlled only by men, is practically nothing more than an enlarged oligarchy, whose assumptions of natural superiority and of the right to rule are as baseless as those enforced by the aristocratic powers of the old world.
Resolved, That in celebrating our third decade we have reason to congratulate ourselves on the marked change in woman's position—in her enlarged opportunities for education and labor, her greater freedom under improved social customs and civil laws, and the promise of her speedy enfranchisement in the minor political rights she has already secured.
Resolved, That the International Congress[41] called in Paris, July 20, to discuss the rights of woman—the eminent Victor Hugo, its presiding officer—is one of the most encouraging events of the century, in that statesmen and scholars from all parts of the world, amid the excitement of the French Exposition, propose to give five days to deliberations upon this question.
Resolved, That the majority report of the chairman of the Committee on Privileges and Elections, Senator Wadleigh of New Hampshire, against a sixteenth amendment to secure the political rights of woman in its weakness, shows the strength of our reform.
Resolved, That the national effort to force citizenship on the Indians, the decision of Judge Sawyer in the United States Circuit Court of California against the naturalization of the Chinese, and the refusal of congress to secure the right of suffrage to women, are class legislation, dangerous to the stability of our institutions.
Whereas, Woman's rights and duties in all matters of legislation are the same as those of man.
Resolved, That the problems of labor, finance, suffrage, international rights, internal improvements, and other great questions, can never be satisfactorily adjusted without the enlightened thought of woman, and her voice in the councils of the nation.
Resolved, That the question of capital and labor is one of special interest to us. Man, standing to woman in the position of capitalist, has robbed her through the ages of the results of her toil. No just settlement of this question can be attained until the right of woman to the proceeds of her labor in the family and elsewhere is recognized, and she is welcomed into every industry on the basis of equal pay for equal work.
Resolved, That as the first duty of every individual is self-development, the lessons of self-sacrifice and obedience taught woman by the Christian church have been fatal, not only to her own vital interests, but through her, to those of the race.
Resolved, That the great principle of the Protestant Reformation, the right of individual conscience and judgment heretofore exercised by man alone, should now be claimed by woman; that, in the interpretation of Scripture, she should be guided by her own reason, and not by the authority of the church.
Resolved, That it is through the perversion of the religious element in woman—playing upon her hopes and fears of the future, holding this life with all its high duties in abeyance to that which is to come—that she and the children she has trained have been so completely subjugated by priestcraft and superstition.
This was the last convention ever attended by Lucretia Mott. Her family had specially requested that she should not be urged to go; but on seeing the call, she quietly announced her intention to be at the meeting, and, with the ever faithful Sarah Pugh as her companion, she made the journey from Philadelphia in the intense heat of those July days. Mrs. Mott was the guest of her husband's nephew, Dr. E.M. Moore, who, fearing that his aunt would be utterly exhausted, called for her while she was in the midst of her closing remarks. As she descended the platform, she continued speaking while she slowly moved down the aisle, shaking hands upon either side. The audience simultaneously rose, and on behalf of all, Frederick Douglass ejaculated, "Good-by, dear Lucretia!"
The last three resolutions called out a prolonged discussion[42] not only in the convention but from the pulpit and press of the State.
One amusing encounter in the course of the debate is worthy of note. Perhaps it was due to the intense heat that Mr. Douglass, usually clear on questions of principle, was misled into opposing the resolutions. He spoke with great feeling and religious sentiment of the beautiful Christian doctrine of self-sacrifice. When he finished, Mrs. Lucy Coleman, always keen in pricking bubbles, arose and said: "Well, Mr. Douglass, all you say may be true; but allow me to ask you why you did not remain a slave in Maryland, and sacrifice yourself, like a Christian, to your master, instead of running off to Canada to secure your liberty, like a man? We shall judge your faith, Frederick, by your deeds."
An immense audience assembled at Corinthian Hall in the evening to listen to the closing speeches[43] of the convention. Mrs. Robinson of Boston gave an exhaustive review of the work in Massachusetts, and her daughter, Mrs. Shattuck, gave many amusing experiences as her father's[44] clerk in the legislature of that State.
The resolutions provoked many attacks from the clergy throughout the State, led by Rev. A.H. Strong, D.D., president of the Baptist Theological Seminary in Rochester, Of his sermon the National Citizen said:
None too soon have we issued our resolutions, proclaiming woman's right to self-development—to interpret Scripture for herself, to use her own faculties. In speaking of what Christianity has done for woman, Dr. Strong stultifies his own assertions by referring to Switzerland and Germany "where you may see any day hundreds of women wheeling earth for railroad embankments." Does he not remember that Switzerland and Germany are Christian countries and that it is part of their civilization that while women do this work, some man takes the pay and puts it in his own pocket quite in heathen fashion? The reverend doctor in the usual style of opposition to woman—which is to quote something or other having no bearing upon the question—refers to Cornelia's "jewels," forgetting to say that Cornelia delivered public lectures upon philosophy in Rome, and that Cicero paid the very highest tribute to her learning and genius.
Dr. Strong advocates the old theory that woman and man are not two classes standing upon the same level, but that the two are one—that one on the time-worn theory of common law, the husband; and talks of the "dignity and delicacy of woman" being due to the fact of her not having been in public life, and that this "dignity and delicacy" would all evaporate if once she were allowed to vote, which reminds one of the story of Baron Munchausen's horn, into which a certain coach-driver blew all manner of wicked tunes. The weather being very cold, these tunes remained frozen in the horn. When hung by the fire, the horn began to thaw out, and these wicked tunes came pealing forth to the great amazement of the by-standers. The reverend gentlemen seems to think women are full of frozen wickedness, which if they enter public life will be thawed out to the utter demolition of their "dignity and delicacy" and the disgust of society. He deems it "too hazardous" to allow women to vote. "Bad women would vote." Well, what of it? Have they not equal right with bad men, to self-government? Bad is a relative term. It strikes us that the very reverend Dr. Strong is a "bad" man—a man who does not understand true Christianity—who is not just—who would strike those who are down—who would keep woman in slavery—who quotes the Bible as his authority: thus fettering woman's conscience, binding her will, and playing upon her hopes and fears to keep her in subjection.
From Augustine, down, theologians have tried to compel people to accept their special interpretation of the Scripture, and the tortures of the inquisition, the rack, the thumb-screw, the stake, the persecutions of witchcraft, the whipping of naked women through the streets of Boston, banishment, trials for heresy, the halter about Garrison's neck, Lovejoy's death, the branding of Captain Walker, shouts of infidel and atheist, have all been for this purpose.
We know the ignorance that exists upon these points. Few have yet begun to comprehend the influence that ecclesiasticism has had upon law. Wharton, a recognized authority upon criminal law, issued his seventh edition before he ascertained the vast bearing canon law had had upon the civil code, and we advise readers to consult the array of authorities, English, Latin, German, to which he, in his preface, refers. We hope to arouse attention and compel investigation of this subject by lawyers and theologians as well as by women themselves.
Francis E. Abbot, editor of The Index, the organ of the Free Religious Association, spoke grandly in favor of the resolutions. He said:
These resolutions we have read with astonishment, admiration and delight. We should not have believed it possible that the convention could have been induced to adopt them. They will make forever memorable in the history of the organized woman movement, this thirtieth anniversary of its birth. They put the National Woman Suffrage Association in an inconceivably higher and nobler position than that occupied by any similar society. They go to the very root of the matter. They are a bold, dignified, and magnificent utterance. We congratulate the convention on a record so splendid in the eyes of all true liberals. From this day forth the whole woman movement must obey the inspiration of a higher courage and a grander spirit than have been known to its past. Opposition must be encountered, tenfold more bitter than was ever yet experienced. But truth is on the side of these brave women; the ringing words they have spoken at Rochester will thrill many a doubting heart and be echoed far down the long avenue of the years.
During the same week of the Rochester convention, the Paris International Congress opened it sessions, sending us a telegram of greeting to which we responded with two hundred and fifty francs as a tangible evidence of our best wishes. The two remarkable features of that congress were the promise of so distinguished a man as Victor Hugo to preside over its deliberations, though at last prevented by illness; and the fact that the Italian government sent Mlle. Mozzoni as an official delegate to the congress to study the civil position of woman in various countries, in order that an ameliorating change of its code, in respect to woman, could be wisely made.
The newspapers of the French capital in general treated the congress with respect. The Rappel, Victor Hugo's organ, spoke of it in a most complimentary manner. Theodore Stanton, in a letter to the National Citizen, said:
In one important respect this congress differed entirely from an American convention of like character—it made no demand for suffrage. The word was never mentioned except by the American delegates. In continental Europe the idea of demanding for woman a share in the government, is never considered. This is the more remarkable in France, as this claim was made at the time of the revolution. But every imaginable side of the question was discussed, except the side that comprehends all the others. To an American, therefore, European woman's rights is rather tame; it is like the play of Hamlet with Hamlet left out. But Europe is moving, and the next international congress will, undoubtedly, give more attention to suffrage and less to hygiene.
The Eleventh Washington Convention was held January 9, 10, 1879. The resolutions give an idea of the status of the question, and the wide range of discussion covered by the speakers:[45]
Resolved, That the forty-fifth congress, in ignoring the individual petitions of more than three hundred women of high social standing and culture, asking for the removal of their political disabilities, while promptly enacting special legislation for the removal of the political disabilities of every man who petitioned, furnishes an illustration of the indifference of this congress to the rights of citizens deprived of political power.
Whereas, Senator Blaine says, it is the very essence of tyranny to count any citizens in the basis of representation who are denied a voice in their laws and a choice in their rulers; therefore,
Resolved, That counting women in the basis of representation, while denying them the right of suffrage, is compelling them to swell the number of their tyrants and is an unwarrantable usurpation of power over one-half the citizens of this republic.
Whereas, In President Hayes' last message, he makes a truly paternal review of the interests of this republic, both great and small, from the army, the navy, and our foreign relations, to the ten little Indians in Hampton, Va., our timber on the western mountains, and the switches of the Washington railroads; from the Paris Exposition, the postal service, the abundant harvests, and the possible bull-dozing of some colored men in various southern districts, to cruelty to live animals, and the crowded condition of the mummies, dead ducks and fishes in the Smithsonian Institute—yet forgets to mention twenty million women robbed of their social, civil and political rights; therefore,
Resolved, That a committee of three be appointed from this convention to wait upon the president and remind him of the existence of one-half of the American people whom he has accidentally overlooked, and of whom it would be wise for him to make some mention in his future messages.
Whereas, All of the vital principles involved in the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth constitutional amendments have been denied in their application to women by courts, legislatures and political parties; therefore,
Resolved, That it is logical that these amendments should fail to protect even the male African for whom said courts, legislatures and parties declare they were expressly designed and enacted.
Resolved, That the judges of the Supreme Court of the United States in denying Belva A. Lockwood admission to its bar, while she was entitled under the law and under its rules to that right, violated their oath of office.
Resolved, That the Senate Judiciary Committee, Mr. Edmonds chairman, in its report on the bill to allow women to practice law in the courts of the United States in which it declares that "further legislation is not necessary," evaded the plain question at issue before it in a manner unworthy of judges learned in the honorable profession of the law, and thereby sanctioned an injustice to the women of the whole country.
Whereas, The general government has refused to exercise federal power to protect women in their right to vote in the various States and territories; therefore,
Resolved, That it should forbear to exercise federal power to disfranchise the women of Utah, who have had a more just and liberal spirit shown them by Mormon men than Gentile women in the States have yet perceived in their rulers.
Whereas, The proposed legislation for the Chinese women on the Pacific slope and for outcast women in our cities, and the opinion of the press that no respectable woman should be seen in the streets after dark, are all based upon the presumption that woman's freedom must be forever sacrificed to man's licence; therefore,
Resolved, That the ballot in woman's hand is the only power by which she can restrain the liberty of those men who make our streets and highways dangerous to her, and secure the freedom that belongs to her by day and by night.
Frances E. Willard
At the close of the convention it was decided at a meeting of the executive committee to present an address to the president and both houses of congress, and that a printed copy of the resolutions should be laid on the desk of every member. The president having granted a hearing,[46] the following address was presented:
To his Excellency, the President of the United States:
Whereas, Representatives of associations of women waited upon your excellency before the delivery of your first and second annual messages, asking that in those documents you would remember the disfranchised millions of citizens of the United States; and,
Whereas, Upon careful examination of those messages, we find therein specifically enumerated, the interests, great and small, of all classes of men, and recommendations of needful legislation to protect their civil and political rights, but find no mention made of any need of legislation to protect the political, civil, or social rights of one-half of the people of this republic, and,
Whereas, There is pending in the Senate a constitutional amendment to prohibit the several States from disfranchising United States citizens on account of sex, and a similar amendment is pending upon a tie vote in the House Judiciary Committee; and as petitions to so amend the constitution have been presented to both houses of congress from more than 40,000 well-known citizens of thirty-five States and five territories,
Therefore, we respectfully ask your excellency, in your next annual message, to make mention of the disfranchised millions of wives, mothers and daughters of this republic, and to recommend to congress that women equally with men be protected in the exercise of their civil and political rights.
On behalf of the National Woman Suffrage Association.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, President.
Matilda Joslyn Gage, Corresponding Secretary. Susan B. Anthony, Chairman Executive Committee.
The delegates from the territory of Utah were also received by the president. They called his attention to the effect of the enforcement of the law of 1862 upon 50,000 Mormon women, to render them outcasts and their children nameless, asking the chief executive of the nation to give some time to the consideration of the bill pending under different headings in both houses. The president asked them to set forth the facts in writing, that he might carefully weigh so important a matter. A memorial was also presented to congress by these ladies, closing thus:
We further pray that in any future legislation concerning the marriage relation in any territory under your jurisdiction you will consider the rights and the consciences of the women to be affected by such legislation, and that you will consider the permanent care and welfare of children as the sure foundation of the State.
And your petitioners will ever pray.
Emmeline B. Wells.
Zina Young Williams.
Mr. Cannon of Utah moved that the memorial be referred to the Committee on the Judiciary with leave to report at any time. It was so referred. The Judiciary Committee of the Senate brought in a bill legitimatizing the offspring of plural marriages to a certain date; also authorizing the president to grant amnesty for past offenses against the law of 1862.
The Congressional Record of January 24, under the head of petitions and memorials, said:
The vice-president, Mr. Wheeler of New York, presented the petition of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Matilda Joslyn Gage and Susan B. Anthony, officers of the National Association, praying for the passage of Senate joint resolution No. 12, providing for an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, protecting the rights of women, and also that the House Judiciary Committee be relieved from the further consideration of a similar resolution.
Mr. Ferry—If there be no objection I ask that the petition be read at length.
The Vice-president—The Chair hears no objection, and it will be reported by the secretary.
The petition was read and referred to the Committee on Privileges and Elections, as follows:
To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States, in Congress assembled:
Whereas, More than 40,000 men and women, citizens of thirty-five States and five territories, have petitioned the forty-fifth congress asking for an amendment to the federal constitution prohibiting the several States from disfranchising United States citizens on account of sex; and
Whereas, A resolution providing for such constitutional amendment is upon the calendar (Senate resolution No. 12, second session forty-fifth congress), and a similar resolution is pending upon a tie vote in the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives; and
Whereas, The women of the United States constitute one-half of the people of this republic and have an inalienable right to an equal voice with men in the nation's councils; and
Whereas, Women being denied the right to have their opinions counted at the ballot-box, are compelled to hold all other rights subject to the favors and caprices of men; and
Whereas, In answer to the appeals of so large a number of honorable petitioners, it is courteous that the forty-fifth congress should express its opinion upon this grave question of human rights; therefore,
We pray your honorable body to take from the calendar and pass Senate resolution No. 12, providing for an amendment to the constitution protecting the rights of women; and
We further pray you to relieve the House Judiciary Committee from the further consideration of the woman suffrage resolution brought to a tie vote in that committee, February 5, 1878, that it may be submitted to the House of Representatives for immediate action.
And your petitioners will ever pray.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, President.
Matilda Joslyn Gage, Corresponding Secretary. Susan B. Anthony, Chairman Executive Committee.
At the opening of the last session of the forty-fifth congress most earnest appeals (copies of which were sent to every member of congress) came from all directions for the presentation of a minority report from the Committee on Privileges and Elections. The response from our representatives was prompt and most encouraging. The first favorable report our question had ever received in the Senate of the United States was presented by the Hon. George F. Hoar, February 1, 1879:
The undersigned, a minority of the Committee on Privileges and Elections, to whom were referred the resolution proposing an amendment to the constitution prohibiting discrimination in the right of suffrage on account of sex, and certain petitions in aid of the same, submit the following minority report:
The undersigned dissent from the report of the majority of the committee. The demand for the extension of the right of suffrage to women is not new. It has been supported by many persons in this country, in England and on the continent, famous in public life, in literature and in philosophy. But no single argument of its advocates seems to us to carry so great a persuasive force as the difficulty which its ablest opponents encounter in making a plausible statement of their objections. We trust we do not fail in deference to our esteemed associates on the committee when we avow our opinion that their report is no exception to this rule.
The people of the United States and of the several States have founded their political institutions upon the principle that all men have an equal right to a share in the government. The doctrine is expressed in various forms. The Declaration of Independence asserts that "all men are created equal" and that "governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed." The Virginia bill of rights, the work of Jefferson and George Mason, affirms that "no man or set of men are entitled to exclusive or separate emoluments or privileges from the rest of the community but in consideration of public services." The Massachusetts bill of rights, the work of John Adams, besides reaffirming these axioms, declares that "all the inhabitants of this commonwealth, having such qualifications as they shall establish by their frame of government, have an equal right to elect officers, and to be elected for public employment." These principles, after full and profound discussion by a generation of statesmen whose authority upon these subjects is greater than that of any other that ever lived, have been accepted by substantially the whole American people as the dictates alike of practical wisdom and of natural justice. The experience of a hundred years has strengthened their hold upon the popular conviction. Our fathers failed in three particulars to carry these principles to their logical result. They required a property qualification for the right to vote and to hold office. They kept the negro in slavery. They excluded women from a share in the government. The first two of these inconsistencies have been remedied. The property test no longer exists. The fifteenth amendment provides that race, color, or previous servitude shall no longer be a disqualification. There are certain qualifications of age, of residence, and, in some instances of education, demanded; but these are such as all sane men may easily attain.
This report is not the place to discuss or vindicate the correctness of this theory. In so far as the opponents of woman suffrage are driven to deny it, for the purpose of an argument addressed to the American people, they are driven to confess that they are in the wrong. This people are committed to the doctrine of universal suffrage by their constitutions, their history and their opinions. They must stand by it or fall by it. The poorest, humblest, feeblest of sane men has the ballot in his hand, and no other man can show a better title to it. Those things wherein men are unequal—intelligence, ability, integrity, experience, title to public confidence by reason of previous public service—have their natural and legitimate influence under a government wherein each man's vote is counted, to quite as great a degree as under any other form of government that ever existed.
We believe that the principle of universal suffrage stands to-day stronger than ever in the judgment of mankind. Some eminent and accomplished scholars, alarmed by the corruption and recklessness manifested in our great cities, deceived by exaggerated representations of the misgovernment of the Southern States by a race just emerging from slavery, disgusted by the extent to which great numbers of our fellow-citizens have gone astray in the metaphysical subtleties of financial discussion, have uttered their eloquent warnings of the danger of the failure of universal suffrage. Such utterances from such sources have been frequent. They were never more abundant than in the early part of the present century. They are, when made in a serious and patriotic spirit, to be received with the gratitude due to that greatest of public benefactors—he who points out to the people their dangers and their faults.
But popular suffrage is to be tried not by comparison with ideal standards of excellence, but by comparison with other forms of government. We are willing to submit our century of it to this test. The crimes that have stained our history have come chiefly from its denial, not from its establishment. The misgovernment and corruption of our great cities have been largely due to men whose birth and training have been under other systems. The abuses attributed by political hostility to negro governments at the South—governments from which the intelligence and education of the State held themselves sulkily aloof—do not equal those which existed under the English or French aristocracy within the memory of living men. There have been crimes, blunders, corruptions, follies in the history of our republic. Aristides has been banished from public employment, while Cleon has been followed by admiring throngs. But few of these things have been due to the extension of the suffrage. Strike out of our history the crimes of slavery, strike out the crimes, unparalleled for ferocity and brutality, committed by an oligarchy in its attempt to overthrow universal suffrage, and we may safely challenge for our national and State governments comparison with monarchy or aristocracy in their best and purest periods.
Either the doctrines of the Declaration of Independence and the bills of rights are true, or government must rest on no principle of right whatever, but its powers may be lawfully taken by force and held by force by any person or class who have strength to do it, and who persuade themselves that their rule is for the public interest. Either these doctrines are true, or you can give no reason for your own possession of the suffrage except that you have got it. If this doctrine be sound, it follows that no class of persons can rightfully be excluded from their equal share in the government, unless they can be proved to lack some quality essential to the proper exercise of political power.
A person who votes helps, first, to determine the measures of government; second, to elect persons to be intrusted with public administration. He should therefore possess, first, an honest desire for the public welfare; second, sufficient intelligence to determine what measure or policy is best; third, the capacity to judge of the character of persons proposed for office; and, fourth, freedom from undue influence, so that the vote he casts is his own, and not another's. That person or class casting his or their own vote, with an honest desire for the public welfare, and with sufficient intelligence to judge what measure is advisable and what person may be trusted, fulfill every condition that the State can rightfully impose.
We are not now dealing with the considerations which should affect the admission of citizens of other countries to acquire the right to take part in our government. All nations claim the right to impose restrictions on the admission of foreigners trained in attachment to other countries or forms of rule, and to indifference to their own, whatever they deem the safety of the State requires. We take it for granted that no person will deny that the women of America are inspired with a love of country equal to that which animates their brothers and sons. A capacity to judge of character, so sure and rapid as to be termed intuitive, is an especial attribute of woman. One of the greatest orators of modern times has declared:
I concede away nothing which I ought to assert for our sex when I say that the collective womanhood of a people like our own seizes with matchless facility and certainty on the moral and personal peculiarities and character of marked and conspicuous men, and that we may very wisely address ourselves to such a body to learn if a competitor for the highest honors has revealed that truly noble nature that entitled him to a place in the hearts of a nation.
We believe that in that determining of public policies by the collective judgment of the State which constitutes self-government, the contribution of woman will be of great importance and value. To all questions into the determination of which considerations of justice or injustice enter, she will bring a more refined moral sense than that of man. The most important public function of the State is the provision for the education of youths. In those States in which the public school system has reached its highest excellence, more than ninety per cent. of the teachers are women. Certainly the vote of the women of the State should be counted in determining the policy that shall regulate the school system which they are called to administer.
It is seldom that particular measures of government are decided by direct popular vote. They are more often discussed before the people after they have taken effect, when the party responsible for them is called to account. The great measures which go to make up the history of nations are determined not by the voters, but by their rulers, whether those rulers be hereditary or elected. The plans of great campaigns are conceived by men of great military genius and executed by great generals. Great systems of finance come from the brain of statesmen who have made finance a special study. The mass of the voters decide to which party they will intrust power. They do not determine particulars. But they give to parties their general tone and direction, and hold them to their accountability. We believe that woman will give to the political parties of the country a moral temperament which will have a most beneficent and ennobling effect on politics.
Woman, also, is specially fitted for the performance of that function of legislative and executive government which, with the growth of civilization, becomes yearly more and more important—the wise and practical economic adjustment of the details of public expenditures. It may be considered that it would not be for the public interest to clothe with the suffrage any class of persons who are so dependent that they will, as a general rule, be governed by others in its exercise. But we do not admit that this is true of women. We see no reason to believe that women will not be as likely to retain their independence of political judgment, as they now retain their independence of opinion in regard to the questions which divide religious sects from one another. These questions deeply excite the feelings of mankind, yet experience shows that the influence of the wife is at least as great as that of the husband in determining the religious opinion of the household. The natural influence exerted by members of the same family upon each other would doubtless operate to bring about similarity of opinion on political questions as on others. So far as this tends to increase the influence of the family in the State, as compared with that of unmarried men, we deem it an advantage. Upon all questions which touch public morals, public education, all which concern the interest of the household, such a united exertion of political influence cannot be otherwise than beneficial.
Our conclusion, then, is that the American people must extend the right of suffrage to woman or abandon the idea that suffrage is a birthright. The claim that universal suffrage will work mischief in practice is simply a claim that justice will work mischief in practice. Many honest and excellent persons, while admitting the force of the arguments above stated, fear that taking part in politics will destroy those feminine traits which are the charm of woman, and are the chief comfort and delight of the household. If we thought so we should agree with the majority of the committee in withholding assent to the prayer of the petitioners. This fear is the result of treating the abuses of the political function as essential to its exercise. The study of political questions, the forming an estimate of the character of public men or public measures, the casting a vote, which is the result of that study and estimate, certainly have in themselves nothing to degrade the most delicate and refined nature. The violence, the fraud, the crime, the chicanery, which, so far as they have attended masculine struggles for political power, tend to prove, if they prove anything, the unfitness of men for the suffrage, are not the result of the act of voting, but are the expressions of course, criminal and evil natures, excited by the desire for victory. The admission to the polls of delicate and tender women would, without injury to them, tend to refine and elevate the politics in which they took a part. When, in former times, women were excluded from social banquets, such assemblies were scenes of ribaldry and excess. The presence of women has substituted for them the festival of the Christian home.
The majority of the committee state the following as their reasons for the conclusion to which they come:
First—If the petitioners' prayer be granted it will make several millions of female voters.
Second—These voters will be inexperienced in public affairs.
Third—They are quite generally dependent on the other sex.
Fourth—They are incapable of military duty.
Fifth—They are without the power to enforce the laws which their numerical strength may enable them to make.
Sixth—Very few of them wish to assume the irksome and responsible duties which this measure thrusts upon them.
Seventh—Such a change should only be made slowly and in obedience to a general public demand.
Eighth—There are but thirty thousand petitioners.
Ninth—It would be unjust to impose "the heavy burden of governing, which so many men seek to evade, on the great mass of women who do not wish for it, to gratify the few who do."
Tenth—Women now have the sympathy of judges and juries "to an extent which would warrant loud complaint on the part of their adversaries of the sterner sex."
Eleventh—Such a change should be made, if at all, by the States. Three-fourths of the States should not force it on the others. In any State in which "any considerable part of the women wish for the right to vote, it will be granted without the intervention of congress."
The first objection of the committee is to the large increase of the number of the voting population. We believe on the other hand, that to double the numbers of the constituent body, and to compose one-half that body of women, would tend to elevate the standard of the representative both for ability and manly character. Macaulay in one of his speeches on the Reform bill refers to the quality of the men who had for half a century been members for the five most numerous constituencies in England—Westminster, Southwark, Liverpool, Bristol and Norwich. Among them were Burke, Fox, Sheridan, Romilly, Windham, Tierney, Canning, Huskisson. Eight of the nine greatest men who had sat in parliament for forty years sat for the five largest represented towns. To increase the numbers of constituencies diminishes the opportunity for corruption. Size is itself a conservative force in a republic. As a permanent general rule the people will desire their own best interest. Disturbing forces, evil and selfish passions, personal ambitions, are necessarily restricted in their operation. The larger the field of operation, the more likely are such influences to neutralize each other.
The objection of inexperience in public affairs applies, of course, alike to every voter when he first votes. If it be valid, it would have prevented any extension of the suffrage, and would exclude from the franchise a very large number of masculine voters of all ages.
That women are quite generally dependent on the other sex is true. So it is true that men are quite generally dependent on the other sex. It is impossible so to measure this dependence as to declare that man is more dependent on woman or woman upon man. It is by no means true that the dependence of either on the other affects the right to the suffrage.
Capacity for military duty has no connection with capacity for suffrage. The former is wholly physical. It will scarcely be proposed to disfranchise men who are unfit to be soldiers by reason of age or bodily infirmity. The suggestion that the country may be plunged into wars by a majority of women who are secure from military dangers is not founded in experience. Men of the military profession, and men of the military age are commonly quite as eager for war as non-combatants, and will hereafter be quite as indifferent to its risks and hardships as their mothers and wives.
The argument that women are without the power to enforce the laws which their numerical strength may enable them to make, proceeds from the supposition that it is probable that all the women will range themselves upon one side in politics and all the men on the other. Such supposition flatly contradicts the other arguments drawn from the dependence of women and from their alleged unwillingness to assume political burdens. So men over fifty years of age are without the power to enforce obedience to laws against which the remainder of the voters forcibly rebel. It is not physical power alone, but power aided by the respect for law of the people, on which laws depend for their enforcement.
The sixth, eighth and ninth reasons of the committee are the same proposition differently stated. It is that a share in the government of the country is a burden, and one which, in the judgment of a majority of the women of the country, they ought not to be required to assume. If any citizen deem the exercise of this franchise a burden and not a privilege, such person is under no constraint to exercise it. But if it be a birthright, then it is obvious that no other power than that of the individual concerned can rightfully restrain its exercise. The committee concede that women ought to be clothed with the ballot in any State where any considerable part of the women desire it. This is a pretty serious confession. On the vital, fundamental question whether the institutions of this country shall be so far changed that the number of persons in it who take a part in the government shall be doubled, the judgment of women is to be and ought to be decisive. If woman may fitly determine this question, for what question of public policy is she unfit? What question of equal importance will ever be submitted to her decision? What has become of the argument that women are unfit to vote because they are dependent on men, or because they are unfit for military duty, or because they are inexperienced, or because they are without power to enforce obedience to their laws?
The next argument is that by the present arrangement the administration of justice is so far perverted that one-half the citizens of the country have an advantage from the sympathies of juries and judges which "would warrant loud complaint" on the part of the other half. If this be true, it is doubtless due to an instinctive feeling on the part of juries and judges that existing laws and institutions are unjust to women, or to the fact that juries composed wholly of men are led to do injustice by their susceptibility to the attractions of women. But certainly it is a grave defect in any system of government that it does not administer justice impartially, and the existence of such a defect is a strong reason for preferring an arrangement which would remove the feeling that women do not have fair play, or for so composing juries that, drawn from both sexes, they would be impartial between the two.
The final objection of the committee is that "such a change should be made, if at all, by the States. Three-fourths of the States should not force it upon the others. Whenever any considerable part of the women in any State wish for the right to vote, it will be granted without the intervention of congress." Who can doubt that when two-thirds of congress and three-fourths of the States have voted for the change, a considerable number of women in the other States will be found to desire it, so that, according to the committee's own belief, it can never be forced by a majority on unwilling communities? The prevention of unjust discrimination by States against large classes of people in respect to suffrage is even admitted to be a matter of national concern and an important function of the national constitution and laws. It is the duty of congress to propose amendments to the constitution whenever two-thirds of both houses deem them necessary. Certainly an amendment will be deemed necessary, if it can be shown to be required by the principles on which the constitution is based, and to remove an unjust disfranchisement from one-half the citizens of the country. The constitutional evidence of general public demand is to be found not in petitions, but in the assent of three-fourths of the States through their legislatures or conventions.
The lessons of experience favor the conclusion that woman is fit for a share in government. It may be true that in certain departments of intellectual effort the greatest achievements of women have as yet never equaled the greatest achievements of men. But it is equally true that in those same departments women have exhibited an intellectual ability very far beyond that of the average of men and very far beyond that of most men who have shown very great political capacity. But let the comparison be made in regard to the very thing with which we have to deal. Of men who have swayed chief executive power, a very considerable proportion have attained it by usurpation or by election, processes which imply extraordinary capacity on their part as compared with other men. The women who have held such power have come to it as sovereigns by inheritance, or as regents by the accident of bearing a particular relation to the lawful sovereign when he was under some incapacity. Yet it is an undisputed fact that the number of able and successful female sovereigns bears a vastly greater proportion to the whole number of such sovereigns, than does the number of able and successful male sovereigns to the whole number of men who have reigned. An able, energetic, virtuous king or emperor is the exception and not the rule in the history of modern Europe. With hardly an exception the female sovereigns or regents have been wise and popular. Mr. Mill, who makes this point, says:
We know how small a number of reigning queens history presents in comparison with that of kings. Of this small number a far larger proportion have shown talents for rule, though many of them have occupied the throne in difficult periods. When to queens and empresses we add regents and viceroys of provinces, the list of women who have been eminent rulers of mankind swells to a great length.... Especially is this true if we take into consideration Asia as well as Europe. If a Hindoo principality is strongly, vigilantly and economically governed; if order is preserved without oppression; if cultivation is extending and the people prosperous, in three cases out of four that principality is under a woman's rule. This fact, to me an entirely unexpected one, I have collected from a long official knowledge of Hindoo governments.
Certainly history gives no warning that should deter the American people from carrying out the principles upon which their government rests to this most just and legitimate conclusion. Those persons who think that free government has anywhere failed, can only claim that this tends to prove, not the failure of universal suffrage, but the failure of masculine suffrage. Like failure has attended the operation of every other great human institution, the family, the school, the church, whenever woman has not been permitted to contribute to it her full share. As to the best example of the perfect family, the perfect school, the perfect church, the love, the purity, the truth of woman are essential, so they are equally essential to the perfect example of the self-governing State.
Geo. F. Hoar,
John H. Mitchell,
Angus Cameron.
Thousands of copies of this report were published and franked to every part of the country. On February 7, just one week after the presentation of the able minority report, the bill allowing women to practice before the Supreme Court passed the Senate[47][Pg 139] and received the signature of President Hayes. Senators McDonald, Hoar and Sargent made the principal speeches. We give Mr. Hoar's speech in full because of its terse and vigorous presentation of the fact that congress is a body superior to the Supreme Court of the United States. Mr. Hoar said:
Mr. President—I understand the brief statement which was made, I think, during this last session by the majority of the Judiciary Committee in support of their opposition to this bill, did not disclose that the majority of that committee were opposed to permitting women to engage in the practice of law or to be admitted to practice it in the Supreme Court of the United States, but the point they made, was that the legislation of the United States left to the Supreme Court the power of determining by rule who should be admitted to practice before that tribunal, and that we ought not by legislation to undertake to interfere with its rules. Now, with the greatest respect for that tribunal, I conceive that the law-making and not the law-expounding power in this government ought to determine the question what class of citizens shall be clothed with the office of the advocate. I believe that leaving to the Supreme Court by rule to determine the qualifications or disqualifications of attorneys and counselors in that court is an exception to the nearly uniform policy of the States of the Union. Would it be tolerated if the Supreme Court undertook by rule to establish any other disqualification, any of those disqualifications which have existed in regard to holding any other office in the country? Suppose the court were of the opinion we had been too fast in relieving persons who took part in the late rebellion from their disabilities, and that it would not admit persons who had so taken part to practice before the Supreme Court; is there any doubt that congress would at once interfere? Suppose the Supreme Court were of opinion that the people of the United States had erred in the amendment which had removed the disqualification from colored persons and declined to admit such persons to practice in that court; is there any doubt that congress would interfere and would deem it a fit occasion for the exercise of the law-making power?
Now, Mr. President, this bill is not a bill merely to admit women to the privilege of engaging in a particular profession; it is a bill to secure to the citizen of the United States the right to select his counsel, and that is all. At present a case is tried and decided in the State courts of any State of this Union which may be removed to the Supreme Court of the United States. In the courts of the State, women are permitted to practice as advocates, and a woman has been the advocate under whose direction and care and advocacy the case has been won in the court below. Is it tolerable that the counsel who has attended the case from its commencement to its successful termination in the highest court of the State should not be permitted to attend upon and defend the rights of that client when the case is transferred to the Supreme Court of the United States? Everybody knows, at least every lawyer of experience knows, the impossibility of transferring with justice to the interests of a client, a cause from one counsel to another. A suit is instituted under the advice of a counsel on a certain theory, a certain remedy is selected, a certain theory of the cause is the one on which it is staked. Now that must be attended to and defended by the counsel under whose advice the suit has taken its shape; the pleadings have been shaped in the courts below.
Under the present system, a citizen of any State in the Union having selected a counsel of good moral character who has practiced three years, who possesses all-sufficient professional and personal qualifications, and having had a cause brought to a successful result in the State court, is denied by the present existing and unjust rule having counsel of his choice argue the cause in the Supreme Court of the United States.
The greatest master of human manners, who read the human heart and who understood better than any man who ever lived the varieties of human character, when he desired to solve just what had puzzled the lawyers and doctors, placed a woman upon the judgment seat; and yet, under the present existing law, if Portia herself were alive, she could not defend the opinion she had given, before the Supreme Court of the United States.
The press commented favorably upon this new point gained for women. We give a few extracts:
The senators who voted to-day against the bill "to relieve certain legal disabilities of women" are marked men and have reason to fear the result of their action.—[Telegraph to the New York Tribune, February 7.
The women get into the Supreme Court in spite of the determination of the justices. They gained a decided advantage to-day in the passage by the Senate of a bill providing that any woman who shall have been a member of the highest court in any State or territory, or of the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia, for three years, may be admitted to the Supreme Court. The bill was called up by Senator McDonald, in antagonism to Mr. Edmunds' amendment to the constitution which was the pending order. Mr. Edmunds objected to the consideration of the bill and voted against it. There was not much discussion, the main speeches being by Mr. Sargent and Mr. Hoar.—[Special dispatch to the New York World, February 7.
A Woman's Rights Victory in the Senate.—The Lockwood bill, giving women authority to practice before the Supreme Court of the United States, passed the Senate yesterday by a vote of two to one, and now it only requires the approval of Mr. Hayes to become a law. The powerful effect of persistent and industrious lobbying is manifested in the success of this bill. When it was first introduced, it is doubtful if one-fourth the members of congress would have voted for it. Some of the strong-minded women, who were interested in the bill, stuck to it, held the fort from day to day, and talked members and senators into believing it a just measure. Senator McDonald gave Mr. Edmunds a rebuff yesterday that he will not soon forget. The latter attempted to administer a rebuke to the Indiana senator for calling up a bill during the absence of the senator who had reported it. Mr. McDonald retorted that he knew the objection of the senator from Vermont was made for the purpose of defeating the bill and not, as pretended, to give an absent senator opportunity to speak upon it.—[Washington Post, February 8.
The credit for this victory belongs to Mrs. Belva Lockwood, of this city, who, having been refused admission to the bar of the United States Supreme Court, appealed to congress, and by dint of hard work has finally succeeded in having her bill passed by both houses. She called on Mrs. Hayes last evening, who complimented her upon her achievement, and informed her that she had sent a bouquet to Senator Hoar, in token of his efforts in behalf of the bill.—[Washington Star, February 8.
The bill was carried through merely by the energetic advocacy of Senators McDonald, Sargent and Hoar, whose oratorical efforts were reënforced by the presence of Mrs. Lockwood. After the struggle was over, all the senators who advocated the bill were made the recipients of bouquets, while the three senators whose names we have given received large baskets of flowers. This is a pleasing omen of that purification of legal business which it is hoped will flow from the introduction of women to the courts. It was not flowers that used to be distributed at Washington and Albany in the old corrupt times, among legislators, in testimony of gratitude for their votes. Let us hope that venal legislation at Washington will be extirpated by the rise of this beautiful custom.—[New York Nation.
It was noticeable that all the presidential candidates dodged the issue except Senator Blaine, who voted for the bill.—[Chicago Inter-Ocean.
How humiliated poor old Judge Magruder must feel, since the congress of the United States paid the woman whom he forbade to open her mouth in his august presence, in his little court, so much consideration as to pass an act opening to her the doors of the Supreme Court of the United States. All honor to the brave woman, who by her own unaided efforts thus achieved honor, fortune and fame—the just rewards of her own true worth.—[Havre Republican, Havre de Grace, Maryland.
Enter Portia.—An act of congress was not necessary to authorize women to be lawyers, if their legal acquirements fitted them for that vocation; nor was it necessary to state, as an expression of opinion by the national legislature, that some women are so fully qualified for the legal profession that no barriers should be permitted to stand in their way. It was needed simply as a key whereby the hitherto locked door of the Supreme Court of the United States may be opened if a woman lawyer, with the usual credentials, should knock thereon. That is all; and there is no new question opened for profitless debate. The ability of some women to be lawyers is like the ability of others to make bread—it rests upon the facts. There is no room for elaborate argument to prove either their fitness or unfitness for legal studies, so long as in Missouri, Wisconsin, Michigan, the District of Columbia, Iowa and North Carolina there are women in more or less successful practice and repute. * * * Nowhere are these great attributes of civilization and regulated liberty—law, conservatism, justice, equity and mercy in the administration of human affairs put in broader light or truer, than they are by the words that Shakespeare puts in the mouth of this woman jurist.—[Public Ledger, Philadelphia, February 12.
When congress recently passed a law allowing women to practice in the Supreme Court, it was not a subject of any special or eager comment. A woman who is a lawyer sent flowers to the desks of the members who voted for the bill, and before they had faded, comment was at an end. The home was still safe and the country was not in peril. It was one of the questions which had settled itself and was a foregone conclusion. * * * United States Senator Edmunds of Vermont, has fallen into disfavor with the ladies for voting against the above bill.—[From John W. Forney's Progress, February 22.
On March 3, by motion of Hon. A. G. Riddle, Mrs. Lockwood was admitted to the bar of the United States Supreme Court,[48][Pg 142] taking the official oath and receiving the classic sheep-skin; and the following week she was admitted to practice before the Court of Claims. The forty-sixth congress contained an unusually large proportion of new representatives, fresh from the people, ready for the discussion of new issues, and manifesting a chivalric spirit toward the consideration of woman's claims as a citizen. On Tuesday, April 29, the following resolution was submitted to the Committee on Rules in the House of Representatives:
Resolved, That a select committee of nine members be appointed by the speaker, to be called a Committee on the Rights of Women, whose duty it shall be to consider and report upon all petitions, memorials, resolutions and bills that may be presented in the House relating to the rights of women.
Admitting the justice of a fair consideration of a question involving every human right of one-half of the population of this country, Alex. H. Stephens of Georgia, James A. Garfield of Ohio, Wm. P. Frye of Maine, immediately declared themselves in favor of the appointment of said committee, and Speaker Randall, the chairman, ordered it reported to the House. A similar resolution was introduced in the Senate, before the adjournment of the special session. This showed a clearer perception of the magnitude of the question, and the need of its early and earnest consideration, than at any time during the previous thirty years of argument, heroic struggle and sacrifice on the altar of woman's freedom.
The anniversary of 1879 was held in St. Louis, Missouri, May 7, 8, 9. Mrs. Virginia L. Minor and Miss Phœbe W. Couzins made all possible arrangements for the success of the meeting and the comfort of the delegates.[49] Mrs. Minor briefly stated the object of the convention and announced that, as the president of the association had not arrived, Mrs. Joslyn Gage would take the chair. Miss Couzins gave the address of welcome:
Mrs. President and Members of the National Woman Suffrage Association:
It becomes my pleasant duty to welcome you to the hospitalities of my native city. To extend to you who for the first time meet beyond the Mississippi, a greeting—not only in behalf of the friends of woman suffrage, but for those of our citizens who, while not in full sympathy with your views, have a desire to hear you in deliberative council and to cordially tender you the same courtesies offered other conventions which have chosen St. Louis as their place of annual gathering.
And I am the more happy to do this because of the opportunity it affords me to disabuse your minds of certain impressions which have gone abroad concerning our slowness of action in the line of advanced ideas. Certainly in some phases of that reformation to which you and your co-laborers have pledged your lives, your fortunes—the cause of woman—St. Louis is the leader.
When, eighteen or twenty years since, Harriet Hosmer desired to study anatomy, to perfect herself in her art, not a college in New England would open its doors to her; she traveled West, and through the generous patronage of Wayman Crow of this city, she became a pupil of the dean of the St. Louis Medical college.
When other cities had refused equality of wages and position, St. Louis placed Miss Brackett at the head of our normal school, giving her—a heretofore exclusively male prerogative—the highest wages, added to the highest educational rank.
And here in St. Louis began the advance march which has finally broken down the walls of the highest judicial fortress, the Supreme Court of the United States. Washington University, in response to my request, unhesitatingly opened its doors, and for the first time in the history of America, woman was accorded the right to a legal course of training with man, and, at its close, after successful examination, I was freely accorded the degree of Bachelor of Laws! A city or a State that could perpetrate the anomaly of a female bachelor, is certainly not far behind the radicalism of the age.
Again, as I turn to its record on suffrage, I find as early as 1866 the Hon. B. Gratz Brown of Missouri made a glowing speech for woman's enfranchisement, in the United States Senate, on Mr. Cowan's motion to strike out "male" from the District of Columbia suffrage bill, which resulted in an organization in 1867, through the efforts of Mrs. Virginia L. Minor, its first president. And again, I remember when that hydra-headed evil arose in our midst, degrading all women and violating all the sweet and sacred sanctities of life—a blow at our homes and a lasting stigma on our civilization—the people of this community, led by the chancellor of Washington University, at the ballot-box but recently laid that monster away in a tomb, never, I trust, to be resurrected.
And now, Mrs. President, let me add, in words which but faintly express the emotion of my heart, the gratitude we feel towards the noble women who have borne the burden and heat of the day. They who have been ridiculed, villified, maligned, but through it all maintained an unswerving allegiance to truth. In the name of all true womanhood I welcome this association in our midst as worthy of the highest honor.
We have lived to see the enlargement of woman's thought in all directions. From our laboratories, libraries, observatories, schools of medicine and law, universities of science, art and literature, she is advancing to the examination of the problems of life, with an eye single only to the glory of truth. Like the Spartan of old she has thrown her spear into the thickest of the fray, and will fight gloriously in the midst thereof till she regains her own. No specious sophistry or vain delusion—no time-honored tradition or untenable doctrine can evade her searching investigation.
Mrs. Gage responded to this address in a few earnest, appropriate words.
Of the many letters[50] read in the convention none was received with greater joy than the few lines, written with trembling hand, from Lucretia Mott, then in the eighty-seventh year of her age:
Roadside, Fourth Month, 26, 1879.
My Dear Susan Anthony—It would need no urgent appeal to draw me to St. Louis had I the strength for the journey. You will have no need of my worn-out powers. Our cause itself has become sufficiently attractive. Edward M. Davis has a joint letter on hand for my signature, so this is enough, with my mite toward expenses. And to all assembled in St. Louis best wishes for—yes, full faith in your success. I have signed Edward's letter, so it is hardly necessary for me to say,
Lucretia Mott.
The distinguishing feature of this convention was an afternoon session of ladies alone, prompted by an attempt to reënact a law for the license of prostitution, which had been enforced in St. Louis a few years before and repealed through the united efforts of the best men and women of the city. Mrs. Joslyn Gage opened the meeting by reading extracts from the Woman's Declaration of Rights presented at the centennial celebration, and drew especial attention to the clause referring to two separate codes of morals for men and women, arising from woman's inferior political position:
There are two points which may be considered open for discussion during the afternoon—one, the fact that there are existing in all forms of society, barbaric, semi-civilized, civilized or enlightened, two separate codes of morals; the strict code to which women are held accountable, and the lax code which governs the conduct of men.
The other question which can very properly be discussed at the present time is, "Why in this country, and in all civilized nations, do one-half of the population die under five years of age, and in some countries a very large proportion under one year?"
A letter was read from Mrs. Josephine E. Butler. As the experiment of licensing prostitution had been extensively tried in England, and she had watched the effects of the system not only in her own country but on the continent, her opinions on this question are worthy of consideration:
To the Annual Meeting of the National Suffrage Association in St. Louis:
Dear Friends—As I am unable to be present at your convention on May 7, 8, 9, and as you ask for a communication from me, I gladly write you on some of the later phases of our struggle against legalized prostitution. A brave battle has been fought in St. Louis against that iniquity, and we have regarded it with sympathy and admiration; but you are not yet safe against the devices of those who uphold this white slavery, nor are we safe, although we know that in the end we shall be conquerors. You tell me that "England is held up as an example of the beneficial working of the legalizing of vice." England holds a peculiar position in regard to the question. She was the last to adopt this system of slavery and she adopted it in that thorough manner which characterizes the Anglo-Saxon race. In no other country has prostitution been regulated by law. It has been understood by the Latin races, even when morally enervated, that the law could not without risk of losing its majesty violate justice. In England alone the regulations are law. Their promoters, by their hardihood in asking parliament to decree injustice, have brought on unconsciously to themselves, the beginning of the end of the whole system. The Englishman is a powerful agent for evil as for good. In the best times of our history my countrymen possessed preëminently vigorous minds in vigorous bodies. But when the animal nature has outgrown the moral, the appetites burst their proper restraints, and man has no other notion of enjoyment save bodily pleasure; he passes by a quick and easy transition into a powerful brute. And this is what the upper-class Englishman has to a deplorable extent become. There is no creature in the world so ready as he to domineer, to enslave, to destroy. But together with this development towards evil, there has been in our country a counter development. Moral faith is still strong among us. There are powerful women, as well as strong, pure, and self-governed men, of the real old Anglo-Saxon type. It was in England then, which adopted last the hideous slavery, that there arose first a strong national protest in opposition. English people rose up against the wicked law before it had been in operation three months. English men and women determined to carry abolition not at home only, but abroad, and they promptly carried their standard to every country on the continent of Europe. In all these countries men and women came forward at the first appeal, and said, "We are ready, we only waited for you, Anglo-Saxons, to take the lead; we have groaned under the oppression, but there was not force enough among us to take the initiative step."
We have recently had a visit from Monsieur Aimi Humbert of Switzerland, our able general secretary for the continent. Much encouragement was derived from the reports which reached us from France, Holland, Denmark, Sweden and even Spain, where a noble lady, Donna Concepcion Arenal of Madrid, and several gentlemen have warmly espoused our cause. The progress is truly encouraging; yet, on the other hand, it is obvious that the partisans of this legislation have recently been smitten with a kind of rage for extending the system everywhere, and are on the watch to introduce it wherever we are off our guard. In almost all British colonies they are very busy. At the Cape of Good Hope, where the Cape parliament had repealed the law, the governor, Sir Bartle Frere, has been induced by certain specialists and immoral men, to reïntroduce it. But since he could not count on the parliament at Cape Town for doing this, he has reintroduced the miserable system by means of a proclamation or edict, without the sanction and probably, to a great extent, without the knowledge of parliament. The same game is being played in other colonies. These facts seem to point to a more decided and bitter struggle on the question than we have yet seen. An energetic member of our executive committee, M. Pierson of Zetten, in Holland, says:
I look upon legalized prostitution as the system in which the immorality of our age is crystalized, and that in attacking it we attack in reality the great enemies which are hiding themselves behind its ramparts. But if we do not soon overthrow these ramparts we must not think our work is fruitless. A great work is already achieved; sin is once more called sin instead of necessary evil, and the true standard of morality—equal for men and women, for rich and poor—is once more raised in the face of all the nations.
This legalization of vice which recognized the "necessity" of impurity for man and the institution of slavery for woman, is the most open denial which modern times have seen of the principle of the sacredness of the individual human being. It is the embodiment of socialism in its worst form. An English high-class journal confessed this, when it dared to demand that women who are unchaste shall henceforth be dealt with "not as human beings, but as foul sewers," or some such "material nuisance" without souls, without rights and without responsibilities. When the leaders of public opinion in a country have arrived at such a point of combined depotism as to recommend such a manner of dealing with human beings, there is no crime which that country may not legalize. Were it possible to secure the absolute physical health of a whole province, or an entire continent by the destruction of one, only one poor and sinful woman, woe to that nation which should dare, by that single act of destruction, to purchase this advantage to the many! It will do it at its peril.
We entreat our friends in America to renew their alliance with us in the sacred conflict. Union will be strength. The women of England are beginning to understand their responsibilities. Like yourselves, we are laboring to obtain the suffrage. The wrong which has fallen upon us in this legalizing of vice has taught us the need of power in legislation. Meanwhile, the crusade against immorality is educating women for the right use of suffrage when they obtain it. The two movements must go hand in hand.
Altogether this was an impressive occasion in which women met heart to heart in discussing the deepest humiliations of their sex. After eloquent speeches by Mrs. Meriwether, Mrs. Spencer, Mrs. Leonard, Mrs. Thompson and Rev. Olympia Brown, the audience slowly dispersed.
