Female Suffrage [17]
than if she were to mount the rostrum to-morrow and make a political speech eloquent as any of Webster's.
Sensible women may always have a good measure of political influence of the right sort, if they choose. And it is in one sense a duty on their part to claim this influence, and to exert it, but always in the true womanly way. The influence of good sense, of a sound judgment, of good feeling may always he theirs. Let us see that we preserve this influence, and that we use it wisely. But let us cherish our happy immunities as women by keeping aloof from all public personal action in the political field. There is much higher work for us to do. Our time, our thoughts, our efforts may be given to labors far more important than any mere temporary electing, or law-making, passed today, annulled to-morrow, in obedience to the fickle spirit of party politics.
THAT WORK IS TO PROMOTE BY ALL WORTHY MEANS THE MORAL CIVILIZATION OF THE COUNTRY.
Toward this work legislation, the mere enacting of laws, can do but little. We have all heard of the shrewd mind who considered the songs of a people as more important than their laws. The moral condition of a nation is subject to many different influences--of these the statute book is but one, and that not the most important. No mere skeleton of political constitution can, of itself, produce moral health and strength. It is the living heart within which does the work. And over that heart women have very great influence. The home is the cradle of the nation. A sound home education is the most important of all moral influences. In the very powerful influences which affection gives them over the home, by teaching childhood, by guiding youth, over the men of their family, women have noble means for working good, not only to their own households, not only to the social circle about them, but to the nation at large. All these influences they can bring into action far more effectually by adhering closely to that position which is not only natural to them, but also plainly allotted to them by the revealed Word of God. In no position of their own devising can they do that work half so well.
Political and social corruption are clearly the great evils to be dreaded for our country. We have already gone far enough in the path of universal manhood suffrage to feel convinced that no mere enlargement of the suffrage has power to save us from those evils. During half a century we have been moving nearer and nearer to a suffrage all but universal, and we have, during the same period, been growing more corrupt. The undisguised frauds at elections, the open accusations of bribery in legislative assemblies, the accusations of corruption connected with still higher offices--of these we read daily in the public prints. And these accusations are not disproved. They are generally believed. It is clear, therefore, that something more effectual than universal manhood suffrage is needed to stem the torrent. And it is simply ridiculous to suppose that womanhood suffrage can effect the same task. Who can believe that where men, in their own natural field, have partially failed to preserve a healthful political atmosphere, an honest political practice, that women, so much less experienced, physically so much more feeble, so excitable, so liable to be misled by fancy, by feeling, are likely, in a position foreign to their nature, not only to stand upright themselves, but, like Atlas of old, to bear the weight of the whole political world on their shoulders--like Hercules, to cleanse the Augean stables of the political coursers--to do, in short, all that man has failed to do? No; it is, alas! only too clear that something more than the ballot-box, whether in male or female hands, is needed here. And it is the same in social life. The public prints, under a free press, must always hold up a tolerably faithful mirror to the society about them. The picture it displays is no better in social life than in political life. We say the mirror is tolerably faithful, since there are heights of virtue and depths of sin
Sensible women may always have a good measure of political influence of the right sort, if they choose. And it is in one sense a duty on their part to claim this influence, and to exert it, but always in the true womanly way. The influence of good sense, of a sound judgment, of good feeling may always he theirs. Let us see that we preserve this influence, and that we use it wisely. But let us cherish our happy immunities as women by keeping aloof from all public personal action in the political field. There is much higher work for us to do. Our time, our thoughts, our efforts may be given to labors far more important than any mere temporary electing, or law-making, passed today, annulled to-morrow, in obedience to the fickle spirit of party politics.
THAT WORK IS TO PROMOTE BY ALL WORTHY MEANS THE MORAL CIVILIZATION OF THE COUNTRY.
Toward this work legislation, the mere enacting of laws, can do but little. We have all heard of the shrewd mind who considered the songs of a people as more important than their laws. The moral condition of a nation is subject to many different influences--of these the statute book is but one, and that not the most important. No mere skeleton of political constitution can, of itself, produce moral health and strength. It is the living heart within which does the work. And over that heart women have very great influence. The home is the cradle of the nation. A sound home education is the most important of all moral influences. In the very powerful influences which affection gives them over the home, by teaching childhood, by guiding youth, over the men of their family, women have noble means for working good, not only to their own households, not only to the social circle about them, but to the nation at large. All these influences they can bring into action far more effectually by adhering closely to that position which is not only natural to them, but also plainly allotted to them by the revealed Word of God. In no position of their own devising can they do that work half so well.
Political and social corruption are clearly the great evils to be dreaded for our country. We have already gone far enough in the path of universal manhood suffrage to feel convinced that no mere enlargement of the suffrage has power to save us from those evils. During half a century we have been moving nearer and nearer to a suffrage all but universal, and we have, during the same period, been growing more corrupt. The undisguised frauds at elections, the open accusations of bribery in legislative assemblies, the accusations of corruption connected with still higher offices--of these we read daily in the public prints. And these accusations are not disproved. They are generally believed. It is clear, therefore, that something more effectual than universal manhood suffrage is needed to stem the torrent. And it is simply ridiculous to suppose that womanhood suffrage can effect the same task. Who can believe that where men, in their own natural field, have partially failed to preserve a healthful political atmosphere, an honest political practice, that women, so much less experienced, physically so much more feeble, so excitable, so liable to be misled by fancy, by feeling, are likely, in a position foreign to their nature, not only to stand upright themselves, but, like Atlas of old, to bear the weight of the whole political world on their shoulders--like Hercules, to cleanse the Augean stables of the political coursers--to do, in short, all that man has failed to do? No; it is, alas! only too clear that something more than the ballot-box, whether in male or female hands, is needed here. And it is the same in social life. The public prints, under a free press, must always hold up a tolerably faithful mirror to the society about them. The picture it displays is no better in social life than in political life. We say the mirror is tolerably faithful, since there are heights of virtue and depths of sin