All thinking people must see how easily we turn from the consolidated law of ages, with its false views, its untrue estimate of woman and duty, to the question of the right of suffrage.

In 1848 and 1850, we used to hear a great deal of three objections to conferring this right upon wo

men:

1st, Its incompatibility with household care and the duties of maternity.

2d, Its hardening effect on the character; politics not being fit for woman.

3d, The inexpediency of increasing competition in the already crowded fields of labor and office.

To these three points we gave short and summary

answers:

1st, There are a great many women who will never be mothers and housekeepers; and, if there were not, suffrage is no more incompatible with maternity and housekeeping than it is with mercantile life and the club-room.

2d, If it hardens women, it will harden men; and the politics which are not fit for her are not fit for him, nor will they become so till her presence gives men a motive to purify them.

3d, At the worst, competition could only go so far, that a man and a woman would earn as little together as the man now does alone. This would be better than the present condition of things; for they would then be equal partners, and no longer master and slave. Both would work, and neither need pine.

These answers, whether logical or not, have practically silenced the objections. We hear no more of

this nonsense. But, on the other hand, a respectable daily says, "As to the abstract right of a woman to vote because she is a human being and pays taxes, there is no such abstract right in any human being, male or female: the extent of the elective franchise is, and must ever be, limited by considerations of expediency."

Then a distinguished review goes on to say, "that while the question of suffrage stands where it now does, so unsettled that every Congress and Parliament discuss it anew, we are glad that any thing should prevent the discussion as to conferring on woman a duty, the grounds of which are very vague and undetermined so far as regards men;" and a critic of Rosa Bonheur's magnificent pictures advises the "sad sisterhood of women's-rights advocates to visit the exhibition, and sigh to think how much one silent woman's hand outvalues for their cause the pathos and the jeers of their unlovely platform."

Such remarks as these are easily met. To the first objector, who declares, although the professed advocate of a republican government, that there is no such thing as any abstract right to vote, we reply, that in this particular discussion we don't care about abstract rights; what we want is our own share of the tangible acknowledged right which human governments confer. If in England this right depends on a property qualification, then we claim that there the property qualification shall endow woman as well as man with the right of suffrage. If in America it depends upon an

inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, then we demand that our government recognize woman as so endowed, and receive her vote.

To the reviewer we say also, If the grounds of suffrage are vague and undetermined in theory, they may remain so, so far as our interference is concerned. What we ask to share is the steady right to vote, which has been actually granted, and never disputed, since our government was founded; and sufficiently pressed, we might add, that, if there is ever any chance of limiting the right of suffrage, we shall do all we can to secure its dependence on a certain amount of education, in preference to a certain amount of wealth.

As to the art critic, we thank him for calling us the "sad sisterhood." We should be sorry to be otherwise, when pleading for women before men; sorry to find matter for jesting in those purlieus of St. Giles and Five Points and the Black Sea, beating up remorselessly against these very doors, which lie at the very heart of our effort. As to the matter of going to see the Horse Fair and the Highland Cattle, it will probably be found to be a fact, that, in every city where those great pictures have been exhibited, "women's-rights women" have been their earliest visitors; and, standing before the canvas, have thanked God, with an earnestness the art critic never dreamt of, for that silent woman's hand, that glorious woman's life. It was not necessary for him to remind us of what Solomon had said so much better three thousand

years ago; namely, that "speech is silvern, and silence is golden." Nathless, silver is still current in all markets; and, God willing, we are not ashamed to use it.

We intend to claim, in words, the right of suffrage; and why?

Turning from that wretched estimate of woman, and of man's duty toward woman, which the lawbooks have just offered us, we claim the right of suffrage, because only through its possession can women protect themselves; only through its exercise can both sexes have equality of right and power before the law. Whenever this happened, character would get its legitimate influence; and it is just possible that men might become rational and virtuous in private, if association with women compelled them to seem so in public.

It is noticeable, that every man disclaims at his own hearth, and in the presence of women, whatever there is of disgraceful appertaining to political or other public meetings. Somebody must be responsible for these things; and yet, if we are to believe witnesses, nobody ever does them. The bare fact of association must take all the blame.

The laws already existing prove conclusively to woman herself, that she has never had a real representative. What she seeks is to utter her own convictions, so that they shall redeem and save not merely her own sex but the race.

That the right of suffrage would be a protection to

women, we see from this fact, that it would at once put an end to three classes of laws:

I. Those that protect her from violence.

II. Those made to protect her from fraud.

III. Those that protect society from the passions of both sexes.

The moment woman began to exercise this right, I think we should see moral significance streaming from every statute. We should no longer hear that seduction was to be sued as "loss of service:" it would become loss of honor to more than one. We should no longer hear that consent or temptation excused it: we should find that God demanded chastity of both sexes, and had made man the guardian of his own virtue. We should find, that, if its punishment admitted of degrees, it should be heaviest where a man committed it in defiance or abuse of a positive trust.

Let us look at a single decision in the light of these principles. Let us take the case of Harris versus Butler, reported in the notes to Davis's Prize Essay.

A man named Harris had apprenticed his daughter to a milliner named Butler, paying as an entrance-fee a sum equivalent to a hundred and fifty dollars. After a short time, the girl was seduced by her mistress's husband. She became seriously ill, and was returned to her father, who lost not only his hundred and fifty dollars, but all the benefits of her apprenticeship, and was obliged to provide her with board, medicine, and nursing.