Mr. Mill’s motion for the bestowal of the franchise upon women occasioned a good deal of silly giggling:—
“Fools have still an itching to deride, And fain would be upon the laughing side.”
But it seldom happens that a really able man makes a proposal that is entirely devoid of sense and reason; and we are glad that a minority of seventy-three were found in the House gallant enough to vote for the motion. The member for Westminster did not ask a vote for any woman whose legal personality was even partially merged in that of another. Neither married women, whose husbands are in life, nor domestic servants, would be admitted by him to the franchise. But if a woman is a householder, managing her own affairs, paying her way, liable to every tax, and faultless in every civil capacity; where is the person of intelligence who will dare to pronounce Mr. Mill’s proposal absurd? On the 4th of May, 1870, Mr. Jacob Bright moved the second reading of the bill for the enfranchisement of women, and adduced his best arguments to prove that widows and spinsters should have votes. By a majority of thirty-three votes, in a house of 215 members, the women carried the day; and the bill was read a second time amid loud cheers. This in future will be an important subject between constituencies and candidates; and we have little doubt that in the course of a few years the British parliament will know nothing of the distinctions of strong and weak, male and female, rich and poor. Why should women be excluded by law from doing the very things for which they are peculiarly qualified? Had Queen Elizabeth and Queen Victoria not inherited the throne, they could not have been entrusted with the smallest political duties! The former was one of the most eminent rulers of mankind; and the vocation of the latter for government has made its way, and become conspicuous. Happy will be the day in our country—happy will be the day throughout the world—when woman stands in this respect, as well as in others, a help meet for man!
God has planted in every breast a passion for congenial society, and made its wholesome play essential for the fulness of happiness; but depraved passions have rendered the claims and duties of both sexes ambiguous, and disarranged the harmonies of the first creation. As society becomes corrupt, power assumes authority over weakness; and they who ought to help, begin to hinder. Upon this principle women have been held in a state of social degradation in all countries in which Christianity has been wholly unknown. The Egyptians decreed it to be indecent in women to go abroad without shoes, and threatened with death any one who should make shoes for them. Among Celtic nations, the labours of the field, as well as domestic toil, devolved on the women; which evidently originated in the general impression of their inferiority in the scale of existence. The domestic life of the Greeks exhibit unquestionable evidences of barbarity in the treatment of women. At no time were they entrusted with any knowledge of their husbands’ affairs, and they were totally excluded from mixed society. According to the laws of the Romans, the wife was in servitude; though she had in name the rights of a citizen. In savage, superstitious, and Mahometan countries, the condition of females justifies the exclamation of an ancient philosopher, who thanked God that _he was born a man and not a woman_.