Social problems; United States -- Social conditions -- 1865-1918
Whatever may be the evils of our present social or political system, it
is evident that the right of suffrage, if extended to woman, could not
afford a remedy, but on the contrary, would tend to weaken, rather than
strengthen, mutual interests, by creating unwomanly aspirations and
domestic dissensions, thus sundering the ties of love and affection
which naturally exist between the sexes. In a word, it would be opening
Pandora's box, and letting escape the imps of social and political
discord, and finally result in universal misrule, if not in positive
anarchy.
Modesty and delicacy are the crowning characteristics of a true woman.
She naturally shrinks from the storms of political strife. Give her the
right of suffrage,--a boon no sensible woman desires; place her in
office, in the halls of legislation, in the Presidential chair; enrobe
her with the judicial ermine, or make her the executive officer of a
criminal tribunal,--and how could she assume the tender relations of a
mother, and at the same time officiate in any of these high places of
public trust, in which the sternest and most inflexible duties are often
required to be performed?
It is not possible, however, that the erratic comets, whose trailing
light occasionally flashes athwart our political sky, will ever acquire
sufficient momentum to jostle the "fixed stars" out of place, because
there is a fixed law of Nature which preserves them in place. There is
also a law of Nature which makes man not only the protector, but the
worshipper, of woman,--a worship which is as instinctively paid as
reciprocated, and which is by no means inconsistent with the worship of
God, but in truth is a part of it. It is this kind of worship--this
natural and holy impulse of the heart--which constitutes the basis of
man's rights and of woman's rights, and should harmonize all their
relations in life.
We see the instinctive exhibition of man's reverence for women almost
every day of our lives, and often in a way that proves how ridiculous
are modern theories in regard to woman's rights, when brought to the
test in practical life. Not long since, in one of our cities where a
woman's rights convention was in session, a strong-minded female
delegate entered a street railway car, when an old gentleman arose to
give her his seat, but at that moment, suspecting her to be a delegate,
asked, "Be you one of these women's righters?"--"I am." "You believe a
woman should have all the rights of a man?"--"Yes, I do." "Then stand up
and enjoy them like a man." And stand up she did,--the old gentleman
coolly resuming his seat, to the great amusement of the other
passengers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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