Page:Letters to a friend on votes for women.djvu/52

 ? It is this dream of a millennium of public righteousness, this passion for a crusade against private vice and in favour of universal peace, which induces some among the best and the most highly educated of English women, as also some women who are not quite the wisest of human beings, to raise, in season and out of season, the cry of 'Votes for women!'

This hope of national regeneration, I confidently assert, is doomed to disappointment, and this for the following reasons:

1. The moral improvement of men or of nations is effected far less by the force of law than by the power of opinion. Law, when unsupported by public opinion, may fail to punish notorious crimes. A duellist who has caused the death of his opponent has for centuries, according to the law of England, been deemed a murderer. But a duellist who fought fairly might, till quite recent days, kill his man without the least fear of punishment. The high morality of Sir Walter Scott, the strictly religious education of Macaulay, left each of them ready to accept a challenge. The philosophic intellect of Sir William Molesworth did not prevent his fighting a