Page:Letters to a friend on votes for women.djvu/53

 duel. A duellist might be put on trial for murder, but the jury would not convict him, and the Judge's charge would suggest reasons or fallacies in acquittal. By about the middle of the century opinion had begun to change. Lord Cardigan was all but convicted of murder for killing Captain Tuckett in a duel. His lordship, unfortunately for the nation, escaped conviction through a purely technical error in the indictment. It is public opinion, not law, which has to a great extent put down gambling; it is public opinion, not change in the law, which has led English gentlemen to adopt habits of habitual sobriety. It is to public opinion we must mainly trust for the diminution of that love of drink which is the curse of the English wage-earners. But women can, and do, influence public opinion as much as do men. Does anyone seriously suppose that 'Uncle Tom's Cabin,' which directed the indignation of the civilized world against the maintenance of negro slavery in the United States, produced the less effect because it was written by Mrs. Beecher Stowe, and not by her brother? I have no wish to exaggerate. There is no need to deny that the