Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 20.djvu/666

646 natures and gifts, coequal but distinct, and incapable of identification unless women can take what is now the work of men, and men can take the work of mothers. Law, even in the most civilized states, rests at bottom upon the force of the community, and the force of the community is male. Enactments made by those who had not power to execute them would be futile. Would the men allow the women to vote them into a war, say in defense of a romantic Queen of Naples, or some other darling of female fancy? Would they execute upon themselves the severe laws which women are threatening to make against them in matters connected with the relations of the sexes? If they would, the tyranny of man must be a fable. But if decrees were not carried into effect, and laws were not executed, the government would fall. In domestic life, though a character at least as high as the political is formed, political character is not formed. What would be the condition of a nation in a dangerous crisis like that of secession in the United States, or even the Irish crisis here, if its policy were swayed to and fro by the emotions of the women? The advocates of women's suffrage hardly realize the fact that they are turning government over into female hands; yet in the United States, where the franchise is personal, the female voters would at once outnumber the male; and in England it is well understood that the limitation to widows and spinsters is merely put forward as a mask. The next step would be a demand of eligibility to Parliament and to political office, which is probably the personal aim of some of the female leaders (one of whom, indeed, wanted to be a candidate for the presidency), and could not consistently be refused. But could women in office ever be made accountable like men? A sex which is not thoroughly justiciable can not be made thoroughly responsible; and, when women have interfered in politics, their want of a restraining sense of accountability has appeared. Henrietta Maria, by the indulgence of her feelings, hurried her husband and the country into a civil war, as Margaret of Anjou had done before her; Marie Antoinette, by a similar outbreak of passion, precipitated the French Revolution; and the Empress Eugénie, with fatal truth, called the German War her own. That women can not take part in the defense of the country is an argument which may have been pressed too far; yet they are hereby rendered untrustworthy counselors in questions of peace and war. Some who know the Southern States well say that if the women could have had their way there would very likely have been a renewal of the civil war. The whole history of female government leads to conclusions adverse to the change; the reign of Elizabeth herself, now that we know what she really was and did, as decisively as the rest.

Neither men nor women can plead natural right against the good of the community; the community is the ordinance of nature. Men were not invested by nature with political liberty; they won it by