Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 20.djvu/668

648 and jobbery in the exercise of patronage against administrative reform. The suffrage movement is, in the United States at all events, only part of a movement against the limitations of sex, against the bondage of matrimony and the burdens of maternity. Those who are thus striving to break up the political unity of the family are assailing its integrity in other ways by separating as much as possible the interest of the wife from that of the husband, and teaching her to regard him not with confidence but with jealousy. The writer has heard in several quarters that some of the female leaders of the movement do all in their power to deter young women from marriage. The name of John Stuart Mill, on the banners of the movement, indicates its real character, and shows that it extends to the general status of women. If it spreads in America, the consequence will be, that the Anglo-American race will be supplanted by the Irish and Germans, whose women are loyal to sex, true to the family, and good mothers, while all the Irish and half the Germans belong to a Church by which the family has always been upheld.What nobody will deny is that the question is one of the most tremendous significance. The family is more important than the state to human character and happiness; and while the state may be regenerated by the family, the family can not be regenerated by the state. Levity, therefore, and concession to vague sentiment are criminal. Man, as the responsible holder of political power, is bound to decide unselfishly and generously; but he is bound to decide carefully and wisely, in the interest of his partner as well as in his own. In England Conservatism has of late been led into strange ways. If, instead of allying itself with beer and ignorance against intelligence, or stirring up war passions as revolutionary as they are wicked and destructive, it would take to guarding property and the family, its just influence in the state would be increased.

The most important point remaining is the ballot, which has now been pretty well tried. The notion that it would specially favor Liberalism is at an end. It annuls all pressure, that of the trades-union or the social circle, as well as that of the landlord or the customer. On the other hand, it affords a cover for individual follies and for all the motives which shun the light. It has failed to baffle the wire-puller for the reason already mentioned; he always succeeds in convincing the mass of electors that a vote given for any but a regular party candidate will be lost. Probably the balance of advantage is on the side of allowing a man to give free expression to his real sentiments, whatever they may be; the result is then trustworthy, and the general action of the voters as citizens will be in accordance with their votes.

That the British Constitution is unwritten, and therefore elastic, may be the boast of Britons, but, like many things which are the boast of Britons, it forms no precedent for other nations. For reasons before given, unwritten traditions or understandings are valid only in these islands. In new-born democracies nothing will prevent the militant politician from using for his own behoof and for the discomfiture of his opponent all the powers which the letter of the law puts into his hands, the sacred principles of the constitution notwithstanding; and thus we find a lieutenant-governor of a province turning out the ministry of the majority in order to transfer the provincial patronage to the hands of his own party on the eve of a general election, and the Senate of the same province withholding the supplies as an ordinary