Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/747

Rh devoid of benevolence, especially toward the lower animals. Some women imagine, for this reason, that their entire sex is morally the superior of the male. But a good many women learn to correct this opinion. In departments of morals which depend on the emotional nature, women are the superior; for those which depend on the rational nature, man is the superior. When the balance is struck, I can see no inferiority on either side. But the quality of justice remains with the male. It is on this that men and women must alike depend, and hence it is that women so often prefer to be judged by men rather than by their own sex. They will not gain anything, I believe, by assuming the right of suffrage, that they can not gain without it, and they might meet with serious loss. In serving the principle of "the greatest good of the greatest number," man is constantly called on to disregard the feelings of particular persons, and even to outrage their dearest ties of home and family. Woman can not do this judicially. After the terrors of the law have done their work, woman steps in and binds up the wounds of the victims, and the world blesses both the avenger and the comforter.

In the practical working of woman suffrage, women would either vote in accordance with the views of their husbands and lovers or they would not. Should they do the former habitually, such suffrage becomes a farce, and the only result would be to increase the aggregate number of votes cast. Should women vote in opposition to the men to whom they are bound by ties sentimental or material, unpleasant consequences would sooner or later arise. No man would view with equanimity the spectacle of his wife or daughters nullifying his vote at the polls, or contributing their influence to sustain a policy of government which he should think injurious to his own well-being or that of the community. His purse would be more open to sustain the interests of his own political party, and if he lived in the country he would probably not furnish transportation to the polls for such members of his family as voted against him. He would not probably willingly entertain at his house persons who should be active in obtaining the votes of his wife and daughters against himself; and on the other hand the wife might refuse entertainment to the active agents of the party with which she might not be in sympathy. The unpleasantness in the social circle which comes into view with the advent of woman suffrage is formidable in the extreme, and nothing less than some necessity yet undreamed of should induce us to give entrance to such a disturber of the peace. We need no additional causes of marital infelicity. But we are told by the woman-suffrage advocate that such objections on the part of men are without good reason, and are prejudices which should be set aside. But they can not be set aside so long as human