Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/749

Rh the state, than the wife, because more independent. The number of men and women who would adopt some system of marriage without obligation, would greatly increase. Confidence and sympathy between married people would be in many instances impaired; in fact, the first and many other steps would be taken in the process of weakening home affection, and there would follow a corresponding loss of its civilizing influences and a turning backward of the current of moral progress. The intervention of women into public affairs is to be dreaded also by those who desire peace among men. Both women and their male friends resent treatment for them which men would quite disregard as applied to themselves; and woman suffrage would see the introduction of more or less numerous women into public life. The extreme and irresponsible language used by Mrs. Stanton and Mrs. Lathrop at the last woman's congress in Washington effectively illustrate this aspect of the question.

The devotional nature of women must not be left out of the account in considering this question. While this element is of immense value to that sex and to society when expended upon ethical themes, when it is allied to theological issues it becomes an obstruction to progress of the most serious nature. Were woman suffrage granted, theological questions would at once assume a new political importance, and religious liberty and toleration would have to pass through new perils and endure the test of new strains. What the effect would be we can not foresee, but it could not be good. The priest would acquire a new political importance, and the availability of candidates would be greatly influenced by the question of their church affiliations.

Many objections would be nullified if women should vote under the immediate direction of their responsible male associates, except the one based on their exemption from the execution of the laws; but, should they so vote, woman suffrage becomes a farce, as it is to that extent where it now prevails. The very essential support given by women voters to polygamy in Utah is an illustration of this. In Wyoming men load up wagons with their women to drive them to the polls to vote their own ticket, as I have had the opportunity of seeing in that Territory; and so they would do everywhere. If they wished to vote otherwise, they might stay at home; and it is to be expected that women would sometimes wish to vote "otherwise."

What I have written does not include any reference to supposed inherent right to the suffrage or to any principles of representative government. This is because the view that suffrage is not a right but a privilege appears to the writer to be the most rational one, and because any system of government which tends to disturb the natural relations of the sexes I believe to be most