Page:The Enfranchisement of Women, the law of the land.pdf/9

9 without end of instilling into them good principles before they are fit for a male tutor." In a dialogue (ascribed to Tacitus) describing the glories of Borne in the age of the Commonwealth, it is observed, "Children were suckled not in the hut of a mercenary nurse, but by the chaste mother who bore them. Their education during non-age was in her hands; and it was her chief care to instil into them every virtuous principle. In her presence a loose word or an improper action were strictly prohibited. She superintended not only their serious studies, but even their amusements, which were conducted with decency and moderation. In that manner the Gracchi, educated by Cornelia their mother, and Augustus by Atia his mother, appeared in public with untainted minds—fond of glory, and prepared to make a figure in the world." If we expect our women fitly to discharge their infinitely important office in the economy of education, we must emancipate them from the bondage of conventional subordination, and call them to the exercise of those political functions in which we now inhibit their participation. I say nothing farther here on the folly of denying to the sex the salutary influences of important duties, and the openings to an honourable ambition, which to active and energetic minds alone realise the higher objects of life. Society knows not what it loses when it confines the larger half of human kind in the enchanted castle of a theory which has no real foundation in the natural history of the race. There is no elementary difference in the inherent mental and moral qualities of the sexes. Their apparent idiosyncrasies are the creatures of hereditary transmission of acquired habits, and of the influences of the manners and customs by which they are surrounded and affected. There are man milliners as well as women soldiers. The interchangeability of the supposed spiritual characteristics of the sexes is one of the best settled facts in the history of the race.

Are then these claims to be put off with banter about strong-minded women by weak-minded men? Is the earnestness with which they are pursued by those who encounter ridicule, unmannerly rudeness, and abuse, in a cause which is really identified with the best interests of the community, to be rewarded only with contumely, and baffled by mere masterly inactivity?