Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 8.djvu/108

104 woman has no voice in the State. Men make laws disposing of her property, her person, her children; still she must bear it “with a patient shrug.”

Looking at it as a matter of pure right and pure science, I know no reason why woman should not be a voter, or hold office, or make and administer laws. I do not see how I can shut myself into political privileges and shut woman out, and do both in the name of inalienable right. Certainly, every woman has a natural right to have her property represented in the general representation of property, and her person represented in the general representation of persons.

Looking at it as a matter of expediency, see some facts. Suppose woman had a share in the municipal regulation of Boston, and there were as many Alderwomen as Aldermen, as many Common Councilwomen as Common Councilmen—do you believe that, in defiance of the law of Massachusetts, the City Government, last spring, would have licensed every two hundred and forty-fourth person of the city to sell intoxicating drink?—would have made every thirty-fifth voter a rum-seller? I do not.

Do you believe the women of Boston would spend ten thousand dollars in one year in a city frolic, or spend two or three thousand every year, on the Fourth of July, for sky-rockets and fire-crackers; would spend four or five thousand dollars to get their Canadian guests drunk in Boston harbour, and then pretend that Boston had not money enough to establish a High School for girls, to teach the daughters of mechanics and grocers to read French and Latin, and to understand the higher things which rich men's sons are driven to at college? I do not.

Do you believe that the women of Boston, in 1851, would have spent three or four thousand dollars to kidnap a poor man, and have taken all the chains which belonged to the city, and put them round the Court House, and have drilled three hundred men, armed with bludgeons and cutlasses, to steal a man and carry him back to slavery? I do not. Do you think, if the women had had the control, “fifteen hundred men of property and standing” would have volunteered to take a poor man, kidnapped in Boston, and conduct him out of the State with fire and sword? I believe no such thing.