Page:Uncivil Liberty.djvu/23

 she will do well—in making love or laws, a loaf of bread or an immortal being—just in proportion as responsibility is recognized, intelligence enlarged and liberty inviolate. All hail, Equality! Then indeed will moral regeneration begin, social concord be possible, when the sexes, meeting as intelligent beings, mutually accountable to each other and to destiny, engaged irretrievably to nothing but right, reason together on the issues of life, and welcome its yet untried privileges.

The male:

Woman has no better friends incarnate than men whom she can freely love, respect and trust; and no worse enemy than him who, for any purpose whatever, would subordinate her being to his. Liberated self loyal womanhood is to be the connecting link between isolation and society, "the guardian angel of our associated destiny." Both sexes need to be profoundly converted to truth and honor; for liberty is not the goddess we read of, but male, incontinent, libertine when not overruled by an intelligent moral sense. Rights obtained should impel to corresponding duties; and free, intelligent inter-dependence make love relations less formal and promiscuous, but more select, intimate and refining. Each belongs to self and others, one being only half man without woman, and the other only half woman without man. The family retains its place, in the hope of unity and honesty, at least in a narrow circle; enlightened liberty will eliminate its defects and universalize its merits. As the old spinning wheel and power loom have given place to great factories; so the single tenement, with its cooking drudgery, washtubs and neglected children, will disappear in recognized housekeeping, the scientific classification of woman's industrial and maternal functions. Be just and fear not; what love has joined, can be put asunder only by destroying the conditions out of which love springs and flourishes. Whether marriage is induced by affinity of likes or unlikes, the subtle attraction of essential worth and beauty, the fascination of form and touch, the base allurement of money, tyranny of circumstances, or carnal coalition from mere proximity; whether society rests on a combination of opposing or concurrent forces, everything good is to be gained, and nothing but bad lost, in the new departure involved in woman's enfranchisement.

That it will bring revolutionary and startling changes is evident; but, knowing in whom and what they have believed, new seas of agitation, however tempestuous, have no perils to those sail by the compass of right. In the conflict of thought with idolatry, feudalism, priestcraft, political and chattel slave-holders, the hearts of strong men often failed them for fear; yet, impelled by the inward might of faith, through ignorance, superstition, avarice, infidelity and cowardice, the moral sense steadily gropes its way towards order, system empire. The same law which holds ocean in its bed and planets in their courses will inspire these two mysterious sovereignties we call man and woman to transact their gayest and gravest affairs, with no jar or hurt, but mutual assistance to each other, and the general welfare. That widely looked-for personage, yet to rise from this agitation like Venus from surf of the Grecian sea, the coming woman, no feminine man or masculine opposite, with greater physical vigor of finer fibre, will bring impressive beauty, melting tenderness, ethereal grace, mental force, moral rectitude, such as the exhaustless sources of being yearn to incarnate. That passion now thought incapable of analysis, uncertain in its origin, accidental in its course, inspiring alike the darkest and brightest experiences, replete with ecstacy and tragedy, love, inherently pure, ineffably beneficent, is destined to make inclination one with duty, liberty the bride of order, and justice the security of citizens and the life of states.