Those Are The Questions
Asked By The Friends Of The Rights Of Women.
But the young women
do marry, and the men pour their earnings into their wives' laps.
If little has as yet been done in extending the rights of women by
giving them a greater share of the work of the world, still less
has been done toward giving them their portion of political
influence. In the States there are many men of mark, and women of
mark also, who think that women should have votes for public
elections. Mr. Wendell Phillips, the Boston lecturer who advocates
abolition, is an apostle in this cause also; and while I was at
Boston I read the provisions of a will lately left by a
millionaire, in which he bequeathed some very large sums of money
to be expended in agitation on this subject. A woman is subject to
the law; why then should she not help to make the law? A child is
subject to the law, and does not help to make it; but the child
lacks that discretion which the woman enjoys equally with the man.
That I take it is the amount of the argument in favor of the
political rights of women. The logic of this is so conclusive that
I am prepared to acknowledge that it admits of no answer. I will
only say that the mutual good relations between men and women,
which are so indispensable to our happiness, require that men and
women should not take to voting at the same time and on the same
result. If it be decided that women shall have political power,
let them have it all to themselves for a season. If that be so
resolved, I think we may safely leave it to them to name the time
at which they will begin.
I confess that in the States I have sometimes been driven to think
that chivalry has been carried too far - that there is an attempt to
make women think more of the rights of their womanhood than is
needful. There are ladies' doors at hotels, and ladies' drawing-
rooms, ladies' sides on the ferry-boats, ladies' windows at the
post-office for the delivery of letters - which, by-the-by, is an
atrocious institution, as anybody may learn who will look at the
advertisements called personal in some of the New York papers. Why
should not young ladies have their letters sent to their houses,
instead of getting them at a private window? The post-office
clerks can tell stories about those ladies' windows. But at every
turn it is necessary to make separate provision for ladies. From
all this it comes to pass that the baker's daughter looks down from
a great height on her papa, and by no means thinks her brother good
enough for her associate. Nature, the great restorer, comes in and
teaches her to fall in love with the butcher's son. Thus the evil
is mitigated; but I cannot but wish that the young woman should not
see herself denominated a lady so often, and should receive fewer
lessons as to the extent of her privileges. I would save her, if I
could, from working at the oven; I would give to her bread and meat
earned by her father's care and her brother's sweat; but when she
has received these good things, I would have her proud of the one
and by no means ashamed of the other.
Let women say what they will of their rights, or men who think
themselves generous say what they will for them, the question has
all been settled both for them and for us men by a higher power.
They are the nursing mothers of mankind, and in that law their fate
is written with all its joys and all its privileges. It is for men
to make those joys as lasting and those privileges as perfect as
may be. That women should have their rights no man will deny. To
my thinking, neither increase of work nor increase of political
influence are among them. The best right a woman has is the right
to a husband, and that is the right to which I would recommend
every young woman here and in the States to turn her best
attention. On the whole, I think that my doctrine will be more
acceptable than that of Mrs. Dall or Mr. Wendell Phillips.
CHAPTER XIX.
EDUCATION.
The one matter in which, as far as my judgment goes, the people of
the United States have excelled us Englishmen, so as to justify
them in taking to themselves praise which we cannot take to
ourselves or refuse to them, is the matter of Education. In saying
this, I do not think that I am proclaiming anything disgraceful to
England, though I am proclaiming much that is creditable to
America. To the Americans of the States was given the good fortune
of beginning at the beginning. The French at the time of their
revolution endeavored to reorganize everything, and to begin the
world again with new habits and grand theories; but the French as a
people were too old for such a change, and the theories fell to the
ground. But in the States, after their revolution, an Anglo-Saxon
people had an opportunity of making a new State, with all the
experience of the world before them; and to this matter of
education they were from the first aware that they must look for
their success. They did so; and unrivaled population, wealth, and
intelligence has been the result; and with these, looking at the
whole masses of the people - I think I am justified in saying -
unrivaled comfort and happiness. It is not that you, my reader, to
whom in this matter of education fortune and your parents have
probably been bountiful, would have been more happy in New York
than in London. It is not that I, who, at any rate, can read and
write, have cause to wish that I had been an American.
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