We are perpetually met by the opposition extended to any thing that is new. It ought to be our object, therefore, to show, that for woman to claim and possess the right of suffrage is by no means a new thing. It is easy to show from the records of most nations, that women held and exercised political power so long as power was supposed to inhere chiefly in property, and so long as women, either single or in association, possessed property not represented by men. Thus the suppression of religious houses in England put an end to the representation of abbesses. "Truly, we think more of money than of love," said one of the St. Simoniens: "we have more consideration for bags of dollars than human dignity. We emancipate women in proportion as they are property-holders; but, in proportion as they are women, our laws declare them inferior to us." It was only when the republican idea had crept to a certain extent into monarchical governments themselves, that women gradually dropped a recognized public influence which had depended on rank and wealth. What men have to do is, not to reconcile themselves to a woman's right to vote,—a right acknowledged hundreds of years ago, which is still covertly acknowledged when woman means property,—but to reconcile themselves to the idea that woman is a human being, and that humanity has a right to vote. Wherever governments decide that every individual has a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, they must admit the right of the individual woman to vote, or deny the fact of her humanity. There is the dilemma. In support of this statement, I should have shown you, that in France, as early as the reign of Louis XIV., the political rights of property were respected in the persons of women. At the present day, the remains of the old feudal and communal system still secure a kind of political influence to certain women in the provinces, and often confer upon their husbands a right of franchise. In the reign of Louis XIV., the women who hawked and vended fish took up the business of the "insolvent fishmongers," and managed so well, that they acquired wealth, married their children into the first families, and finally became an estate of the realm.
"Les Dames de la Halle," or "Dames of the Market," as they are called, have a corporate existence; and, if corporations have no souls, they ordinarily possess franchises! They have their queen, their laws, and a language peculiar to themselves. They take part in revolutions, and send deputations to the foot of the throne. Nor am I alluding now to long-past feudal or re-actionary crises. Louis Napoleon treats them as civilly as he does the clergy. When he was married, and when the young prince was born, they went to the Tuileries in their court-dress. Their princesses—and we are told that their blood-royal claims the higher privilege of beauty also—their princesses took the front rank in the procession, and offered bouquets to their imperial majesties. In response, Louis Napoleon gave to them what he gives to all corporations,—a very diplomatic speech.
I have told you what was granted at Upsal in 1858. It is a curious fact, that, just at the moment when this question of suffrage was first agitated by the women of the United States assembled in convention at Seneca Falls in 1848, Pauline Roland and Madame Moniot publicly claimed their civil rights in Paris. Pauline went herself to the ballot, and, when her vote was refused, published a protest after the fashion of our tax-payers. Very absurd English society found woman's first demand for the suffrage; yet what Englishmen refuse contemptuously to give to woman, certain men of the mean sort, yet calling themselves respectable, have not been ashamed in that very country to borrow of her. Even "Blackwood" helps out our argument, when it says, in November, 1854, "I believe, Eusebius, I speak of a notorious fact, when I say, that it is less than a century since, for election purposes, parties were unblushingly married in cases where women conveyed a right of freedom, a political franchise to their husbands, and parted, after the election, by shaking hands over a tombstone, as an act of dissolution of the contract, under cover of the words, 'Until death do us part.'"[40] The men who looked calmly on this profane and absurd fraud may well dread the moral influence of woman on elections. As to the historical argument for England, ladies of birth and quality, we are told, sat in council with the Saxon Witas. The Abbess Hilda presided in an ecclesiastical council. "In Wightfred's great council at Benconceld in 694," says Gurdon in his "Antiquities of Parliament," "the abbesses sat and deliberated; and five of them signed decrees of that council, with the king and bishops:" and that illuminated prebendary of Sarum, old Thomas Fuller, thus further chronicles the same event:—
"A great council (for so it is titled) was held at Becanceld (supposed to be Beckingham in Kent) by Withred, King of Kent, and Bertuald, Archbishop of Britain, so called therein (understand, him of Canterbury), wherein many things were concluded in favor of the church. Five Kentish abbesses—namely, Mildred, Ethelred, Æte, Wilnolde, Heresinde—were not only present, but subscribed their names and crosses to the constitutions concluded therein; and we may observe, that their subscriptions are not only placed before and above all presbyters, but also above that of Botred, a bishop present in this great council. It seems it was the courtesy of England to allow the upper hand to the weaker sex, as in their sitting, so in their subscription."
King Edgar's charter to the Abbey of Crowland, in 961, was with consent of the nobles and abbesses who signed that charter. In Henry the Third's and King Edward the First's time, four abbesses were summoned to Parliament; namely, of Shaftesbury, of Winchester, of Berking, and of Wilton. In the thirty-fifth year of Edward the Third, were summoned—by writ of Parliament, to sit in person or by their proxies—Mary, Countess of Norfolk; Alienor, Countess of Ormond; Anna Despenser; Philippa, Countess of March; Johanna Fitzwater; Agneta, Countess of Pembroke; Mary de St. Paul; Mary de Roos; Matilda, Countess of Oxford; Catharine, Countess of Athol.
As to the offices which women can hold in Great Britain, we have already quoted something from Mr. Higginson, in speaking of the prohibitions of the law. Lady Packington's estate has probably, by this time, passed into male hands: so she elects no more members of Parliament. Those who have read the plea of Lady Alice Lille, when she was forbidden to speak by attorney, will find no great difficulty in imagining that a woman could manage a government debate.
Such women as have purchased or inherited East-India stock have always had the privilege of voting at the meetings of the company, and so have assisted to govern that unhappy country. In the provincial English towns, if I may judge from the indirect testimony of novels and newspapers, women appear to attend all stockholders' meetings; certainly those held by the banks. In the United States, they are notified, but not expected to attend; a cool kind of insult, which I wish some women might astonish them by retaliating. If any bank were established by, or had a majority of, female stockholders, it would be quite easy to notify men, without expecting them to attend; and the alternative of trusting their own property to the judgment of women might possibly open the eyes of men to the absurdity of the present custom.
As we withdraw our eyes from the past, it is natural to inquire, What late changes have taken place in Great Britain? and what is the strength of the reform tendency? I have often said, yet I must repeat it here, that nothing has ever promised such noble usefulness for woman, nothing has ever occurred to change the popular estimate of her character, in the same degree as the formation of that out-of-door Parliament,—the Association for the Advancement of Social Science. It offers a position of entire equality to woman. It encourages her to express herself in the presence and with the sympathy of the wisest men, and gives her an opportunity to speak to the actual Parliament through her own influence exerted on its best members. It has been well said (I think, by Mrs. Mill), that the very best opportunities of education will be opened to woman in vain, until she is practically invited to turn them to account. Here, in this association, is her first practical invitation in Great Britain. God grant that she may understand the responsibility it involves, and bear it well! But the formation of this association in 1857 was preceded by other steps. It was on the 13th of February, 1851, that a petition of women, agreed to by a public meeting at Sheffield, and claiming the elective franchise, was laid before the House of Lords by the Earl of Carlisle; and, in July of the same year, Mrs. Mill's admirable article on the "Enfranchisement of Women," now become commonplace on account of the extensive and thorough use that has been made of it, appeared in the "Westminster."
The examination of Florence Nightingale before a commission of inquiry bore witness no less to the surpassing ability of the woman than to the increasing value of such ability to all governments. In connection with it, one could not but smile at the distress felt by certain journals over a single mistake on the part of the lady as to the proper title of a subordinate officer.