I.
THE CHRISTIAN DEMAND AND THE PUBLIC OPINION.
"Since I am coming to that holy room,
Where, with the choir of saints for evermore,
I shall be made thy music; as I come,
I tune the instrument here at the door,
And what I must do then, think here before."
Macdonald.
TO propose an essay on education requires no little courage; for the term has covered, with its broad mantle, every thing that is stupid, perverse, and oppressive in literature. We will not tax ourselves, however, to consider exact theories, or suggest formal dissertations. In these lectures, let us take all the liberties of conversation; pass, in brief review, a wide range of subjects; comment lightly, not thoroughly, upon them; and trust to quick sympathies and intelligent apprehension to follow out any really useful suggestions that may be made.
Some time since, we laid down this proposition: "A man's right to education—that is, to the education or drawing-out of all the faculties God has given him—involves the right to a choice of vocation; that is, to a choice of the end to which those faculties shall be trained. The choice of vocation involves the right and the duty of protecting that vocation; that is, the right of deciding how far it shall be taxed, in how many ways legislative action shall be allowed to control it; in one word, the right to the elective franchise."
This statement we made in the broadest way; applying it to the present condition of women, and intending to show, that, the moment society conceded the right to education, it conceded the whole question, unless this logic could be disputed.
Men of high standing have been found to question a position seemingly so impregnable, but only on the ground that republicanism is itself a failure, and that it is quite time that Massachusetts should insist upon a property qualification for voters.
In this State, so remarkable for its intelligence and mechanical skill,—a State which has sent regiment after regiment to the battle-field, armed by the college, rather than the court,—in this State, one somewhat eminent voice has been heard to whisper, that men have not this right to education; that the lower classes in this country are fatally injured by the advantages offered them; that they would be happier, more contented, and more useful, if left to take their chance, or compelled to pay for the reading and writing which their employers, in some kinds, might require.
We need not be sorry that these objections are so stated. They are a fair sample of all the objections that obtain against the legal emancipation of woman, an emancipation which Christ himself intended and prophesied,—speaking always of his kingdom as one in which no distinctions of sex should either be needed or recognized. Push any objector to the wall, and he will be compelled to shift his attitude. He says nothing more about women, but shields himself under the old autocratic pretension, that man, collectively taken, has no right to life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness; that republicanism itself is a failure.