Certainly, whatever the lawyers may do, the law itself confidently expects of them a superhuman strength. It gives them no defence but immaculateness. It offers them no shelter but God's temple, no robe but spotless ermine; and then, turning the page, it says, "A husband is expected to be vigilant, and so prevent his own dishonor:" as if his vigilance and quick-wittedness could save the woman whom his love had not blessed.
Ah! these lawyers are but blind guides, after all. Centuries of discomfiture and defeat have not sufficed to teach them how little security is to be found in suspicion and scepticism. If I do not want my groceries stolen, I must leave my storeroom open. The very servant who would not scruple to pick my locks will know better than to pick that of her own heart. "A thorough-bred woman," says Mrs. Reid, "is good only so far as her husband suggests and allows;" and, so long as this is the standard, woman's duplicity may well match man's utmost expectation, and there is not a privilege of his open vice that she will not secure by stealth.
There was a time when all the women at the court of France blushed for one of their number who unluckily made use of a hard word in a proper place. In like manner, the woman who reads law blushes to find herself even tolerably sincere and modest. It is not expected of her. Why has she never done any of the bad things the law so confidently predicts?
All thinking people must see how easily we turn from the consolidated law of ages, with its false views, its untrue estimate of woman and duty, to the question of the right of suffrage.
In 1848 and 1850, we used to hear a great deal of three objections to conferring this right upon women:—
1st, Its incompatibility with household care and the duties of maternity.
2d, Its hardening effect on the character; politics not being fit for woman.
3d, The inexpediency of increasing competition in the already crowded fields of labor and office.
To these three points we gave short and summary answers:—
1st, There are a great many women who will never be mothers and housekeepers; and, if there were not, suffrage is no more incompatible with maternity and housekeeping than it is with mercantile life and the club-room.
2d, If it hardens women, it will harden men; and the politics which are not fit for her are not fit for him, nor will they become so till her presence gives men a motive to purify them.
3d, At the worst, competition could only go so far, that a man and a woman would earn as little together as the man now does alone. This would be better than the present condition of things; for they would then be equal partners, and no longer master and slave. Both would work, and neither need pine.