These answers, whether logical or not, have practically silenced the objections. We hear no more of this nonsense. But, on the other hand, a respectable daily says, "As to the abstract right of a woman to vote because she is a human being and pays taxes, there is no such abstract right in any human being, male or female: the extent of the elective franchise is, and must ever be, limited by considerations of expediency."
Then a distinguished review goes on to say, "that while the question of suffrage stands where it now does, so unsettled that every Congress and Parliament discuss it anew, we are glad that any thing should prevent the discussion as to conferring on woman a duty, the grounds of which are very vague and undetermined so far as regards men;" and a critic of Rosa Bonheur's magnificent pictures advises the "sad sisterhood of women's-rights advocates to visit the exhibition, and sigh to think how much one silent woman's hand outvalues for their cause the pathos and the jeers of their unlovely platform."
Such remarks as these are easily met. To the first objector, who declares, although the professed advocate of a republican government, that there is no such thing as any abstract right to vote, we reply, that in this particular discussion we don't care about abstract rights: what we want is our own share of the tangible acknowledged right which human governments confer. If in England this right depends on a property qualification, then we claim that there the property qualification shall endow woman as well as man with the right of suffrage. If in America it depends upon an inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, then we demand that our government recognize woman as so endowed, and receive her vote.
To the reviewer we say also, If the grounds of suffrage are vague and undetermined in theory, they may remain so, so far as our interference is concerned. What we ask to share is the steady right to vote, which has been actually granted, and never disputed, since our government was founded; and sufficiently pressed, we might add, that, if there is ever any chance of limiting the right of suffrage, we shall do all we can to secure its dependence on a certain amount of education, in preference to a certain amount of wealth.
As to the art critic, we thank him for calling us the "sad sisterhood." We should be sorry to be otherwise, when pleading for women before men; sorry to find matter for jesting in those purlieus of St. Giles and Five Points and the Black Sea, beating up remorselessly against these very doors, which lie at the very heart of our effort. As to the matter of going to see the Horse Fair and the Highland Cattle, it will probably be found to be a fact, that, in every city where those great pictures have been exhibited, "women's-rights women" have been their earliest visitors; and, standing before the canvas, have thanked God, with an earnestness the art critic never dreamt of, for that silent woman's hand, that glorious woman's life. It was not necessary for him to remind us of what Solomon had said so much better three thousand years ago; namely, that "speech is silvern, and silence is golden." Nathless, silver is still current in all markets; and, God willing, we are not ashamed to use it.
We intend to claim, in words, the right of suffrage; and why?
Turning from that wretched estimate of woman, and of man's duty toward woman, which the law-books have just offered us, we claim the right of suffrage, because only through its possession can women protect themselves; only through its exercise can both sexes have equality of right and power before the law. Whenever this happened, character would get its legitimate influence; and it is just possible that men might become rational and virtuous in private, if association with women compelled them to seem so in public.
It is noticeable, that every man disclaims at his own hearth, and in the presence of women, whatever there is of disgraceful appertaining to political or other public meetings. Somebody must be responsible for these things; and yet, if we are to believe witnesses, nobody ever does them. The bare fact of association must take all the blame.
The laws already existing prove conclusively to woman herself, that she has never had a real representative. What she seeks is to utter her own convictions, so that they shall redeem and save, not merely her own sex but the race.
That the right of suffrage would be a protection to women, we see from this fact, that it would at once put an end to three classes of laws:—