I. Those that protect her from violence.
II. Those made to protect her from fraud.
III. Those that protect society from the passions of both sexes.
The moment woman began to exercise this right, I think we should see moral significance streaming from every statute. We should no longer hear that seduction was to be sued as "loss of service:" it would become loss of honor to more than one. We should no longer hear that consent or temptation excused it: we should find that God demanded chastity of both sexes, and had made man the guardian of his own virtue. We should find, that, if its punishment admitted of degrees, it should be heaviest where a man committed it in defiance or abuse of a positive trust.
Let us look at a single decision in the light of these principles. Let us take the case of Harris versus Butler, reported in the notes to Davis's Prize Essay.
A man named Harris had apprenticed his daughter to a milliner named Butler, paying as an entrance-fee a sum equivalent to a hundred and fifty dollars. After a short time, the girl was seduced by her mistress's husband. She became seriously ill, and was returned to her father, who lost not only his hundred and fifty dollars, but all the benefits of her apprenticeship, and was obliged to provide her with board, medicine, and nursing.
Why the father became liable for the care of his child under such circumstances does not appear. Common sense would suggest that the court might have required this at the hands of the Butlers; but, unfortunately, law has very little to do with common sense.
The father brought an action against Butler: but the defence urged, that he could only sue for "loss of service;" that her "services" were not his after she was apprenticed to Mrs. Butler; that Mrs. Butler and her husband were "one person in law;" and that, if Butler chose to deprive himself of her services for his own ends, the law had no remonstrance to make, no redress to afford.
The prosecution urged, that the "care of morals" was one of the duties involved in the very system of apprenticeship; but the court denied the claim, unless it were distinctly set forth on the articles signed.
This is but one case out of hundreds accessible to you all. The moment woman becomes a law-maker, such records will be wiped out of your life. They may make a certain sort of show in your law-books; but what have the unbending laws of God to do with this "one person in law," this plea for "loss of service"? At the eternal bar, no man will dare to echo that plea, no judge rehearse that verdict. Such law rests not in the "bosom of God;" its voice chimes not in keeping with the harmony of his countless spheres.
You object to seeing women in Parliament. English lords tell us that delicate matters have to be discussed there, with which women would hardly care to meddle. The natural growth of society opens the area of all proprieties. Delicate matters come to be discussed in most households; and it is reasonable to suppose that they would be more delicately and rationally discussed if they were sometimes publicly met. It is my opinion, that no subject is fit for discussion at all that cannot be discussed between men and women. It is separating the sexes in such cases, that opens the way to indecency. All great themes of human thought and human virtue, men and women ought to be trained to consider seriously together; and where better than in the Congress or the Parliament? Think only of the debate which I have quoted on the New Divorce Bill! Could such a scene have taken place in the presence of women? Recur to the trial of Queen Caroline; or to that of the Duke of York, when accused of conniving at the corrupt sale of military commissions by his mistress, Mrs. Clarke.