Under date of Feb. 16, 1809, Freemantle writes: "The scene which is going on in the House of Commons is so disgusting, and at the same time so alarming, that I hardly know how to describe it to you. Of course, while this ferment lasts (and God knows when it is to end), no attention will be paid to the business of the country."
In these instances, high-bred men showed a taste for low scandal; battening day after day on the same loathsome details, which the presence of a single woman must have checked. Here was a woman, too, this very Mrs. Clarke, somewhat debased and hardened, who had never a seat in Parliament, who had never dreamed of exercising the right of suffrage, yet was quite equal, as the evidence showed, to any political venality, striving in her way to outdo the very jobbers of Downing Street itself! Why should elections be scenes of tumult, or parliaments free fields for imbecile improprieties? Why should not a peeress feel herself as properly placed among her peers as the Queen seated at her Council?
We are not likely to withdraw our claim while it is sustained by such a man as John Stuart Mill, who, in his late essay on "Political Representation," advises this extension of the suffrage: "All householders, without distinction of sex," he says, "might be adopted into the constituency, on proving to the registrar's officer that they have fifty pounds a year, and can read, write, and calculate."
"The almost despotic power of husbands over wives," Mr. Mill adds in his "Essay on Liberty," "needs not to be enlarged upon here, because nothing more is needed for the complete removal of the evil than that wives should have the same rights, and should receive the protection of the law in the same manner, as all other persons; and because, on this subject, the defenders of established injustice do not avail themselves of the plea of liberty, but stand forth openly as the champions of power."
The dedication of this "Essay on Liberty" ought to be preserved in these pages; for it is full of historic significance:—
"To the beloved and deplored memory of her who was the inspirer, and in part the author, of all that has been best in my writings; the friend and wife, whose exalted sense of truth and right was my strongest excitement, and whose approbation was my chief reward,—I dedicate this volume.
"Like all that I have written for many years, it belongs as much to her as to me; but the work, as it stands, has had, in a very insufficient degree, the inestimable advantage of her revision; some of the most important portions having been reserved for a more careful re-examination, which they are now never destined to receive. Were I but capable of interpreting to the world one-half the great thoughts and noble feelings which are buried in her grave, I should be the medium of a greater benefit to it than is ever likely to arise from any thing that I can write, unprompted and unassisted by her all but unrivalled wisdom."
I said that this dedication ought, for many reasons, to be preserved in these pages. What is better fitted than such a tribute to check the jeering scepticism of the crowd as to the ability and purity of the sex? What could lay a better foundation for a better estimate on the part of the law? Necker, in his report to the French Government, publicly awarded to his wife the credit of the recent retrenchment in the expenses of the Government; Bowditch dedicated his translation of the "Mécanique Céleste" to the wife who aided him to prepare, and by her self-denial opened a way for him to publish it: but where, in the records of the past, shall we find such a tribute offered by such a man, as honorable in itself to the first political economist of our time as it is a gracious adornment to the name of the woman he loved? Does it not promise in itself the dawning of a brighter future for woman, when no "sad sisterhood" shall be needed either to proclaim woman's rights or redress her wrongs?[39]
About two years since (1858), the Stockholm "Aftonblad," a Swedish newspaper, stated that "the authorities of the old university-town of Upsal had granted the right of suffrage to fifty women owning real estate, and to thirty-one doing business on their own account. The representative that their votes assisted in electing was to sit in the House of Burgesses."
This is the way the matter is to begin. By and by, the interests of labor and trade will force the authorities of Bristol and Manchester, Newcastle and Plymouth, to do the same thing; and, after women have gone on for some twenty years electing members of Parliament, no one of us will be surprised to find some women sitting in that body. "But," objects somebody, "if that ever happens, we shall have women on juries, women pleading at the bar, women as attorneys, and so on." And this is exactly what we want. Women are very much needed on juries, and female criminals will never be tried by their peers until they are there. It is very seldom that a criminal case in which women are implicated is brought forward, when women could not be of immense service in clearing up evidence, and showing to the male jurors on the panel the absurdity or impossibility of some of the statements. The recent instance of Miss Shedden, who took up, at a moment's notice, a case which five well-feed lawyers of distinction declared themselves unprepared to defend, might be quoted in confirmation of our view. Mr. Russell said at the Liverpool Assizes lately, in a case which involved some peculiar evidence, "The evidence of women is, in some respects, superior to that of men. Their power of judging of minute details is better; and when there are more than two facts, and something be wanting, their intuitions supply the deficiency." And precisely the qualities which fit them to give evidence, fit them to sift and test it. Women often have occasion to smile, sometimes sadly, sometimes mischievously, at the verdicts passed upon their own sex. If women were to enter into the practice of law, or become law-makers, an immense change would take place in all that relates to it. Absurd technicalities would be swept off its papers. One hundred words would no longer do duty for one. Simple, common-sense forms of expression would take the place of obsolete Latin and Norman-French. Daylight would be let into indictments, and flaws would soon be hard to find. No woman ever existed, whose patience would stand, in cases where meaning and law are evident, the absurd delays of chancery courts, or the still absurder "filing of objections," or "defining of terms," with which lawyers amuse a jury, and which Sir Leicester Dedlock, we are told, considered as the bulwarks of the English Constitution. This impatience of woman might not be very valuable, if she were to legislate alone; but, controlled by man's conservative caution, it will be of the greatest service.