There the great city stands.”
—Walt Whitman (“Song of the Broad Axe”).
3.—“Her voice in council and in senate ...”
“Is there so great a superfluity of men fit for high duties, that society can afford to reject the service of any competent person? Are we so certain of always finding a man made to our hands for any duty or function of social importance which falls vacant, that we lose nothing by putting a ban on one half of mankind and refusing beforehand to make their faculties available, however distinguished they may be? And even if we could do without them, would it be consistent with justice to refuse to them their fair share of honour and distinction, or to deny to them the equal right of all human beings to choose their occupation (short of injury to others) according to their own preferences, at their own risk? Nor is the injustice confined to them, it is shared by those who are in a position to benefit by their services. To ordain that any kind of persons shall not be physicians, or shall not be advocates, or shall not be members of parliament, is to injure not them only, but all who employ physicians, or advocates, or elect members of parliament.”—J. S. Mill (“The Subjection of Women,” p. 94).
4.—“... harmonising word ...”
“... the main reason why so many thoughtful women now claim direct Parliamentary representation is an unselfish one. They desire to take their full share in the service of the race; to help to solve those grave social problems now so urgently pressing, and which demand for their solution the combined resources of the wisdom, experience, and heart of both halves of humanity. They know that the time is fast coming—if, indeed, it be not already come—which will need for its direction and control something more than diplomatic cleverness or political manœuvring, which will demand the clearer conscience and the more sensitive perception of justice born of imaginative sympathy. It is because they hope and believe that in virtue of their faculty of motherhood they can contribute somewhat of these elements to the world’s well-being, and can thus speed its progress towards a nobler future, that they claim full right and power to follow and fulfil their highest conceptions of duty.”—Elizabeth C. Wolstenholme Elmy (“The Decision in the Clitheroe Case and its Consequences,” p. 17).
7.—“Self-reverent each and reverencing each.”
—A line from Part VII. of Tennyson’s “Princess.”
Id.... “The exigencies of the new life are no more exclusive of the virtues of generosity than those of the old, but it no longer entirely depends on them. The main foundations of the moral life of modern times must be justice and prudence; the respect of each for the rights of every other, and the ability of each to take care of himself.”—J. S. Mill (“The Subjection of Women,” p. 159).