There is no question whether you are to have work or not. The question is, what work. This poor housewife’s mutton and corn are given you to eat. Good. Now, if you, with your day’s work, produce for her, and send to her, spices, or tea, or rice, or maize, or figs, or any other good thing,—that is true and beneficent trade. But if you take her mutton and corn from her, and send her back an Armstrong gun, what can she make of that? But you can’t grow figs and spices in England, you say? No, certainly, and therefore means of transit for produce in England are little necessary. Let my poor housewife keep her sheep in her near fields, and do you—keep sheep at Newcastle—and the weekly bills will not rise. But you forge iron at Newcastle; then you build an embankment from Newcastle to my friend’s village, whereupon you take her sheep from her, suffocating half of them on the way; and you send her an Armstrong gun back; or, perhaps not even to her, but to somebody who can fire it down your own throats, you jolterheads.
No matter, you say, in the meantime, we eat more, and drink more; the housewife herself allows that. Yes, I have just told you, her corn and sheep all are sent to you. But how about other people? I will finish my sentence now, paused in above. It is all very well to bring up creatures with a spoon, when they are one or two too many, if they are useful things like pigs. But how if they be useless things like young ladies? You don’t want any wives, I understand, now, till you are forty-five; what in the world will you do with your girls? Bring them up with a spoon, to that enchanting age?
“The girls may shift for themselves.” Yes,—they may, certainly. Here is a picture of some of them, as given by the ‘Telegraph’ of March 18th, of the present year, under Lord Derby’s new code of civilization, endeavouring to fulfil Mr. John Stuart Mill’s wishes, and procure some more lucrative occupation than that of nursing the baby:—
“After all the discussions about woman’s sphere and woman’s rights, and the advisability of doing something to redress the inequality of position against which the fair sex, by the medium of many champions, so loudly protests and so constantly struggles, it is not satisfactory to be told what happened at Cannon-row two days last week. It had been announced that the Civil Service Commissioners would receive applications personally from candidates for eleven vacancies in the metropolitan post-offices, and in answer to this notice, about 2,000 young women made their appearance. The building, the courtyard, and the street were blocked by a dense throng of fair applicants; locomotion was impossible, even with the help of policemen; windows were thrown up to view the sight, as if a procession had been passing that way; traffic was obstructed, and nothing could be done for hours. We understand, indeed, that the published accounts by no means do justice to the scene. Many of the applicants, it appears, were girls of the highest respectability and of unusually good social position, including daughters of clergymen and professional men, well connected, well educated, tenderly nurtured; but nevertheless, driven by the res angustæ which have caused many a heart-break, and scattered the members of many a home to seek for the means of independent support. The crowd, the agitation, the anxiety, the fatigue, proved too much for many of those who attended; several fainted away; others went into violent hysterics; others, despairing of success, remained just long enough to be utterly worn out, and then crept off, showing such traces of mental anguish as we are accustomed to associate with the most painful bereavements. In the present case, it is stated, the Commissioners examined over 1,000 candidates for the eleven vacancies. This seems a sad waste of power on both sides, when, in all probability, the first score supplied the requisite number of qualified aspirants.”
Yes, my pets, I am tired of talking to these workmen, who never answer a word; I will try you now—for a letter or two—but I beg your pardon for calling you pets,—my “qualified aspirants” I mean (Alas! time was when the qualified aspiration was on the bachelor’s side). Here you have got all you want, I hope!—liberty enough, it seems—if only the courtyard were bigger; equality enough—no distinction made between young ladies of the highest, or the lowest, respectability; rights of women generally claimed, you perceive; and obtained without opposition from absurdly religious, moral, or chivalric persons. You have got no God, now, to bid you do anything you don’t like; no husbands, to insist on having their own way—(and much of it they got, in the old times—didn’t they?)—no pain nor peril of childbirth;—no bringing up of tiresome brats. Here is an entirely scientific occupation for you! Such a beautiful invention this of Mr. Wheatstone’s! and I hope you all understand the relations of positive and negative electricity. Now you may “communicate intelligence” by telegraph. Those wretched girls that used to write love-letters, of which their foolish lovers would count the words, and sometimes be thankful for—less than twenty—how they would envy you if they knew. Only the worst is, that this beautiful invention of Mr. Wheatstone’s for talking miles off, won’t feed people in the long run, my dears, any more than the old invention of the tongue, for talking near, and you’ll soon begin to think that was not so bad a one, after all. But you can’t live by talking, though you talk in the scientificalest of manners, and to the other side of the world. All the telegraph wire over the earth and under the sea, will not do so much for you, my poor little qualified aspirants, as one strong needle with thimble and thread.
You do sometimes read a novel still, don’t you, my scientific dears? I wish I could write one; but I can’t; and George Eliot always makes them end so wretchedly that they’re worse than none—so she’s no good, neither. I must even translate a foreign novelette or nouvelette, which is to my purpose, next month; meantime I have chanced on a little true story, in the journal of an Englishman, travelling, before the Revolution, in France, which shows you something of the temper of the poor unscientific girls of that day. Here are first, however, a little picture or two which he gives in the streets of Paris, and which I want all my readers to see; they mark, what most Englishmen do not know, that the beginning of the French Revolution, with what of good or evil it had, was in English, not French, notions of “justice” and “liberty.” The writer is travelling with a friend, Mr. B——, who is of the Liberal school, and, “He and I went this forenoon to a review of the foot-guards, by Marshal Biron. There was a crowd, and we could with difficulty get within the circle, so as to see conveniently. An old officer of high rank touched some people who stood before us, saying, ‘Ces deux Messieurs sont des étrangers;’ upon which they immediately made way, and allowed us to pass. ‘Don’t you think that was very obliging?’ said I. ‘Yes,’ answered he; ‘but by heavens, it was very unjust.’
“We returned by the Boulevards, where crowds of citizens, in their holiday dresses, were making merry; the young dancing cotillons, the old beating time to the music, and applauding the dancers. ‘These people seem very happy,’ said I. ‘Happy!’ exclaimed B——; ‘if they had common sense, or reflection, they would be miserable.’ ‘Why so?’ ‘Could not the minister,’ answered he, ‘pick out half-a-dozen of them if he pleased, and clap them into the Bicêtre?’ ‘That is true, indeed,’ said I; ‘that is a catastrophe which, to be sure, may very probably happen, and yet I thought no more of it than they.’
“We met, a few days after he arrived, at a French house where we had been both invited to dinner. There was an old lady of quality present, next to whom a young officer was seated, who paid her the utmost attention. He helped her to the dishes she liked, filled her glass with wine or water, and addressed his discourse particularly to her. ‘What a fool,’ says B——, ‘does that young fellow make of the poor old woman! if she were my mother, d—n me, if I would not call him to an account for it.’
“Though B—— understands French, and speaks it better than most Englishmen, he had no relish for the conversation, soon left the company, and has refused all invitations to dinner ever since. He generally finds some of our countrymen, who dine and pass the evening with him at the Parc Royal.
“After the review this day, we continued together, and being both disengaged, I proposed, by way of variety, to dine at the public ordinary of the Hôtel de Bourbon. He did not like this much at first. ‘I shall be teased,’ says he, ‘with their confounded ceremony;’ but on my observing that we could not expect much ceremony or politeness at a public ordinary, he agreed to go.