[CHAPTER XIV.]
INDIA.
Josephine Butler’s constant advocacy of Women’s Suffrage is illustrated by the following short speech given at a conference in the City Temple on July 20th, 1891.
I told your chairman that I would come forward just to tell you that I cannot say anything. Still perhaps I may be able to put one little thought before you. I am sorry that fear and timidity are growing up again, and that a fresh conspiracy of silence threatens us.
God gives us a phraseology, a pure and chaste and holy indignation, which makes it possible for us to go to the bottom of these things without offending the chastest ear. For twenty-one years I have worked with my dear fellow-workers in a public manner against these hateful laws, which one of the resolutions pronounced and which I pronounce as accursed. During these twenty-one years there was one thing which made our battle harder than it would have been. We have had to fight outside the Constitution. We have been knocking at the door of the Constitution all these years, and there are men who even now tell me that they would give us anything in the way of justice except the parliamentary vote. We have been talking about certain Members of Parliament who are not fit to occupy that position. Give the women a vote, and see what will be the result. In all my work my one strength has been the strength of the Almighty, sought and won by constant prayer; and the prayer which I now offer in my secret chamber is that the veil may be taken away, and the selfishness—the perhaps unconscious selfishness—may be removed from the hearts of men who deny women equality, and keep them outside the Constitution. Think what we could do in the cause of morality, think of the pain and trouble and martyrdom that we might be saved in the future, if we had that little piece of justice.
The same question is dealt with in a letter written in the following year to a meeting in London of the World’s Women’s Christian Temperance Union.
We may pray and we may preach about these things, and we may raise our voices to some little extent during the excitement of a contested election; but that is not enough. My friends, we must have the suffrage. It is our right, and it is cruel, and a continued injustice, to withhold it from us. It has lately been said that the women generally of the country have not shown any desire for the suffrage. Some years ago I can assert that the women of the country showed a very great desire for it. Men do not know that at the bottom of that desire, underneath many other good motives, there lies a bitterness of woe which is the most powerful stimulus towards the desire for representation in the Legislature. I am sometimes afraid that one of these days some other terrible injustice may be enacted in Parliament through which women will again suffer as they did under those laws I have alluded to. Perhaps it might not be an altogether bad thing, if it caused women to utter once more the bitter cry to which none of our legislators could pretend to be deaf. But have we not, as it is, sufficient trouble, and misery, and degradation among our own sex to make us utter even now the bitter cry—a cry however at the same time of hope, courage and confidence?
In June, 1893, Josephine Butler published The Present Aspect of the Abolitionist Cause in relation to British India: a letter “giving a recital illustrative of the truth that a golden thread of Divine guidance runs throughout the lives and work of those who give themselves to the cause of truth, leading them out of every labyrinth of difficulty towards the goal at which they aim.” She tells how information having been received from various sources that the Regulation System had been continued in several of the Indian Cantonments, notwithstanding the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Act in 1888, and official denial having been made of the allegations to this effect, the British Branch of the Federation decided to make a thorough investigation of the actual state of affairs, which was carried out in the early part of 1892 by two American ladies, members of the World’s Women’s Christian Temperance Union, Mrs. Andrew and Dr. Kate Bushnell.
The wonderful manner in which Providence answered our wish and prayer to find suitable instruments for so serious an investigation I shall now relate. In the year 1878 I was staying with my sister, Madame Meuricoffre at her country home on the borders of the Lake of Geneva. One exquisite summer evening we sat together, with another friend, on the shore of the lake. The water and the snow-capped mountains were lighted up with gorgeous tints of rose and amber from the setting sun. In such an hour of calm repose it is sometimes granted to us to see with greater clearness the past, the present and the future of God’s dealings with us, and of any work to which we have been called. My mind had long been troubled by the thought of the growing and gigantic nature of the Abolitionist work in the various countries of the world, and of the need and lack of women workers. I knew that women must always continue to be at the heart and in the forefront of the work in order to ensure success. I saw around me hundreds of true and faithful women whose hearts were deeply stirred on the question. But where were those, I asked, who would form the powerful phalanx needed for the one object of continued attack on and resistance to that masterpiece of Satan, official or State recognised and regulated prostitution?
These thoughts I expressed to my sister and my friend. It was one of those moments in which, whether in sadness or perplexity, or passive waiting for light, it is sometimes given to us to realise, as with the disciples at Emmaus, that “Jesus Himself drew nigh.” We were asking ourselves: “Whence shall this army of women come? Where shall we find them? What will be the sign of their fitness for this work?” We sat some time in silence; and then I recollect there came to me one of those moments of re-assurance and hope, which are sometimes granted during such silence of the soul. I somewhat dimly recall now that there came before my mind’s eye a host of women presenting themselves from different quarters of the globe, speaking different languages, and possessing various gifts, but all having the special call and the necessary qualifications for this great conflict. It reminded me of the incident recorded in Swiss history, during one of Switzerland’s brave struggles in defence of her freedom; that occasion, I mean, when a great white mist covering the mountains in the early morning rolled upwards, and disclosed to the astonished gaze of the invading army entrenched in the valley a long procession of angels, clad in white, descending the mountain side; an apparition which so alarmed the enemy that it is said they lost nerve, turned, and were defeated. This was but a stratagem devised by a number of shrewd peasant women, inhabitants of the mountain villages, who dressed themselves in white and slowly descended the mountain, thus working upon the superstitious fears of the enemy. So the white-robed army appeared to my mental vision on this occasion. The mists cleared away, and the hosts were descending to the plains to engage in this great spiritual conflict. It was one of those mental pictures which do not fade, a prophetic thought, the fulfilment of which I have been led to remark year by year as noble women of different lands have from time to time appeared just as they were wanted in this cause. Since then I have not doubted as to the advent of the women workers who would be needed in great crises, and especially when the physical forces of the pioneers become exhausted and they must contemplate passing on and leaving the work to other hands. I shall give in the unstudied language in which Dr. Kate Bushnell and Mrs. Elizabeth Andrew recounted it to me, their own narrative of their call to this work. Dr. Kate Bushnell writes:—
“One hot summer day, while searching my Bible for light, I turned first as by accident to Joseph’s dream. As it did not interest me, and seemed inapplicable to my need, I turned the pages quickly, and my attention was next arrested by the account of Belshazzar’s dream, and Daniel’s interpretation. This seemed to me as foreign to my expectations of help as the other, and turning the leaves over to the Gospel of St. Matthew, I read there that ‘when Herod was dead, behold an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt.’ My feeling was that I had been baffled in my search for consolation and help in the sacred pages. Being very weary, I threw myself on my couch, thinking of the darkness of Egypt in my own plans. I said to the Lord that I was so stupid in understanding His guidance, that I thought He might have to send me the instructions I needed through a dream, and to guide me at times as He did His simple children of old. I fell asleep almost instantly, and dreamed that I felt myself tossed on the billows of the Atlantic on my way to England to see Josephine Butler.” [At this time we had never met nor corresponded.—J.E.B.] “It became plain to me that she had something for me to do. It was one of those brief, refreshing periods of unconsciousness, from which I awoke almost instantly, but with a strong impression that I must write to Mrs. Butler. This I did, telling her that I came to her much under such an impulse as urged Peter to go to Cornelius, and that I was deeply impressed that she could counsel me as to my future course. She replied, giving me a brief account of the situation in India, telling me that she and some of her friends had been earnestly praying that God would raise up an English-speaking woman to go to that country, and make careful enquiry into the condition of things there, with a view to ridding that conquered people of the oppressive tyranny and shame imposed upon them by the Army authorities, who she had reason to fear had never carried out the will of Parliament in abolishing the system of regulation. This letter I showed to Mrs. Andrew, and we took counsel together. Mrs. Butler had asked me to come over to England, if possible, that we might talk face to face on this matter. Mrs. Andrew was then on the eve of starting for England, and very soon after my decision was taken to join her and to begin our world’s tour together, taking in the special Indian work, if after full consultation with Mrs. Butler this should seem advisable.”