Men receive about as much as women from public charity: this is unjust. They have infinitely more resources. They are stronger, have a greater variety of work, more initiative, a more active impulse, more locomotion, if I may so express myself, to go and hunt out work. They travel, emigrate, and find engagements. Not to mention countries where manual labour is very dear, I know of provinces in France, where it is very difficult to find either journeymen or man-servants. Man can wander to and fro. Woman remains at home and dies.
Let this workwoman, whom the opposition of the convent has crushed, crawl to the gate of the convent—can she find an asylum there? She would want, in default of dowry, the active protection of an influential priest, a protection reserved for devout persons, such as have had the time to follow the "Mois de Marie"—Devotions to the Virgin—the Catechisms of Perseverance, &c., &c., and who have been, for a long time past, under ecclesiastical authority. This protection is often very dearly purchased; and for what? To get permission to pass one's life shut up within walls, to be obliged to counterfeit a devotion one has not! Death cannot be worse.
They die then, quietly, decently, and alone. They will never be seen coming down from their garrets into the street to walk about with the motto, "To live working or die fighting." They will make no disturbances; we have nothing to fear from them. It is for this very reason, that we are the more bound to assist them. Shall we then feel our hearts affected only for those of whom we are afraid?
Men of money, if I must speak to you in your own money language, I will tell you, that as soon as we shall have an economical government, it will not hesitate to lay out its money for women, to help them to maintain themselves by their industry.
Not only do these sickly women crowd our hospitals, and leave them only to return, but the offspring of these poor exhausted creatures, if they do not die in the Foundling, will be, like their mothers, the habitual inmates of those hospitals. A miserably poor woman is a whole family of sick persons in perspective.
Whether we be philosophers, physiologists, political economists, or statesmen, we all know that the excellency of the race, the strength of the people, come especially from the woman. Does not the nine months' support of the mother establish this? Strong mothers have strong children.
We all are, and ever shall be, the debtors of women. They are mothers; this says everything. He who would bargain about the work of those who are the joy of the present and the destiny of the future, must needs have been born in misery and damnation. Their manual labour is a very secondary consideration; that is especially our part. What do they make?—Man: this is a superior work. To be loved, to bring forth both physically and morally, to educate man (our barbarous age does not quite understand this yet), this is the business of woman.
"Fons omnium viventium!" What can ever be added to this sublime saying?
Whilst writing all this, I have had in my mind a woman, whose strong and serious mind would not have failed to support me in these contentions: I lost her thirty years ago (I was a child then); nevertheless, ever living in my memory, she follows me from age to age.
She suffered with me in my poverty, and was not allowed to share my better fortune. When young I made her sad, and now I cannot console her. I know not even where her bones are: I was too poor then to buy earth to bury her!