"A Woman's Rights Convention is in session in New York. A collection of women arguing for political rights, and for the privileges usually conceded only to the other sex, is one of the easiest things in the world to make fun of. There is no end to the smart speeches and the witty remarks that may be made on the subject. But when we seriously attempt to show that a woman who pays taxes ought not to have a voice in the manner in which the taxes are expended, that a woman whose property and liberty and person are controlled by the laws, should have no voice in framing those laws, it is not so easy. If women are fit to rule in monarchies, it is difficult to say why they are not qualified to vote in a republic; nor can there be greater indelicacy in a woman going up to the ballot-box than there is in a woman opening a legislature or issuing orders to an army.
"We do not say that women ought to vote; but we say that it is a great deal easier to laugh down the idea than to argue it down. Moreover, there are a great many things besides voting that are confined to men, and that women can do quite as well, or even better. There are many employments which ought to be opened to women, there are many ways in which women can be made to contribute more largely to their own independence and comfort, and to the general good of society. All well-directed plans to this end should receive the support of thinking men. The danger is that conventions of this kind are apt to overlook the present and attainable good, in their efforts for results which are of less certain value and far less practicable."—Providence Journal, Edited by Ex-Governor Anthony.
WISCONSIN LEGISLATURE, 1857.
Wisconsin Report on the Suffrage Question.—The following extract from the report on the extension of the right of suffrage in Wisconsin, we find in The Milwaukee Free Democrat:
"Perhaps no question ever submitted to a community would call forth so much of its mental activity, such a crusade into the realms of history, such a balancing of good and evil, of the past with the present, such an examination of the social and political rights and relations, as the question whether the right of suffrage ought to be extended to all citizens over the age of twenty-one, which would, of course, include both sexes. The giddy devotee of fashion would be surprised in the midst of her frivolity, and be compelled to think and reason, in view of a new responsibility which is menacing her. Even if opposed to the proposition, she would be compelled to organize and inspire the public opinion necessary to defeat it. Whatever might be the event, woman's intellectual position would be changed, and changed forever, and with hers that of all other classes....
"Let no one imagine that he can dispose of this question by a contemptuous fling at strong-minded women and hen-pecked husbands. The principle will gain more strength from the character of the arguments of its opponents than from any number of Bloomer conventions. The modern idea of the fashionable belle, floating like a bird of paradise through the soiree; the impersonation of motion and grace in the ball-room, indulging alternately in syncope and rapture over the marvelous adventures and despair of the hero of a mushroom romance, her rapid transition from one excitement to another, to fill up the dreary vacuum of life, provoking as it does the secret derision of sensible men; all this comes from that legislation, from that public opinion, which drives women away from real life; from the discussion of questions in which her happiness and destiny are involved. A senseless, though a false fondness, denies her a participation in all questions of the actual world around her. The novel writers therefore create a fictitious world, filled with fantastic and hollow characters, for her to range in. Awhile she believes she is an angel, till some unfortunate husband finds her to be a moth on his fortune, and a baleful shadow stretching across his pathway, without curiosity or interests in all those practical realities, which the world, outside of her charmed existence, is attending to. These are the abortions of a false public opinion. For ages they have been regarded as the natural results of female organism. Hence, woman has become famed as a gossip, because she would degrade herself by discussing Judge A.'s qualifications for Judge of Probate, though Judge A. may yet appoint a guardian for her children. In the sewing society, she sews scandal, or reads brocades, silks, and crinolines, because it would be extremely coarse and vulgar in her to read the statutes of Wisconsin, where her rights of person and property, marriage and divorce, are regulated. In those statutes she would find that though $350,000 are appropriated to build a University, she is as effectually excluded from that institution as though it was a convent of monks. So there is some inconvenience at last in being regarded as a bona-fide angel, for angels have no use for Universities. Some indignant school-ma'am begins to suspect the hollow compliments of moon-struck admirers, and demands a direct voice in the laws which provide for the mutual improvement of her sex. But the grave doctor of law puts on his spectacles, and tells her she is fully and exactly represented in man, only more so. When he eats, she eats; when he thinks, she thinks; when he gets drunk, she gets drunk; that it would be as absurd to provide for the board and education of one's own shadow as to provide a separate establishment for woman, who possesses all things, enjoys all things, and sways all things in man, as fully as though she did it herself. And a single woman, or widow, may pay taxes, but it would be outrageous for her to have a choice in the men who are to spend the money and then cry out for more. When married, ten years ago, her education was equal to her husband's, now she can not write a grammatical letter: her husband's mind has been enlarged by the influx of new ideas, and by contacts with the electric atmosphere of thought in the great world without; but denied as she has been the right of expressing her will by a direct vote, she has lost all interest in passing events; the globe has dwindled to a half-acre lot and the village church. Her partner finds the match unequal, spends his time with more congenial society, and is out-and-out in favor of Moses' law of a galloping divorce. The old stager has filled the political arena with frauds and brawls, and bruises and blood; and having levelled the morals of the ballot-box with those of the race-ground or box-ring, he has yet virtue enough left to declare that woman shall not enter this moral Aceldama.
"Yet it may be that democracy, for self-preservation, will be compelled to invite women to the ballot-box, to restrain and overawe the ruffianism of man. Though man smiles with secret derision at the competition of woman, in dress and show, yet he is too tender of her reputation to allow her the same field with himself wherein to exercise her powers. We believe that this contortion of character is justly attributable to the denial of the right of voting, the great mode by which the questions of the day are decided in this country. Politics are our national life. As civilization advances, its issues will penetrate still deeper into social and every-day life of the people; and no man or woman can be regarded as an entity, as a power in society, who has not a direct agency in governing its results. Without a direct voice in molding the spirit of the age, the age will disown us.
"But the objection is argued seriously. Political rivalry will arm the wife against the husband; a man's foes will be those of his own household. But we believe that political equality will, by lending the thoughts and purposes of the sexes, to a just degree, into the same channel, more completely carry out the designs of nature. Women will be possessed of a positive power, and hollow compliments and rose-water flatteries will be exchanged for a pure admiration and a well-grounded respect, when we see her nobly discharging her part in the great intellectual and moral struggles of the age, that wait their solution by a direct appeal to the ballot-box. Woman's power is, at present, poetical and unsubstantial; let it be practical and real. There is no reality in any power that can not be coined into votes. The demagogue has a sincere respect and a salutary fear of the voter; and he that can direct the lightning flash of the ballot-box is greater than he who possesses a continent of vapor, gilded with moonshine.
"It is true, the right of voting would carry with it the right to hold office; but since it is true that the sexes have appropriate spheres, the discretion of individual voters would recognize this fact, and seldom elect a woman to an office, for which she is unfitted by nature and education, as incompetent men are now elected. But the cruelty of our laws is seen in this—that where nature makes exceptions, the laws are inexorable.
"We have shown that woman is not correctly represented by man at the ballot-box. Could her voice be heard, it would alter the choice of public men and their character. With legislators compelled to respect her opinions, the law itself, constitutions, and politics reflect, to a just extent, her peculiar views and interests. Nor is it for us to decide whether these would be for the better or worse. Let the majority rule. Vox populi vox Dei. Woman's intellect would enlarge with her more commanding political condition, and though she might blight the hopes of many a promising aspirant, yet the Union would not be dissolved under her administration. Believing the time has come when an appeal on her behalf to the voters of this State will not be in vain, we have prepared to submit the question to the people, by our amendment to the Senate bill.