We would not, Eusebius, have all their wrongs righted—so lovely is the moral beauty of their wonderful patience in enduring them. What—if they were in a condition to legislate and impose upon us some of their burdens, or divide them with us? What man of your acquaintance could turn dry-nurse—tend even his own babes twelve hours out of the twenty-four?
A pretty head-nurse would my Eusebius make in an orphan asylum. I should like to see you with twins in your arms, both crying into your sensitive ears, and you utterly ignorant of their wants and language. And I do think your condition will be almost as bad, if you publish your catalogue of wrongs in your own name. By all means preserve an incognito. You will be besieged with wrongs—will be the only "Defender of the Faithful"—not knight-errant, for you may stay at home, and all will come to you for redress. You will be like the author, or rather translator, of the Arabian Tales, whose window was nightly assailed, and slumber broken in upon, by successive troops of children, crying "Monsieur Galland if you are not asleep, get up—come and tell us one of those pretty stories." Keep your secret. Now, the mention of the Arabian Tales reminds me of Sinbad—there is a true picture of man's cowardice; what loathsome holes did he not creep into to make his escape when the wife of his bosom was sick, and he understood the law that he was to be buried with her. It is all very well, in the sick chamber, for the husband to say to his departing partner for life—"Wait, my dearest—I will go with you." She is sure, as La Fontaine says in his satire, reversing the case, "to take the journey alone." This is all talk on the man's side—but see what the master of the slave woman has actually imposed upon her as a law. The Hindoo widow ascends the funeral pile, and is burnt rejoicing. What male creature ever thought of enduring this for his wife?—this wrong, for it is a grievous wrong thus to tempt her superior fortitude. It was not without reason that, in the heathen mythology, (and it shows the great advancement of civilization when and wherever it was conceived,) were deified all great and noble qualities in the image of the sex. What are Juno, Minerva, and Venus, but acknowledgments of the strength, wisdom, fortitude, beauty, and love, of woman, while their male deities have but borrowed attributes and ambiguous characters? It is a deference—perhaps unintentionally, unconsciously—paid to the sex, that in every language the soul itself, and all its noblest virtues, and the personification of all virtue, are feminine.
I supposed woman the legislatrix—what reason have we to say she would enact a wrong? The story of the mother of Papirius is not against her; for in that case there was only a choice of evils. It is from Aulus Gellius, as having been told and written by M. Cato in the oration which he made to the soldiers against Galba. The mother of young Papirius, who had accompanied his father into the senate-house, as was usual formerly for sons to do who had taken the toga prætexta, enquired of her son what the senate had been doing; the youth replied, that he had been enjoined silence. This answer made her the more importunate and he adopted this humorous fallacy—that it had been discussed in the senate which would be most beneficial to the state, for one man to have two wives, or for one woman to have two husbands? Hearing this, she left the house in no small trepidation, and went to tell other matrons what she had heard. The next day a troop of matrons went to the senate-house, and implored, with tears in their eyes, that one woman might be suffered to have two husbands, rather than one man have two wives. The senate honoured the young Papirius with a special law in his favour; they should rather have conferred honour upon his mother and the other matrons for their disinterested virtue, who were content to submit themselves to so great an evil, I may say wrong, as to have imposed upon them two masters instead of one. Not that you, Eusebius, ever entertained an idea that women are wronged by not being admitted to a share of legislation. I will not suppose you to be that liberal fool. But you are aware that such a scheme has been, and is still entertained. I believe there is a Miss Somebody now going about our towns, lecturing on the subject, and she is probably worthy to be one of the company of the "Ecclesiagusæ." This idea is not new. The other day I hit upon a letter in the Gentleman's Magazine for the year 1740 on the subject, by which you will see there was some amusement about it a century ago:—
"TO CALEB D'ANVERS, Esq.
"Sir,—I am a mournful relict of five husbands, and the happy mother of twenty-seven children, the tender pledges of our chaste embraces. Had old Rome, instead of England, been the place of my nativity and abode, what honours might I not have expected to my person, and immunities to my fortune? But I need not tell you that virtue of this sort meets with no encouragement in our northern climate. Children, instead of freeing us from taxes increase the weight of them, and matrimony is become the jest of every coxcomb. Nor could I allow, till very lately, that an old bachelor, as you profess yourself to be, had any just pretence to be called a patriot. Don't think that I mean to offer myself to you; for I assure you that I have refused very advantageous proposals since the decease of my last poor spouse, who hath been dead near five months. I have no design at present of altering my condition again. Few women are so happy as to meet with five good husbands, and therefore I should be glad to devote the remaining part of my life to the good of my country and family, in a more public and active station than that of a wife, according to your late scheme for a septennial administration of women. But I think you ought to have enforced your project with some instances of illustrious females, who have appeared in the foremost classes of life, not only for heroic valour, but likewise for several branches of learning, wisdom, and policy—such as Joan of Naples, the Maid of Orleans, Catherine de Medicis, Margaret of Mountfort, Madame Dacier, Mrs Behn, Mrs Manly, Mrs Stephens, Doctor of Physic, Mrs Mapp, Surgeon, the valiant Mrs Ross, Dragoon, and the learned Mrs Osborne, Politician. I had almost forgot the present Queen of Spain, who hath not only an absolute ascendant over the counsels of her husband, but hath often outwitted the greatest statesmen, as they fancy themselves, of another kingdom, which hath already felt the effects of her petticoat government.
"If we look back into history, a thousand more instances might be brought of the same kind; but I think those already mentioned sufficient to prove, that the best capacities of our sex are by no means inferior to the best capacities of yours; and the triflers of either sex are not designed to be the subject of this letter. But much as our sex are obliged to you, in general, for your proposal, I have one material objection against it; for I think you have carried the point a little too far, by excluding all males from the enjoyment of any office, dignity, or employment; for as they have long engrossed the public administration of the government to themselves, (a few women only excepted,) I am apprehensive that they will be loth to part with it, and that if they give us power for seven years, it will be very difficult to get it out of our hands again. I have, therefore, thought of the following expedient, which will almost answer the same purpose—viz. that all power, both legislative and executive, ecclesiastical and civil, may be divided among both sexes; and that they may be equally capable of sitting in Parliament. Is it not absurd that women in England should be capable of inheriting the crown, and yet not intrusted with the representation of a little borough, or so much as allowed to vote for a representative? Is this consistent with the rights of a people, which certainly includes both men and women, though the latter have been generally deprived of their privileges in all countries? I don't mean that the people should be obliged to choose women only, as I said before, for that would be equally hard upon the men—but that the electors should be left at their own liberty; for it is certainly a restraint upon the freedom of elections, that whatever regard a corporation may have for a man of quality's family, if he happened to have no sons or brothers, they cannot testify their esteem for it by choosing his daughters or sisters. I am for no restraint upon the members of either sex; for if the honour, integrity, or great capacity of a fine lady should recommend her to the intimacy or confidence of a Prime Minister, in consequence of which he should get her a place—would it not be very hard that this very act of mutual friendship must render her incapable of doing either him or her country any real service in the senate-house? Is freedom consistent with restraint? or can we propose to serve our country by obstructing the natural operations of love and gratitude? I would not be understood to propose increasing the number of members. Let every county or corporation choose a man or a woman, as they think proper; and if either of the members should be married, let it be in the power of the constituents to return both husband and wife as one member, but not to sit at the same time; from whence would accrue great strength to our constitution, by having the house well attended, without the present disagreeable method of frequent calls, and putting several members to the expense and disgrace of being brought up to town in the custody of messengers; for if a country gentleman should like fox-hunting, or any other rural diversion, better than attending his duty in Parliament, let him send up his wife. Or if an officer in the army should be obliged to be at his post in Ireland, the Mediterranean, the West Indies, or aboard the fleet, a thousand leagues off, or upon any public embassy, if his wife should happen to be chosen, never fear that she would do the nation's business, full as well. Besides, in several affairs of great consequence, the resolutions might perhaps be much more agreeable to the tenderness of our sex than the roughness of yours. As, for instance, it hath often been thought unnatural for soldiers to promote peace. When a debate, therefore, of that sort should be to come on, if the soldiers staid at home, and their wives attended, it would very well become the softness of the female sex to show a regard for their husbands; especially if they should be such pretty, smart, young fellows, as make a most considerable figure at a review." The lady writer goes on at some length, that she has a borough of her own, and will be certainly returned whether she marries or not, and will act with inflexible zeal, naïvely adding—"If, therefore, I should hereafter be put into a considerable employment, and fourteen of my sons be advanced in the army; should the ministry provide for the other seven in the Church, Excise Office, or Exchequer; and my poor girls, who are but tender infants at the boarding-school, should have places given to them in the Customs, which they might officiate by deputy—don't imagine that I am under any undue influence if I should happen always to vote with the Ministry." We do not quote further. The letter is signed "MARGERY WELDONE."
It is needless to tell you the wrong done to the sex by the rigour of modern law. You have stamped the foot at it often enough. I mean, not so much the separation in the whimsically-called union houses, for, as husbands go, they may have little to complain of on that score; but that dire injustice which throws upon woman the whole penalty of a mutual crime, of which the instigator is always man. Then, is she not injured by the legislative removal of the sanctity of marriage, by which the man is less bound to her—thinks less of the bond—the vinculum matrimoniæ being, in his mind, one of straw, to her one of iron. And here, Eusebius, a difficulty presents itself which I do not remember ever to have seen met, no, nor even noticed. How can a court ecclesiastical, which from its very constitution and formula of marriage which it receives and sanctions—that marriage is a Divine institution, that man shall not put asunder those by this matrimony made one—I ask, how can such a court deal with cases where the people have not been put together by the only bond of matrimony which the church can allow? But these are painful subjects, and I feel myself wading in deeper water than will be good for one who can't swim without corks, though he be levior cortice; and lighter than cork, too, will be the obligation on the man's side, who has taken trusting woman to one of these registry houses, leaped over a broomstick and called it a marriage. It will soon come to the truth of the old saying, "The first month is the honeymoon or smick-smack, the second is hither and thither; the third is thwick-thwack; the fourth, the devil take them that brought thee and I together."
"Love, light as air, at sight of human ties,
Spreads his light wings, and in a moment flies."
The great walking monster that does the great wrong to women is, depend upon it, Eusebius, the "brute of a husband," called, by courtesy, in higher life, "Sir John Brute." Horace says wittily, that Venus puts together discordant persons and minds with a bitter joke, "sævo mittere cum joco;" it begins a jest, and ends a crying evil. We name the thing that should be good, with an ambiguous sound that gives disagreement to the sense. It is marry-age, or matter o' money. And let any man who is a euphonist, and takes omens from names, attend the publication of banns, he will be quite shocked at the unharmonious combination. Now, you will laugh when I tell you positively, that within a twelvemonth I have heard called the banns of "John Smasher and Mary Smallbones;" no doubt, by this time they are "marrow bones and cleaver," what else could be expected? Did you never note how it has puzzled curates to read the ill-assorted names?