We have thus far spoken of women only as wives and mothers; but we are told that there are thousands of women who are not and cannot be wives and mothers. In the older and more densely settled States of the Union there is an excess of females over males, and all cannot get husbands if they would. Yet, we repeat, woman was created to be a wife and a mother, and the woman that is not fails of her special destiny. We hold in high honor spinsters and widows, and do not believe their case anywhere need be or is utterly hopeless. There is a mystery in Christianity which the true and enlightened Christian recognizes and venerates—that of the Virgin-Mother. Those women who cannot be wives and mothers in the natural order, may be both in the spiritual order, if they will. They can be wedded to the Holy Spirit, and be the mothers of minds and hearts. The holy virgins and devout widows who consecrate themselves to God in or out of religious orders, are both, and fulfil in the spiritual order their proper destiny. They are married to a celestial Spouse, and become mothers to the motherless, to the poor, the destitute, the homeless. They instruct the ignorant, nurse the sick, help the helpless, tend the aged, catch the last breath of the dying, pray for the unbelieving and the cold hearted, and elevate the moral tone of society, and shed a cheering radiance along the pathway of life. They are dear to God, dear to the church, and dear to Christian society. They are to be envied, not pitied. It is only because you have lost faith in Christ, faith in the holy Catholic Church, and have become gross in your minds, of "the earth, earthy," that you deplore the lot of the women who cannot, in the natural order, find husbands. The church provides better for them than you can do, even should you secure female suffrage and eligibility.
We do not, therefore, make an exception from our general remarks in favor of those who have and can get no earthly husbands, and who have no children born of their flesh to care for. There are spiritual relations which they can contract, and purely feminine duties, more than they can perform, await them, to the poor and ignorant, the aged and infirm, the helpless and the motherless, or, worse than motherless, the neglected. Under proper direction, they can lavish on these the wealth of their affections, the tenderness of their hearts, and the ardor of their charity, and find true joy and happiness in so doing, and ample scope for woman's noblest ambition. They have no need to be idle or useless. In a world of so much sin and sorrow, sickness and suffering, there is always work enough for them to do, and there are always chances enough to acquire merit in the sight of Heaven, and true glory, that will shine brighter and brighter for ever.
We know men often wrong women and cause them great suffering by their selfishness, tyranny, and brutality; whether more than women, by their follies and caprices, cause men, we shall not undertake to determine. Man, except in fiction, is not always a devil, nor woman an angel. Since the woman's rights people claim that in intellect woman is man's equal, and in firmness of will far his superior, it ill becomes them to charge to him alone what is wrong or painful in her condition, and they must recognize her as equally responsible with him for whatever is wrong in the common lot of men and women. There is much wrong on both sides; much suffering, and much needless suffering, in life. Both men and women might be, and ought to be, better than they are. But it is sheer folly or madness to suppose that either can be made better or happier by political suffrage and eligibility; for the evil to be cured is one that cannot be reached by any possible political or legislative action.
That the remedy, to a great extent, must be supplied by woman's action and influence we concede, but not by her action and influence in politics. It can only be by her action and influence as woman, as wife, and mother; in sustaining with her affection the resolutions and just aspirations of her husband or her sons, and forming her children to early habits of filial love and reverence, of obedience to law, and respect for authority. That she may do this, she needs not her political enfranchisement or her entire independence of the other sex, but a better and more thorough system of education for daughters—an education that specially adapts them to the destiny of their sex, and prepares them to find their happiness in their homes, and the satisfaction of their highest ambition in discharging its manifold duties, so much higher, nobler, and more essential to the virtue and well-being of the community, the nation, society, and to the life and progress of the human race, than any which devolve on king or kaiser, magistrate or legislator. We would not have their generous instincts repressed, their quick sensibilities blunted? or their warm, sympathetic nature chilled, nor even the lighter graces and accomplishments neglected; but we would have them all directed and harmonized by solid intellectual instruction, and moral and religious culture. We would have them, whether rich or poor, trained to find the centre of their affections in their home; their chief ambition in making it cheerful, bright, radiant, and happy. Whether destined to grace a magnificent palace, or to adorn the humble cottage of poverty, this should be the ideal aimed at in their education. They should be trained to love home, and to find their pleasure in sharing its cares and performing its duties, however arduous or painful.
There are comparatively few mothers qualified to give their daughters such an education, especially in our own country; for comparatively few have received such an education themselves, or are able fully to appreciate its importance. They can find little help in the fashionable boarding-schools for finishing young ladies; and in general these schools only aggravate the evil to be cured. The best and the only respectable schools for daughters that we have in the country are the conventual schools taught by women consecrated to God, and specially devoted to the work of education. These schools, indeed, are not always all that might be wished. The good religious sometimes follow educational traditions perhaps better suited to the social arrangements of other countries than of our own, and sometimes underrate the value of intellectual culture. They do not always give as solid an intellectual education as the American woman needs, and devote a disproportionate share of their attention to the cultivation of the affections and sentiments, and to exterior graces and accomplishments. The defects we hint at are not, however, wholly, nor chiefly, their fault; they are obliged to consult, in some measure, the tastes and wishes of parents and guardians, whose views for their daughters and wards are not always very profound, very wise, very just, or very Christian. The religious cannot, certainly, supply the place of the mother in giving their pupils that practical home training so necessary, and which can be given only by mothers who have themselves been properly educated; but they go as far as is possible in remedying the defects of the present generation of mothers, and in counteracting their follies and vain ambitions. With all the faults that can be alleged against any of them, the conventual schools, even as they are, it must be conceded, are infinitely the best schools for daughters in the land, and, upon the whole, worthy of the high praise and liberal patronage their devotedness and disinterestedness secure them. We have seldom found their graduates weak and sickly sentimentalists. They develop in their pupils a cheerful and healthy tone, and a high sense of duty; give them solid moral and religious instruction; cultivate successfully their moral and religious affections; refine their manners, purify their tastes, and send them out feeling that life is serious, life is earnest, and resolved always to act under a deep sense of their personal responsibilities, and meet whatever may be their lot with brave hearts and without murmuring or repining.
We do not disguise the fact that our hopes for the future, in great measure, rest on these conventual schools. As they are multiplied, and the number of their graduates increase, and enter upon the serious duties of life, the ideal of female education will be come higher and broader; a nobler class of wives and mothers will exert a healthy and purifying influence; religion will become a real power in the republic; the moral tone of the community and the standard of private and public morality will be elevated; and thus may gradually be acquired the virtues that will enable us as a people to escape the dangers that now threaten us, and to save the republic as well as our own souls. Sectarians, indeed, declaim against these schools, and denounce them as a subtle device of Satan to make their daughters "Romanists;" but Satan probably dislikes "Romanism" even more than sectarians do, and is much more in earnest to suppress or ruin our conventual schools, in which he is not held in much honor, than he is to sustain and encourage them. At any rate, our countrymen who have such a horror of the religion it is our glory to profess that they cannot call it by its true name, would do well, before denouncing these schools, to establish better schools for daughters of their own.
Now, we dare tell these women who are wasting so much time, energy, philanthropy, and brilliant eloquence in agitating for female suffrage and eligibility, which, if conceded, would only make matters worse, that, if they have the real interest of their sex or of the community at heart, they should turn their attention to the education of daughters for their special functions, not as men, but as women who are one day to be wives and mothers—woman's true destiny. These modest, retiring sisters and nuns, who have no new theories or schemes of social reform, and upon whom you look down with haughty contempt, as weak, spiritless, and narrow-minded, have chosen the better part, and are doing infinitely more to raise woman to her true dignity, and for the political and social as well as for the moral and religious progress of the country, than you with all your grand conventions, brilliant speeches, stirring lectures, and spirited journals.
For poor working-women and poor working-men, obliged to subsist by their labor, and who can find no employment, we feel a deep sympathy, and would favor any feasible method of relieving them with our best efforts. But why cannot American girls find employment as well as Irish and German girls, who are employed almost as soon as they touch our shores, and at liberal wages? There is always work enough to be done if women are qualified to do it, and are not above doing it. But be that as it may, the remedy is not political, and must be found, if found at all, elsewhere than in suffrage and eligibility.