The passion of love, however, is the most dangerous one in the breast of the female sovereign. As I have already observed, it is the strongest of our nature whilst it lasts, even in the breast of man; but with woman, it is not only the strongest, but like Aaron's rod, it swallows up all the rest. Elizabeth's lovers were her dependents, and she was withal a woman of strong masculine mind, cultivated by an education of the most classical and severe character, yet we have seen the mighty influence which even her lovers exerted over her, in spite of all her caution.
Mary, the sister of Elizabeth, the bigoted Catholic, is a melancholy instance of the influence of even unrequited love, upon the politics of a female sovereign. While married to Philip of Spain, England was very little more than a Spanish province. Perhaps it was the example of Mary which in a great measure deterred Elizabeth from ever marrying, although repeatedly pressed to it by the Parliament. The caricature gotten up during the reign of Queen Mary is an admirable burlesque of the errors and weaknesses of female rule. It represented her Majesty "naked, meager, withered and wrinkled, with every aggravated circumstance of deformity which could disgrace a female figure, seated in a regal chair; a crown on her head, surrounded with the letters M. R. A. accompanied with Maria Regina Angliæ in smaller letters! A number of Spaniards were sucking her to the skin and bone, and a specification was added of the money, rings, jewels, and other presents with which she had secretly gratified her husband Philip."
To see what woman may be capable of doing under the influence of the passion of love accompanied by jealousy, let us at once recur to a state of semi-barbarism, where but little restraint is imposed on the feelings and passions, and where nature consequently manifests itself in all its most horrid deformities without wearing the mask which civilized manners and an enlightened and moral public opinion, aided by the printing press have imposed even upon the most hardy and most wicked in the polished countries of Europe. Among the Memoirs of Celebrated Women by Madame Junot, we find that of Zingha, a great African princess who ruled in her dominions with absolute sway. In the contemplation of her character we are fully disposed to acquiesce in the truth of Shakspeare's assertion, that "proper deformity shows not in the fiend so horrid as in woman." This princess was a perfect tigress when for a moment her argus-eyed jealousy conceived the least interruption to her amours, from the beauty, or the affections, or the accomplishments of another. We are told that "a young girl who waited on her had the misfortune to be attached to a man upon whom the queen had herself cast an eye of affection. Having discovered that the feeling was mutual between the youthful lovers, Zingha had them brought before her; and giving her poniard to the young man, ordered him to plunge it into the bosom of his mistress, to open her bosom and eat her heart! The moment he had obeyed this cruel order she turned to the wretched man, who perhaps expected his pardon, and looked at him as if to confirm this expectation. But she ordered his head to be severed from his body, and it fell upon the mutilated corpse of his mistress." On another occasion she had spared a particular female from among those doomed to destruction, when perceiving a paramour looking with tenderness upon her, she immediately recalled her executioner, and coldly said, "take this woman also and throw her into the grave with her companion." Such is the influence of the passion of love and jealousy upon the female mind even in Negro land, and well may we join Madame Junot in the remark, that "this memoir (of Zingha) which is strictly true may lead to much reflection in those who so bitterly attack the whites for their treatment of negro slaves. The latter in our colonies have never yet undergone such degradation."6
6 "Add to this the horrible superstitions of the Giagas," says the same writer, "and our colonial slaves must have little to regret in their native country."
A woman in love, whilst she is willing to sacrifice all for the object beloved, may occasionally demand all. She is very apt to be too capricious for wise and prosperous government. A little experiment in love matters might occasionally be of more moment to her, than the regulation of trade, the modification of the corn laws, or the raising or lowering of the taxes. We all know that woman is sometimes extremely capricious and even despotic in the wars of Cupid. She does sometimes make most fearful exactions merely to manifest her power, or to confirm her faith in the fidelity and devotedness of her lover. Now all this will do well enough in private life, because it chequers the path of love with the powerfully exciting alternations of hope and disappointment, and throws around the object of our affections all those attractions, and all that more ethereal and imaginative loveliness, which the extreme difficulty of attainment ever generates in the mind. Although the lover may sometimes groan under such a despotism, and even attempt to renounce it,7 yet the public sustains no injury. But when this capricious lover is a queen upon the throne, or an ambitious aspirant for political power, then the consequences may be truly disastrous. Rousseau tells us upon the authority of Brantome, that during the reign of Francis I, a young girl had a lover who was a great babbler. So capricious was she, and so fond of the exercise of power, that she ordered him to keep an absolute and profound silence, as the condition of her love, until she might release his tongue. He actually remained silent two years, when every body believed him dumb. Then one day in the presence of a large assembly, she boasted that by one word she could restore speech to the dumb. She looked him in the face and said, "parlez!" "speak!" when the man began to speak again! Now in this case no one suffered but the poor man, and he had no doubt hours of ecstatic felicity in her occasional kindness, and sympathy, and love, for so much devotion. He gloried in the chains which he wore: he might be a little restive at times, under the caprice and whim of his mistress, but was no doubt in all his difficulties ever ready to apply to her the language of one of Martial's Epigrams on the whimsical waywardness of a friend,
| "Difficilis, facilis, jucundus, acerbus es idem Nec tecum possum vivere, nec sine te." |
but when such love or caprice as this reaches the throne, the people pay for the folly. Delirant reges plectuntur Achivi.
7 We are informed that during the age of chivalry, a lady and her lover knight, at the Court of Vienna, were looking over a palisade at a very ferocious lion, when the lady designedly let fall her glove within the enclosure, and asked the knight to pick it up for her. Without hesitation he leaped the enclosure, threw a cloak at the lion, which diverted his attention for a moment, and escaped unhurt with the glove, and then in presence of the whole court renounced the lady and her love forever, because she had imposed so cruel and dangerous a test of his affections.
The poor Dutch saw but little sport or justice in those harassing campaigns of Lewis XIV in Holland, undertaken principally to please and amuse his mistresses, and exalt himself in their estimation as a military chieftain. The English too saw nothing but degradation and misfortune while Mademoiselle Queraille, the celebrated Duchess of Portsmouth, was the favorite mistress of Charles, and by her predilections for France, and influence on Charles, made him the subservient tool of Lewis XIV, and England but a province to France. And the ill-fated Protestants of the same country had before but too mournfully lamented at the stake that England's Queen was the wife of the most sullen, dark, and ferocious bigot of his age.
But I have said enough, I hope, to show that the field of politics does not furnish the proper theatre for woman's glory and fame. It is strewed with too many brambles and thorns for her delicate and timid nature. It presents too many temptations to wander from the path of justice and equity, to be resisted by the modest gentleness and the unresisting pliancy of her sympathetic and humane temperament. Let her not then be over-ambitious in politics, lest she be brought to realize at last the maxim which is but too true—"Corruptio optimi pessima est." Let her ever remember that she who has the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, as Gisborne has well observed, enjoys a decoration superior to all the glories of the peerage. Not only, however, has the custom of the world generally excluded woman from political stations, but she has been excluded likewise from the right of suffrage or of voting. Her condition in society, her physical organization, the bearing and nursing of children, her delicacy, modesty, weakness and dependency on man, all concur to make such exclusion proper.8 The utilitarians say, that no evil can result to the fair sex from this exclusion, because their interests are involved in the interests of the males, and consequently the former cannot be oppressed by the latter. Thus they say almost every woman has a husband, a brother, or a father, all of whom are interested in her welfare. She need not consequently fear an invasion of her rights, for those in power are interested in defending them. To a certain extent this assertion is true. But the condition of woman in past ages, and in the eastern nations, shows most conclusively that she may be oppressed by the stronger sex, and that her interests therefore have not been so completely involved in those of man as to make oppression impracticable. Well then, under these circumstances, does it behoove man, in the possession of all the political power, to guard against its abuse—to remember that the frailer and weaker member of our race is placed necessarily under his protection, and lies at his mercy—that humanity, magnanimity, and even self-interest, alike require that her rights should be guarded, and her condition ameliorated—that she who is the delight and ornament of society, the Corinthian capital of our race, should not be permitted to pine under neglect and oppression, but should be conducted tenderly to that exalted eminence whence she may diffuse her benign influence over all the ramifications of social intercourse. And the more I have been enabled to read the page of history have I become convinced, that the continued amelioration of woman's condition is one of the most unerring symptoms of the continuing prosperity and civilization of the world.