THE REASON FIRM, THE TEMPERATE WILL


It is a part of the necessary theory of republican government, that every
class and race shall be judged by its highest types, not its lowest. The
proposition of the French revolutionary statesman, to begin the work of
purifying the world by arresting all the cowards and knaves, is liable to
the objection that it would find victims in every circle. Republican
government begins at the other end, and assumes that the community
generally has good intentions at least, and some common sense, however
it may be with individuals. Take the very quality which the newspapers so
often deny to women,--the quality of steadiness. "In fact, men's great
objection to the entrance of the female mind into politics is drawn from a
suspicion of its unsteadiness on matters in which the feelings could by
any possibility be enlisted." Thus says the New York "Nation." Let us
consider this implied charge against women, and consider it not by
generalizing from a single instance,--"just like a woman," as the editors
would doubtless say, if a woman had done it,--but by observing whole
classes of that sex, taken together.

These classes need some care in selection, for the plain reason that there
are comparatively few circles in which women have yet been allowed enough
freedom of scope, or have acted sufficiently on the same plane with men, to
furnish a fair estimate of their probable action, were they enfranchised.
Still there occur to me three such classes,--the anti-slavery women, the
Quaker women, and the women who conduct philanthropic operations in our