general standing and consideration by every false step. There are
occasions where victory is more really perilous than a timely defeat;
a temporary triumph may lead to ground which the victors can not
permanently hold to their own true and lasting advantage. On the
other hand, every just and judicious demand women may now make
with the certainty of successful results. This is, indeed, the great
fact which especially contributes to render the birthright of American
women a favorable one. If the men of the country are already
disposed to redress existing grievances, where women are
concerned, as we know them to be, and if they are also ready, as we
know them to be, to forward all needful future development of true
womanly action, what more, pray, can we reasonably ask of them?
Where lies this dim necessity of thrusting upon women the burdens
of the suffrage? And why should the entire nation be thrown into the
perilous convulsions of a revolution more truly formidable than any
yet attempted on earth? Bear in mind that this is a revolution which,
if successful in all its aims, can scarcely fail to sunder the family
roof-tree, and to uproot the family hearth-stone. It is the avowed
determination of many of its champions that it shall do so; while
with another class of its leaders, to weaken and undermine the
authority of the Christian faith in the household is an object if not
frankly avowed yet scarcely concealed. The great majority of the
women enlisted in this movement--many of them, it is needless to
say, very worthy persons as individuals--are little aware of all the
perils into which some of their most zealous male allies would lead
them. Degradation for the sex, and not true and lasting elevation,
appear to most of us likely to be the end to which this movement
must necessarily tend, unless it be checked by the latent good
sense, the true wisdom, and the religious principle of women
themselves, aroused, at length, to protest, to resist. If we are called