ARTICLE VII.

"WOMAN SUFFRAGE."

BY THE REV. JOHN MILTON WILLIAMS, A. M., CHICAGO, ILL.

"FOR this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife, and the twain shall become one flesh." In this pregnant utterance the Great Teacher gives the divine conception and the true ideal of marriage. He makes it consist in the oneness of husband and wife. They are, he repeats, no more two, but one. What God hath joined together. Their home and possessions are common to both, their earthly interests inseparable, and they so complement each other as to form a complete person-the unit of society.

The beauty and rationale of this relation appear when we reflect how the identity of aims and interests it secures knits human hearts together. It brings man and wife into the closest conceivable harmony, banishes separate interests, that chief bane of the household, and renders dissonance between them a thing hardly possible.

It is a relation in which woman as the weaker party finds a refuge. She stands related to her husband as a part of himself. He feels the same interest in her welfare he does in his own; he protects, defends, and shelters her, with the same ready hand that shields and protects himself. In the gains and losses, the victories and defeats, the prosperity and adversity of either, both are equal sharers. The gladness and the tears of the home belong equally to husband and wife. Thus united, how doubly strong they are, how doubly dear and helpful to each other, and how doubly fortified against the trials and enemies of the way! Like two moun

tain rills united, they flow along with more than redoubled strength, and more than redoubled music.

This wondrous relation is the key to the great problem of woman's sphere and rights. What are woman's rights? Precisely those, I answer, of her husband. As a matter of convenience he carries the ballot to the polls as he carries the tax to the county treasurer, and relieves her of a burden she gladly escapes. The vote he carries is not his own alone. It is the family vote, selected, it is presumed, by the united wisdom of both husband and wife, in the emoluments of which both equally share. The complaint that she is deprived of her vote is groundless. She is, if in the true sense a wife, represented at the polls by her husband, as a partner in the firm, and she may as reasonably complain that he drives the carriage and feeds the horses. If she is ambitious for the publicity of voting, or if, by sickness or otherwise, he is disabled, I see no objection to her carrying the vote, unless it be the abuse which might come from such an arrangement.

But I am reminded that all women are not wives. It is true, the absolute number of unmarried women is large, but the relative number is not large; and as society advances in civilization and Christianity, the ratio will grow less and less. As it is, the woman who is not identified with some family, and not represented by husband, father, brother, son, or some one, is a rare occurrence; and to burden the many, for any fancied good to the few, is, to say the least, undemocratic.

I am also advised that many women pay taxes, and am triumphantly asked, whether taxation without representation is just. Certainly it is, I answer. God exacts homage, obedience, service, from those who are not represented in his counsels and from whom he never seeks advice. A tax is payment for value received, and in no government constitutes a right to the ballot. The property of the minor and the

alien is taxed the same as other property, and no one complains; and multitudes, possibly a majority, of voters never There is no necessary relation between tax-pay

pay a tax.

ing and voting.

It is farther urged, that discriminating against women at the polls is an implication of inferiority, and an indignity to her sex. Not so is it generally regarded by women. They recognize the difference between their appropriate sphere and duties and those of men, and can see no more disgrace in being denied the privilege of voting, than in being denied the privilege of driving oxen, or acting as town constable. The average woman deems her duties respectable, and about as onerous as she cares to assume, and feels no need of the honor the ballot would confer. Indeed thirty years of faithful missionary labor have failed to make her realize that she is suffering from want of it.

Woman, it is farther claimed, is a citizen, having a natural right to the ballot, and as all just government rests on the consent of the governed, it is unjust to deprive her of all share in the choice of her rulers, and to exact obedience to laws she has had no agency in making.

I unhesitatingly characterize this complaint as both absurd and atheistic, one with which the intelligent American woman has no sympathy. The right to govern does not rest upon the consent of the governed. The divine authority, to which all rightful human authority is subordinate, rests on no such basis. God never asked permission to reign. Nor does the right of the parent to govern rest on the consent of his children. Nor does the right to punish the criminal rest upon his consent to be punished. Governments were ordained to govern, not to be governed. To refuse to obey laws, moral or physical, because we have had no voice in making them, is indicative of insanity. On what then, it will be asked, does the right or duty to govern rest? On the same foundation on which every other obligation rests,

-the claims of the highest good, the supreme law of the moral world. God's obligation to promote the highest welfare of the universe involves the obligation to govern the universe. On this foundation rests family government. Parents are best qualified to govern their children. The highest good requires that they should, and they cannot innocently refuse. On precisely this basis rests civil government. His duty, and of course his right, it is to govern, who can do it best. Or rather he is the rightful ruler whose services, as such, the highest interest of all demands. Where there are no providential indications pointing to the right man, the choice and approval of the people should be regarded as such an indication, and he on whom the choice falls should be accepted as the "minister of God." His authority to govern rests not upon the consent of the people, nor is it conferred by the people, nor by any direct divine intervention; it rests on the obligations of the moral law to contribute to the extent of his ability to "the good of being in general." All this complaint about the injustice of refusing woman a share in the choice of her rulers, and exacting obedience to laws she has had no voice in making, is based upon a theory of government utterly false and subversive of the very foundations of order. All created moral beings are born within the mighty trend of law as changeless and uncreated as God, to which they do well to conform.

No one doubts the ability of the average American woman to use the ballot with discretion. The decisive question is, Does the greatest good of the greatest number require that she have it? If the advocates of woman suffrage can show this, the ballot will not only be accorded her, but pressed upon her acceptance. If they cannot, the burden of proof rests upon them, it is neither wise nor womanly to insist upon having it. My long-established conviction is that the ballot in the hands of woman would not only subserve no

valuable end, but would work ill both in the family and in the state.

Would it aid woman? She suffers much from the brutality and cruelty of the stronger sex, no one doubts. Her wages in many cases are pitifully inadequate, and many have a hard lot, and none deplore it more deeply than men. Will the ballot remedy these evils? Will it tame the ferocity of a husband? Will it afford her more and better-paid employment? It fails to aid men in this respect. Probably ten men find nothing to do, to one woman. Within my observation, while men are seeking employment, employment is seeking woman. Will it give her better laws? I cannot see how, as she has but to suggest any enactment for the betterment of her condition, and our legislatures will hasten to write it in their statute-books. Woman suffrage cannot be relied upon as the remedy of woman's ills.

While not disposed to question the sincerity of woman suffragists, I cannot regard the movement as creditable to woman's good sense. It seems to me, and I think to the great public, as a revolt against marriage in its true import, owing its genesis and inspiration largely to the absence of domestic affection. It appears more like a revenge than a reform, finding its incentives and reasons for being largely in man's alleged tyranny, selfishness, and oppression, the consequent hard lot of woman, and her need of protection. One woman, somewhat prominent, my daily informs me, recommends to her sisters the use of dynamite to bring men to a better mind. These considerations, whispered in closets and shrieked on public platforms, have not been happy in their results. They have created in many an unreflecting woman unrest, and dissatisfaction with her divinely appointed sphere; lowered her estimation of the sacredness of her position as wife, and mother, and mistress of a home; thrown the apple of discord into thousands of otherwise happy families, and