Weekly national intelligencer., 1857-10-17

calleo, not only In our own Sio~ss"s v -s~P-S
Iics,o but in other popular Governments; the IN
auence of woman having often been most visible in
precisely those lands where the civil statutes gave it
| least place among the recognised powers that be.
The Salic law has kept woman from mounting the
throne of Franee but it has not prevented her from
ruling the grande nation in the person now of a
Madame DE MAINTENoN and now of Marchioness
DU PoMPADoUR.
History" says de Tocqueville, !" is picture
gallery, in which there are few originals, but an
abundance of copies" This, we suppose, is little
more than liberal version in French of the wise
saying, uttered some years before by not mob
servant critic of men and things in the land of
Judea, when he said "there was nothing new under
the sun, and the thing that has been is the thing
that shall be-" Certain at least it is that the Wo-
mans Rights movement is not modern sswrin-
ke on the face of society, and can plead an his
torica precedent as ancient as the days of Aspasa
who, unless the muse of history has greatly misre-
presented her character, was Female Reformer of
the most approved type She it was who first
sought to emancipate the Athenian women from the
gynaceum and the nursery; and how admirably
she succeeded in bending the politicians and the phi
losophers to her way of thinking is written with
sufficient clearness in the life of Pericles and
Socrates. Or, if we would catch the manners liv-
ing as they in that most brilliant and exciting
period of Grecian story, we have but to turn the
pages of the great comic dramatist of that day to
fa.l vurvoiros witL philosophers and politi-
clans In petticoats, of whom it is only fair to say
that they have left little nothing for the strong
minded sisterhood of the present time to promul-
gate in the name of "woman's rights" In Illus
tration OF this truth have but to designate the
Arlstophanc drama and to particularize such plays
as the Lysastrata, the Thesmophoriazusa, and es-
pecialy that richest and most descriptive of them
all, the Ecc1esiazuss, or politicians" Themo-
dern Bloomerite, who has adventured to usurp the
most distinctive badges of masculine attire will find
in perusal of the drama last named that the more
reselute matrons of Athens, nearly five centuries
before the Christian era, had shown themselves ca
pable of much profounder plans aud much more ra-
dica measures of reform for we learn from Arsto-
phanes that they had actually contemplated coup
dstat without parallel in history, being no less
than that of appropriating to themselves, in the
men was buried in Sleep every article of manly attire
in the city leaving to the "mae inhabitants nothing
wherewthal to cothe themselves save the cast-of in
sigma of feminiy while, as part of the programme
platform of political principles was to be promul-
gated in the Pnyx sufficiently liberal one would
think to meet the appreciation of Mary Wolston-
crafts or Fanny Wright, embracing as it did the
following somewhat radical provisions: " Commu-
nifty of goods, community of women, the children
to be considered and educated the children of the
State, no more COURTS jails, no more crimi-
nal prosecutions, the halls of justice to be turned
into eatingsaloons free bills of fare for all Athe
MANS" If this platform has ever yet been out
done by any progressive Democracy" male,
female, French we have yet to discover its re-
cord. Behold all these things; are they not writ
ten in the Ecclesaazuse before the year of grace
394?
The American Republic has of late years wit
messed some jealous movements in the name of that
reform which has the " rights of woman y for its
watchword and its slogan, but they have all been
modest compared with those of the Athenian Prax-
agore who greet us in the page of Arstophanes
Indeed such has seemed the stolidity of the female
sex among us that their political rights have
doubtless suffered quite as much from their own
laches in emitting to assert them as from the sell
hshness of the masculine sovereigns in arrogat-
ing to themselves the sole proprety" of the cleo
tive franchise In these latter days, however, when
it has become so common to change State constitu-
tions and extend the rights of suffrage, it would
seem not improbable that the next development of
our progressive Democracy will bring fulflment
of that "good time coming" to which few of
the more aspiring and " strong minded of the sex
have been recently directing their struggles and
their hopes. And to prove that we are not less
Liberal in our creed than WIS Richard Henry Lee,
and that our respect for widows and never-mar-
ned women, who have lands in their own right is
quite as great as his when he calls it greatest"
we are free not only to join with him in the con-
sent to establish their right of voting" but would
go even further, and venture for one experimental
period to commit the destinies of the Republic in
their hands alone assured as we are that they would
discharge the electoral duties of free women quite
as intelIgently as the "male inhabitants to whom
they are now committed. For, SO long as the bust
ness of choosing Representatives Presidents, Sc.
is conducted in the midst Of "tumultuous assem-
blies of men," we have little hope that the mo-
desty of American ladies will permit them to assert
their !" inalienable rights" This is doubtless
weakness on their part, but is nevertheless one
which they can hardly be expected to outgrow in
generation or two; as the Western orator recently
remarked in explanation of the slender growth with
which the tenets of his party seemed blessed in this
country, "a experience has that great truths
make slow progress among mankind, however plain
they may be to others"
Our readers are perhaps aware that in the early
of the Renuhlic the ricrht &c .ro4;ae. zaa az