The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-05-17
sP1R1x OF TEE RRnss.
Editorial Opinions Of the Leading Journals
upon Current Topics-Compiled Every
Day for the Evening Telegraph
HARMLESS DOVES.

has unpleasantly disturbed the heretofore
amicable relations of the sexes, shaken the
ancient peace of many connubial bower,
and added new terrors to matrimony in many
a celibate mind. OF course, we do not for
moment believe this to have been the object
of its promoters. We dare say, indeed, that
the most earnest and the most estimable of
their number will be loudest in denying that
any such effects have been produced by it.
But, with the deepest respect for these earn
est and estimable souls, we must beg them to
remember that we speak as men speaking of
men and for men, and to reflect that no
woman can possibly enter like man into
the nature of man. Our excellent but
erring sisters know not fully what they
are doing. We know whereof we affirm,
and we are sorry to know it. Aris-
tophanes has painted SO lively picture of
the disastrous domestic consequences ensu-
ing upon great secession or barring out
of the female sex in antique Athens that one
may well be excused for contemplating with
some uneasiness the prospect of similar
policy to be suddenly adopted by the mascu-
line population of modern New York. We
desire to avert so dreadful possibility and
with this end we entreat our fellow-creatures
of the male sex to look with us at this new
peril calmly for a brief season, confident as
we are that the matter, when fearlessly gone
into, will lose the greater part of its terrors.
t'Fling but stone, the giantess will fall.
One of the most implacable prophetesses of
female suffrage" Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, in
discourse delivered by her during the
past week in this city, declared that she
and her sisters who think with her had
come to the metropolis, not even as Amazons,
still less as Fates or Furies. 'We are here"
she exclaimed, "as harmless doves" The
dove, to be sure, with all the soft susurous
Nf ifc
a rather dangerous bird. The doves of Venus,
in the old mythology, lent the wings of their
speed to their mistress swooping upon Pha-
dra for her prey. And the "soiled doves" of
modern London and Paris have not seldom
fed upon the substance and the souls of men
as fercely and as unappeasably as the vultures
of Prometheus upon the liver of that unap-
preciated inventor. But the voice of the
turtle has for ages been the symbol of peace
and of the springing year. Billing and COO
ing, gently ruffiing its full plumage, and
softly swelling its deep bosom, the beauteous
creature heralds May and youth and love- Is
the voice, then, of Mrs. Howe and of her sis
ters, the voice of Miss Lucy Stone and of Mr..
Tilton and the rest, in very truth as the voice
of the turtle? We believe it so to be, and,
like Mr.. Richard Swivellef reposing upon his
faith in Miss Sophy Wackles, 1--WE are blest in
SO believing"
Mrs. Stanton, it is true, would have us un-
derstand that the ladies and gentlemen who
have thus suddenly added new terror to an
niversary week are really but the vanguard of
great Amazonian host moving forward to a
battle long, desperate and deep as that
through which the legions of anti-slavery for
thirty years contended unto victory. She de-
clares that ''fifteen millions" of American
women are rising upon us, determined to
vote or die. But, then, Mrs. Stanton herself
gives us reason to hesitate over her statistics
when she unguardedly admits that consid-
cradle number of these ''ffteen millions
whom she recently persuaded in the state of
Missouri to sign petitions demanding 1.-The
franchise" came vehemently back upon her,
some malignant wretch of a man had
explained to them that in asking for
the franchise they had asked for the right
to VOTE They were Mortified at the disco
very. The dear, devout souls had innocently
imagined, as Mrs. Stanton ingenuously con-
fesses that ''the franchise meant something
to do with the church" OF course, Mrs.
Stanton regards such conduct as this as con-
temptible. But it really proves these good
Missouri women to possess an intrinsic, in
tuitive sense of their real mission and of the
true nature of their power in the world,
which seems to us much better even than an
exact knowledge of etymology or hot zeal
in party politics. The qualities which lead
women to take deeper interest in church
affairs than in affairs of State are precisely
the qualities through which nature offers
them an influence, even in affairs of State,
far greater and nobler than any which can
be symbolized by the ballot or exerted
through the polls. The right of suffrage,
after all, is not a power, but an instrument.
You may give man the right of suffrage as
Oiu 1N,,ffh fha
possession of the one will do but little more
than the mere possession of the other to
make him an influence among his fellows.
What the Emperor Napoleon was sensible
enough to see to be the truth concerning
crowned heads and their armies is equally
true concerning the voters of a political
party and their ballots. Bayonets may esta
blish order in Warsaw, and ballots may
reconstruct Georgia, or erect Chinese wal
of tariffs between the industries of ont
people and the needs of another. But there
is new power, making itself daily more anC
more the master of the world, of parties an(
of princes, of bayonets and of ballots, anC
this power is public opinion. Whatever may
be the war, and how long soever it may b.
waged, it is public opinion which wins il
the end In this very anti-slavery war, o
which the female-suffrage movement il
so idly thought to prefgure the re
Vlva under another form, woman, by he
natural influence in the church and in the
home, In literature and society, was incom
parably more powerful than man with hi
platforms and his ballots. In whatever new
developments of liberty and whatever modi
fications OF law may await the relations O
the sexes, woman, we may be sure. will sti
exert her influence through the channels i
which it naturally moves. One of the NAL
champions of the suffrage chimera in luci
moment, on one of the last weeks platform
nv,oxaooad his helief that sStha o,,i,, -. :. =: "a