Rutland weekly herald. [volume] (Rutland, Vt.) 1859-1877, 1870-03-03

6Os ~ ~~~S SAASSAAA63 40 AAAsSAANSeA3 'A'SA'
less any insult to anybody. There was
much well said, worth hearing and re-
membering. The friendship of every
man and woman who spoke would be
worth having. It is meant that what was
said is as fairly set out in the above as it
is in the assumption that any one or all
of the speakers proved that it is best for
woman to vote. It is meant that plausi-
bility is not argument.
Believing that the best good for all,
possible under the circumstances of the
times is the nearest to "perfect and alb
stract right" in this world that the
consent of the governed il, in It's literal
sense, impossible from every human be-
ing that "the consent of the governed"
in its best sense, may be as safely and
perfectly given by the true wife who
trusts because she believes and knows, as
by the child that clings instinctively 4;
that community of interest makes it the
duty of each sex to do its best part; that
community of feeling prompts all that is
done by one sex to relieve and help the
other that the wrongs of women are re-
ally the wrongs of men as we'll; that the
legislation of the country in relation to
woman has been constant effort to be
Just to her; that State laws cannot regu-
late what must be left to the laws of the
social, commercial and political world /;
that there is somewhere division of the
forms of labor and duty as between men
and women; that the husband and wife
cannot both be regarded by the law as the
technical, legal oustodians of the same
thing, without involving the law in alb
surdities and endangering the marriage
relation that the ballot is more than a
right, that it is duty; that education is
more than the ballot; that majority of
men, that majority of women, are to-
day ignorant; that majority of ignorant
men and women cannot vote to better
purpose than men now vote; that all the
right voting is directed by the few who
bring honesty and ability to bear on the
hearts and minds of the people that wo-
man asking the ballot, on the ground that
man will not and cannot be Just to her,
will create antagonism; that everything
depends on preserving and extending the
community of interest and of feeling,
which are abandoned when there is sub
stituted community of rights demanded
by one sex or the other to be enforced by
civil law; that woman does not need the
ballot; that, being useless to her, it will
be, in her hands, dangerous believing all
this and more than can with reason be
stated, many thinking men and women
will continue to deprecate this movement.
If it is argued that, as between the
whites and blacks of the South, commu-
nifty of interest and of feeling should
have been relied on to work out the prob
lem of "the antagonism of races" the an
swer is clear. Community of interest
there was; community of feeling was
wanting, and in its place was prejudice,
all against the negro, and added to preiu-
dice were the jealousy and hate that
would seek cruel revenge. There was the
necessity for the civil law to protect the
weak against the strong.
AS between the sexes, this prejudice
and hate do not exist. The right preju-
dice, the right feeling do exist, and they
are that of one sex for, not against, the
other. The jealousy should be, and is, of
whatever comes between the sexes to Gre
ate antagonism.
Would that earnest men and women
would go about, showing that education
and culture, of both heart and mind,
when allowed to do their complete work,
will secure the perfect and abstract
right" Of every HUMAN being; and that
these reforming graces cannot do their
work except as the common interest, dis
position, heart and will, beat in unison,
the civil law yielding gradually. to the
social law that no written code can COM
prehend. Let us hesitate before abandon
ing anything that has been gained in this
direction. II.