The Daily state journal. [volume] (Alexandria, Va.) 1868-1874, 1871-11-24
One year..."..... 81 80 six months.
CLUB RATES FOR SEMI-wEEKLY:
FRIDAY EVENING. NOV. "a, 1871,
SOCIAL FREEDOM.

ture of Mrs. Victoria Woodruff, on the
principles of Social Freedom" delivered
at Steinway Hall last Monday evening.
Our readers need not be informed that Mrs.
Woodruff goes the entire length of discard
ing all marriage obligations imposed by
law, leaving the parties to the marriage
contract entirely free to remain together or
to separate as each may choose, or as either
may choose. Marriage, according to her
notion, is voluntary union of any two
persons-the opposites in sex--who may
come together on the principle of natural
selection, as Mr.. Darwin would say, and
not on any principle outside of nature, such
as may be absurdly formulated into law.
She asserts that nature determines the
relation, and that the point at which mar
riage begins is fixed by the law Of love and
not by human enactment. Hence, as a
corollary to this proposition, she derives the
further formula, that law has nothing more
to do with marriage than it has with love it.
self. If the law Of marriage were abroga-
ted tomorrow, all the chaos. and confusion
in the married world would cease, and every
thing be turned into harmony and order.
All the Victoria Woodhulls, Theodore.Til-
tons, and Stephen Pearl Andrewses, would
be the happiest men and women alive, and
such perfect heaven of blissful beatitude
let down upon earth as the world has never
seen since the first unhappy pair of Stree
lovers" reluctantly took their walking pa
pcrs out OF Paradise!
This is substantially the position of Mrs.
Victoria Woodruff, in her Steinway Hall
lecture. But she goes even further, and
asserts that frce-love is to be an integral
part of the religion of the future. tits the
inalienable, constitutional, and natural
right of every woman (of the Mrs. Wood
hull stamp to love whom she pleases, and,
rice versa, the equally inalneable right of
every man to recprocate or not as he pleases.
Love is thing that cannot be hampered or
tied down by statute. 1t has right to
glow in Mrs. Woodhull's breast just as
long and as feryently as it chooses to glow,
and no law that man can frame has right
to rob her of the ecstacy. All this is very
true. We admit it. But Mrs. Woodruff
is not the only woman in the world whose
heart may glow. There are several hun
dred million of other women whose hearts
have an equal right to glow with hers, and
it is likely that they glow with quite as
much fervency, if not purity Of fire, as her
own. The law would no sooner think Of
restraining diamond from flashing the sun
light than it would Mrs. Woodhull's heart
from glowing. What it would restrain is
this It's promiscuous gloaoil,g to otte,
ac)mea's detriment. And precisely here
Is where the law steps in and essentially in
terferes with her free-love arrangement,
when she happens to have one upon the
tapis affecting another woman's rights. For
that other woman, whoever she may be, has
rights just as inalenableand sacred as Mrs.
Woodhull's, and if she has fastened her az
fections upon her opposite in sex, and they
have been reciprocated, with or without a
legal sanction, it is her right to demand
that Mrs. Woodruff shall keep out of the
way-that her heart shall not glow too WIS.,
IDLY in that direction. 1t is idle for Mrs.
Woodruff or any other woman to say that
she cannot control her own affections, and
that if she finds another woman's husband
more loveable than her own, she must
Ego" for him as matter of course. She
makes herself worse than a woman of the
town when she says this, and asserts
that the law of ''natural selection" is all
on one side, with the right of woman to
tempt, and man to fall, as in the case of
primeval sin. Marriage is a contract, as
Mrs. Woodruff admits; and contract i'm
plies inviolability of good faith On the part
of those contracting. 1t is mutual obi
CATION at first, freely entered into by the
Composites in SEX" but when the pact
is once made, the rights of the parties are
fixed, and neither of them can shake off
the obligations which an inviolable amity
imposes. But Mrs. Woodruff steps in here
with her objection, that this thing called
inviolable amity has no place in the con-
trlct-that the law only imposes it,
while the consent of the parties to
the imposition land gross one it
is, according to the free-lovers,) was never,
in fact, obtained; and the Steinway Hall
lecturer boldly asserts at this point of the
argument, that the law has no right to i'm
pose restrictions in regard to marriage, any
more than it has to impose them in regard
to love or the current Of the natural affec-
tionE. This is bold reasoning. 1t is knock
ing the sand from under the logical subject
before she even touches the predicate, and
leaves her no foot-hold in the argument but
to land the affections in universal incest
and cohabitation Of nearly related sexes.
The laws Of all civilized countries, as well
as of all barbaric peoples, does layl restric-
tons upon marriage so far as to prohibit
the contract as between the nearer degrees
of consanguinity, and if Mrs. Woodruff
and her crazy associates, of the Steinwsy
Hall school, desire to reyolutionize the