The Cecil Whig. [volume] (Elkton, Md.) 1841-current, 1874-08-29
WOMEN AND THE SUFFRAGE.

! Prof. Goodwin Smith has given in an
English magazine an unusually strong
argument against the woman suffrage
movement. 1t bears particularly against
the views of the late John Stuart Mill, as
they have been fully explained in his re-
Gently published autobiography. In an
swer to Mr.. Mills theory that the lot of
woman has been determined by mans will
that she should be the slave and he her
real origin of the present adjustment of
the social and political relations of the
sexes in the following language:
"' Society, both in this (the case of mar
riage) and other cases, has preferred to
attain its object by foul rather than by fair
means; but this is the only case in which
it has substantially persisted in them even
to the present day. This is Mr.. Mills
| fundamental assumption; and from it, as
every rational student of history is now
aware, conclusions utterly erroneous as
well as injurious to humanity must flow.
! The lot of the woman has not been deter
mined by the will of the man, at least in
any considerable degree. The lot both of
the man and the women has been deter
mined from age to age by circumstances
over which the will of neither of them had
much control, and which neither could be
blamed for accepting or failing to reverse.
Mr.. MILL and those who with him assume
that the man has always willed that he
should himself enjoy political rights, and
that the woman should be his slave, forget
that it is only in few countries that man
does enjoy political rights; and that, even
in those few countries, freedom is the birth
almost of yesterday. 1t may probably be
said that the number of men who have
really and freely exercised the suffrage up
to the present time is not much greater
than the number of those who have in diff.
ferent ages and in various ways laid down
their lives or made sacrifices of other kinds
in bringing the suffrage into existence.
In the early stages of civilization the
family was socially and legally, as we'll as
politically, unit. Its head represented
the whole household before the tribe, the
state, and all persons and bodies without;
while within he exercised absolute power
over all the members, male as we'll as fe-
male, over his sons as well as over his wife
and daughters. On the death of the head
place, and became the representative and
protector of the whole household, includ-
ing the widow of the deceased chief This
system, long retained in conservative Rome,
was there the source of the national re-
spect for authority, and, by an expansion
of feeling from the family to the commun-
ity, of the patriotism which produced and
sustained Roman greatness. But its traces
fingered far down in history. 1t was not
male tyranny that authorized Tudor
queen to send members of the royal house
hold to the Tower by her personal author
ity as the mistress of the family, without
regard to the common law against arbitrary
imprisonment. Such a constitution was
essential to the existence of the family in
primitive time; without it, the germs of
nations and of humanity would have per-
ished. To suppose that it was devised by
the male sex for the qualification of their
own tyrannical propensities would be most
absurd. 1t was at least as much ueces-
sity to the primitive woman as it was to
the primitive man. 1t is still necessity
| to woman in the countries where the prim-
tive type of society remains. What would
be the fate of female Bedouin if she
were suddenly invested with woman's
rights and emancipated from the protec
ton of her husband?
| That the present relation of women to
their husbands literally has its origin in
slavery, and is hideous relic of that system,
| is a theory which Mr.. Mills sets forth in
language such as, if it could sink into the
hearts of those to whom it is addressed,
would turn all affection to bitterness, and
divide every household against ITSELF
Yet this theory is without historical foun-
dalton. 1t seems, indeed like figure of
invective heedlessly converted into history
Even in the most primitive times, and those
in which the subsection of the women was
most complete, the wife was clearly distin-
guished from the slave. The lot of Sarah
is different from that of Hagar; the au-
thority of Hector over Andromache is abso-
lutte, yet no one can confound her position
with that of her handmaidens. The Ro-
man matron who sent her slave to be cruel
fed, the Southern matron who was the
fierce supporter of slavery, were not them
selves slaves. Whatever may now be obso-
lete in the relations of husband and wife is
not relic Of slavery, but of primitive mar
riage, and may be regarded as at worst an
arrangement once indispensable which has
survived its hour. Where real slavery has
existed it has extended to both sexes, and
it has ceased for both at the same time
Even the Oriental seclusion of women, per-
haps the worst condition in which the sex
has ever been, has its root, not in slave
owning propensity so much as in jealousy,
passion which, though extravagant and
detestable in its excessive manifestation, is
not without an element of affection. The
most beautiful building in the East is that
in which Shah Jehan rests by the side Of
Neurmahal."
The condition of the law regarding the
property of married women is accounted
for thus:
{" The anomalies in the property law
affecting married women, to which RENE
dial legislation has recently been directed,
are like whatever is obsolete in the rela-
tons between tho sexes generally, not de-
liberate iniquities, but survivals. They
are relics of feudalism, or of still more
primitive institutions Incorporated by feu-
dalism; and, while the system to which
they belonged existed, they were indis
pensable parts of it, and must have been
so regarded by both sexes alike. Any one
who is tolerably well informed ought to be
ashamed to represent them as the contriv-
ances of male injustice. 1t is not on one
sex only that the relics of feudalism have
borne hard"