The new Northwest. [volume] (Portland, Or.) 1871-1887, 1874-04-17
h enactire by casting her vote into the

and laws, especially as they themselves
constitute the government and hold the
power to amend constitutions and re-
peal laws.
The trouble is, American citizens do
not vet appreciate the dignity of their
position nor the responsibility that self
government involves.
What should we say Of an individual
who made a set of rules to regulate his
everyday life, and then trampled them
all under foot ? We should say that be
was incapable of seif-government.
What shall we say of a people who have
Iepislated nearly a century on alcohol as
a factor in their political, religious, COM
nercial and social relations, who, in
stead of revising their statutes and Wig
orously enforcing their laws, ignore the
personal and property rights Of one class
of their citizens, and send their women
into the by-ways and sinks of iniquity
and vice in towns and cities to pray
down the evils and crimes they vote up?
We should say such people are inca
pable of self-government.
If the hour has come when men see
that the "moral necessity" of the nation
demands woman's help, let it be asked
and given in line with law. Let her be
recognized as n component part of the
! legislative, judicial and executive
branches of the government.
l would rather, by my vote and voice
in the laws, regulate the whisky traffic
and uniformly protect the people against
j rapacity of liquor dealers, than by an
occasional spirit OF enthusiasm make
the obscure dram-seller odiOus and set
one drunkard on his feet again. con-
slider it a cruel waste of woman's
- nd 1.
be forever patching the rents man so
recklessly makes in the world of NOR
ais.
would rather, with the purse IN my
own hand, buy good substantial suit of
clothes for my boy, put his feet in the
best English stockings, double heels and
toes, and with the ballot in my own
hand secure free-trade, good cloth and
stockings at low prices, then to spend
my days patching the cheap things that
! paterfamilias might purchase under his
system of protection.
1t is a degradation of the religious
element in woman TO use it exclusively,
as men do now, to mitigate by indirect
/ influence the crimes of their making,
instead. of, by direct power, preventing
them.
Instead of teaching a higher moral
code in our pulpits, and sealing it at the
ballOt-box, as the matrons of this Re
public have a right to do, shall woman,
insulted by Brooklyn Presbytery and
Boston School Board, be granted no
higher mission for good than as humble
petitioners at the feet of drunkards and
rum-sellers in a dram-shop?
Shall woman's political sagacity as to
war, finance, and social life always
manifest itself in scraping lint, saving
pennies and fishing for drunkards in the
muddy parts Of our cities?
Woman's sympathy in great national
calamities needs some other expression
than prayers and tears.
We have had sympathy enough
poured out from heart-broken mothers,
wives and daughters, to sober every
drunkard in the universe, but sympathy
as civil agent is vague and powerless
until caught and chained in logical, ir-
refragible propositions, and coined into
State law. The dignified way for women
TO express their opinions on all ques-
tions of national policy is In convention,
in tbe halls of legislation, in the pulpit,
in the press, and at the fireside, and vote
them at the ballot-boX conscientiously
and religiously as the most sacred duty
the American citizen can execute.
Mobs in the streets, on the walks,
or crowding into halls and neighborsi
houses, are all alike TO be deplored. The
den of the rum-seller, in by-lane, with
law and the Constitution on his side, and
the American flag over his head, is, in
one sense, as sacIedly entrenched as the
wine-bibbing nabob in his palace in
Fifth Avenue, who treats our sons and
daughters to champagne and sherry.
We must take from both the protection
of the flag, the law and public senti-
ment, and where every psalm and
prayer, is backed by vote the devil
himself will begin to tremble. But he
will laugh in his sleeve at woman's in
fiuence so long as by law, gospel and
public sentiment, she is a slave in the
State, the Church and the home.
There is a body of women in this
country who believe they have the
right OF suffrage, and that the best in.
terests of the nation demand the recog-
milton of their rights.
How would it be for them to COM
mence a campaign of singing and prayer
: in all the State Legislatures and at the
National Capitol, interrupting the regu
lar business, until their wrongs were re
dressed.
Much of the business done under thesi
domes is as depicting to the nationa
treasure as the whisky traffic, and
! might be rs beneficial to public morals
! to bring our representatives, as dram
sellers, to repentance.
But without some form of govern
! ment we should have anarchy. Hence
{ we patiently submit to unjust laws, un
til, by educating public sentiment, W
can repeal them.
) When laws and customs are so op
pressive as to be no longer endured
when resistance is so general as to carr.
everything before it, then a mOvemen
= rises to the dignity of a revolution; any
thing short of this is mob law, and, il
the end, does more harm than good.
e The lesson these women in Ohio ar
learning to-day they will teach thei
sons at their hearthstones. They praC
tically say TO them now, votes, laws
e constitutions are nothing, when you sc
i evils and crimes 60 forth with song
and prayers and a "thus saith the Lord
J in your mouth, and turn and overturl
{ at your good pleasure. Shall labor thu
{ settle its wrongs with capital in ou
mines, manufactures and metropolis
= Shall those interested in sailors right
d besiege every tyrannieal captain an
keep him in harbor until his heart
e softened? Shall prison reformers pitcl
Is their tents within those gloomy wall
: until they melt the strong keepers an
e iron doors and set the victims free?
10 There is better way to a higher civ
It liZation than this, that is to organic
! the faith, enthusiasm, spirit1alit,
e moral power Of woman, and, in combiI
b alton with the best qualities of mar
y hood, incorporate it with the laws an
Ie constitutions of the Republic Wenee
this united thought to-day in govern
Is ment. IA military necessity eigI