The new Northwest. [volume] (Portland, Or.) 1871-1887, 1876-09-29
REASON VS.. TRADITION.
NUMBER TWO.
BY MRS. H. L. NJ CORD.

BY MRS. H. L. NJ CORD.
1t is claimed by men that they have
right to act as their nature prompts
them-as beasts, birds, ETC., in their re-
spective spheres. At the same time
they maintain that certain privileges
conferred upon woman would make of
her an untamed creature, liable to scale
the barriers the Almighty has marked
out for her, and forsake her sphere.
We are inquisitive enough to ask if any
of His creatures are given to sphere
forsaking? 1t is just as impossible for
woman to change her nature as it is
to change the nature of bird; and, as
the song of bird in captivity is shorn
of half its sweetness, so the goodness of
woman is shorn of half its strength and
beauty from unjust restrictions imposed
by fetters that circumscribe and confine
her spirit in the custody of grim and
ancient custom.
1t has ever been a difficult matter to
impress upon humanity the grand idea
that the freer people are, the happier
their conditions. 1t is so between man
and man, between servant and master.
Treating others opinions with kindness
and liberation not only insures happi-
ness to others, but it is the most de-
sirable discipline for our daily lives. In
the wild and turbulent days of the
Middle Ages, when kings and mobiles
held vast estates and lived in strong
castles, they considered them theirs by
right, and the people generally thought
so too. They thought king had a
right to live in luxury and splendor, to
lord it over the country, and compel the
masses of the people to pay nearly all
their earnings in rents and taxes; to
raise armies whenever he commanded
them to go and fight when he became
involved in quarrels with his neighbors
and why? Simply because his fathe1
had done these things before him
Now the rising genius of liberty asks
But what right had his father to de
these things? Nobody in those misty
days dared raise the question, but sub
mitted to the power willingly. They
had blind veneration for ancient i'm
ages and established customs, having
been taught from infancy that king
had right to reign, and mobiles to thei
estates, and that the God of nature
(whom they believed to be JUST, haC
imposed toll and burden upon them al
the days of their lives, and that tt
demur would be a downright sill
against the decree of Providence.
While hereditary rule was not al
together without its beneficial result
in those savage times, those mouIdy
ideas of the Divine prerogatives o
popes and kings are fast losing thei
hold on the human mind-that vast re
ceptacle of acknowledgement reachin,
out, impelled by its own innate necessi
ties, for broader and higher liberties
While in our day the art of self-govern
ment is so imperfectly understood, w
can look back to the time of intellectual
darkness where it was not understoo,
at all. For many centuries Europe wa
held in the bondage of superstition S
completely that even monarchs in thei
thrones were silenced by the thunder
from the vatican. With Martin Luthe
came the first rays of individual righ
to interpret the Scriptures, emanci
pating, to a great extent, priest-ridde
humanity. God-given reason and fail
- faced science have since advanced an
taken possession of the worlds vine
, yard, and, at their hands, these oI
dogmas are going, one by one, throug
, the crucible, while we look on wit
hopeful, wistful gaze, hoping to behol
the speedy separation of the dross fror
), the gold.