y; therefore men and women properly have a joint
heritage in its exactions and its privileges. But government is a
passing phase in the evolution of the social system: when men are
perfected, it will vanish in spontaneous obedience. War or crude
violence universally governed in the primitive society. Little by
little, this barbaric reign of force was encroached upon and
superseded by politics, the forms of statesmanship and legislation.
Then, little by little, the realm and rule of politics began to
shrink before the increasing sway of conscience, reason, and
sympathy, the personal law of justice and love, the intrinsic motives
appropriated by the private heart from society and religion. As war
has been narrowing and receding before politics, politics in turn
must narrow and recede before morality. The less need a nation has of
governmental interference for the securing of justice, the better off
that nation is. The smaller the number of persons engaged in working
that political mechanism, which is never productive, but merely
regulative, the better it would seem to be for the people. We do not
desire ever to see a woman occupy the office of a hangman, nor of a
prosecuting attorney, nor yet of an electioneering politician;
because, these being transient accompaniments of an imperfect
society, the desideratum is to have concentrated on them the interest
and energy of the smallest number competent to secure the needful
results of order. He who believes that a universal devotion to
politics would most speedily achieve the end of politics, namely, the
supersedure of its whole machinery by the arrival at a self-
rectifying observance of the conditions of private and public
welfare--must advocate the bestowment of legislative and other public
functions on women. Let all take part in voting and governing, for
the sake of more quickly reaching the time when none shall vote or
govern, but every one be a law unto himself. On the contrary, he who
believes that a universal rush into public life, forensic
controversy, party and personal rivalry, would exasperate the
interest, and prolong the dominion, of politics, must earnestly
recommend women to abstain from the struggle. Whatever logical right
they may have, he will think it best that they abandon that right,
and devote their zeal to the sphere of morality, whose elements are
the eternal concern of all humankind. A wider outbreak of plots and
cabals, an enlargement of the chase f