ell, if woman can do these
things, they can't vote after all." I heard some boys discoursing
thus not long since. I told them they reminded me of a story I
heard of two Irishmen the first time they saw a locomotive with a
train of cars. As the majestic fire-horse, with all its grace and
polish, moved up to a station, stopped, and snorted, as its
mighty power was curbed, then slowly gathered up its forces again
and moved swiftly on--"be jabers," says Pat, "there's muscle for
you. What are we beside that giant?" They watched it intently
till out of sight, seemingly with real envy, as if oppressed with
a feeling of weakness and poverty before this unknown power; but
rallying at last, one says to the other: "No matter, Pat; let it
snort and dash on--it can't vote, after all."

Poor human nature wants something to look down on. No privileged
order ever did see the wrongs of its own victims, and why expect
the "white male citizen" to enfranchise woman without a
struggle--by a scratch of the pen to place themselves on a dead
level with their lowest order? And what a fall would that be, my
countrymen. In none of the nations of modern Europe is there a
class of women so degraded politically as are the women of these
Northern States. In the Old World, where the government is the
aristocracy, where it is considered a mark of nobility to share
its offices and powers--there women of rank have certain
hereditary rights which raise them above a majority of the men,
certain honors and privileges not granted to serfs or peasants.
In England woman may be Queen, hold office, and vote on some
questions. In the Southern States even the women were not
degraded below their working population, they were not humiliated
in seeing their coachmen, gardeners, and waiters go to the polls
to legislate on their interests; hence there was a pride and
dignity in their bearing not found in the women of the North, and
pluck in the chivalry before which Northern doughfaceism has ever
cowered. But here, where the ruling class, the aristocracy, is
"male," no matter whether washed or unwashed, lettered or
unlettered, rich or poor, black or white, here in this boasted
northern civilization, under the shadow of Bunker Hill and
Faneuil Hall, which Mr. Phillips proposes to cram down the