ey ought to
want; that they had as much as was good for them. The woman must
obey in consideration of the kind protection which her lord
vouchsafes to her. The wife's property ought to belong to the
husband, because upon him the law casts the burden of sustaining
the family. There must be a ruler, and the husband ought to be
that one. But this is the same principle which, during thousands
of years, maintained the divine right of kings. When we apply it
to our system of suffrage the number of sovereigns is increased,
that is all. It is a recognition of the divine right of man to
legislate for himself and woman too. It is only a difference in
the number of autocrats and the manner in which their decrees are
promulgated....

By what argument can a man defend his own suffrage as a right and
not concede an equal right to woman? A just man ought to accord
to every other human being, even his own wife, the rights which
he demands himself.

"But she has her sphere and she ought not go beyond it." My
friend, who gave you the right to determine what that sphere
should be? If nature prescribes it, nature will carry out her own
ordinances without your prohibitory legislation. I have the
greatest contempt for the sort of legislation which seeks to
enable nature to carry out her own immutable laws. I would have
very little respect for any decree, enacted with whatever
solemnity, which should prescribe that an object shall fall
towards the earth and not from it; and I have just as little
respect for any statute of man which enacts that women shall
continue to love and care for their children by shutting them out
from political action and preferment lest they should neglect the
duties of the household....

"But," say you, "woman is already adequately represented. She
does not form a separate class. She has no interests different
from those of her husband, brother or father." These arguments
have been used even by so eminent an authority as John Bright. Is
it indeed a fact? Wherever woman owns property which she would
relieve from unjust taxation; wherever she has a son whom she
would preserve from the temptations of intemperance, or a
daughter from the enticements of a libertine, or a husband from
the conscriptions of war, she has a separate int