n abused community, and that all the men are great
tyrants and rascals, proves plainly enough that they--the women--are
somehow discontented, and that they have, perhaps, a certain amount of
courage, but I cannot see that it proves them to have any remarkable
strength of mind.

Really strong-minded women are not women of words, but of deeds; not
of resolutions, but of actions. History does not teach me that they
have ever consumed much time in conventions and in passing resolutions
about their rights; but they have been very prompt to assert their
rights, and to defend them too, and to take the consequences of
defeat.

Thus all history is full of startling examples of female heroism,
which prove that woman's heart is made of as stout a stuff and of as
brave a mettle as that which beats within the ribs of the coarser sex.
And if we were permitted to descend from this high plane of public
history into the private homes of the world, in which sex, think you,
should we there find the purest spirit of heroism? Who suffers sorrow
and pain with the most heroism of heart? Who, in the midst of poverty,
neglect and crushing despair, holds on most bravely through the
terrible struggle, and never yields even to the fearful demands of
necessity until death wrests the last weapon of defence from her
hands? Ah, if all this unwritten heroism of woman could be brought to
the light, even man himself would cast his proud wreath of fame at her
feet!

Rousseau asserts that "all great revolutions were owing to women." The
French Revolution, the last great and stirring event upon which the
world looks back, arose, as Burke ill-naturedly expresses it, "amidst
the yells and violence of women." We accept the compliment which Burke
here pays to the power of woman, and attribute the coarseness of his
language to the bitter repugnance which every Englishman of that day
had to everything that was French. No, Mr. Burke, it was not by "yells
and violence" that the great women of France helped on that mighty
revolution--it was by the combined power of intellect and beauty. Nor
will women who get together in conventions for the purpose of berating
men, ever accomplish anything. They can effect legislation only by
quiet and judicious counsel, with such means as control the judgment
and the heart of legislators. And the experience of the world has
pretty well proved that a man's judgment is pretty easily controlled
when his heart is once persuaded.