as
long as they had a house needing to be kept--are deserted by the sole
occupation for which they have fitted themselves; and remain with
undiminished activity but with no employment for it, unless perhaps a
daughter or daughter-in-law is willing to abdicate in their favour
the discharge of the same functions in her younger household. Surely
a hard lot for the old age of those who have worthily discharged, as
long as it was given to them to discharge, what the world accounts
their only social duty. Of such women, and of those others to whom
this duty has not been committed at all--many of whom pine through
life with the consciousness of thwarted vocations, and activities
which are not suffered to expand--the only resources, speaking
generally, are religion and charity. But their religion, though it
may be one of feeling, and of ceremonial observance, cannot be a
religion of action, unless in the form of charity. For charity many
of them are by nature admirably fitted; but to practise it usefully,
or even without doing mischief, requires the education, the manifold
preparation, the knowledge and the thinking powers, of a skilful
administrator. There are few of the administrative functions of
government for which a person would not be fit, who is fit to bestow
charity usefully. In this as in other cases (pre-eminently in that of
the education of children), the duties permitted to women cannot be
performed properly, without their being trained for duties which, to
the great loss of society, are not permitted to them. And here let me
notice the singular way in which the question of women's disabilities
is frequently presented to view, by those who find it easier to draw
a ludicrous picture of what they do not like, than to answer the
arguments for it. When it is suggested that women's executive
capacities and prudent counsels might sometimes be found valuable in
affairs of state, these lovers of fun hold up to the ridicule of the
world, as sitting in parliament or in the cabinet, girls in their
teens, or young wives of two or three and twenty, transported bodily,
exactly as they are, from the drawing-room to the House of Commons.
They forget that males are not usually selected at this early age for
a seat in Parliament, or for responsible political functions. Common
sense would tell them that if such trusts were confided to women, it
would be to such as having no special vocation for married life, or
preferring another emp