e benefit of the world besides. Admitting, however--and we do admit
it, heartily--that women are endowed with peculiar talents for the
management of children, and men are better fitted than women for
training horses or managing swine,--which occupation requires the
greater mental culture? Which is likely to do the most for the benefit
of mankind? The proper care for her children, and attention to them,
does not necessarily prevent a woman from attending to matters of public
utility outside of her house.
And then there are the unmarried women, who were referred to previously,
that have not these household claims resting upon them. The objection
concerning the neglect of households does not touch their cases at all;
for they have neither children nor husbands to be neglected. That
unmarried women, who step out from the "private sanctity of their
homes," often accomplish much good by entering on the so much censured
public career, the lives of Florence Nightingale, Miss McPherson, and
Miss Dix, if there were no others, amply prove.
It is argued by some that, if women would exercise the privilege of the
franchise, she must be prepared to take the field as a soldier, or enter
the navy, as circumstances might require, in time of war. History
informs us that women have given valuable assistance in time of war,
even taking the field and fighting nobly for their country when their
valor was needed; and, in our own day, there is on record an instance of
a woman commanding a vessel during a long voyage over exceedingly
dangerous seas, and bringing it successfully into the desired port. But
apart from this, the fact is, the argument is simply used as a bugbear
to frighten the timid and deter them from claiming their just position,
both social and civil. By law, certain classes of men are exempt from
war, except in extreme cases, so that by no means all who vote, now, are
expected to fight. Then, women render an equivalent to the State, and
risk their lives in doing it, quite as much as soldiers or sailors; not,
however, in destroying human life, but in perpetuating it. As recruiting
agents, therefore, and the first drill-masters or instructors of the
members of future battalions, they serve the Government as effectually
as any standing army.
It does not follow, then, that as a consequence of being permitted to
vote, or being admitted to other privileges, women must load the cannon
or wield the sword. We wonder if the originato
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