en husbands will no longer control their wives'
earnings, and a chief justice will no longer order a child to be removed
from its mother, amid its tears and outcries, merely because that mother
has married again. And if, as we are constantly assured, woman's first duty
is to her home and her children, she may count it a good beginning in
statesmanship to secure to herself the means of protecting both. That once
settled, it will be time enough to "interview" her in respect to the proper
rate of duty on pig-iron.

TOO MUCH PREDICTION

"Seek not to proticipate," says Mrs. Gamp, the venerable nurse in "Martin
Chuzzlewit"--"but take 'em as they come, and as they go." I am persuaded
that our woman-suffrage arguments would be improved by this sage counsel,
and that at present we indulge in too many bold anticipations.

Is there not altogether too much tendency to predict what women will do
when they vote? Could that good time come to-morrow, we should be startled
to find to how many different opinions and "causes" the new voters were
already pledged. One speaker wishes that women should be emancipated,
because of the fidelity with which they are sure to support certain
desirable measures, as peace, order, freedom, temperance, righteousness,
and judgment to come. Then the next speaker has his or her schedule of
political virtues and is equally confident that women, if once
enfranchised, will guarantee clear majorities for them all. The trouble is
that we thus mortgage this new party of the future, past relief, beyond
possibility of payment, and incur the ridicule of the unsanctified by
committing our cause to a great many contradictory pledges.

I know an able and high-minded woman of foreign birth, who courageously,
but as I think mistakenly, calls herself an atheist, and who has for years
advocated woman suffrage as the only antidote to the rule of the clergy. On
the other hand, an able speaker in a Boston convention soon after advocated
the same thing as the best way of defeating atheism, and securing the
positive assertion of religion by the community. Both cannot be correct:
neither is entitled to speak for woman. That being the case, would it not
be better to keep clear of this dangerous ground of prediction, and keep to
the argument based on rights and needs? If our theory of government be
worth anything, woman has the same right to the ballot that man has: she
certainly needs it as much for self-defence. How s