and, therefore, all that we have to do is to carry out this
fundamentally right principle into wider application. It may easily be
done, if the cultivation of intellectual powers be carried on with the
same views and motives as were formerly the knowledge of domestic
duties, for the benefit of immediate relations, and for the fulfilment
of appointed duties. If society at large be benefited by such
cultivation, so much the better; but it ought to be no part of the
training of women to consider, with any personal views, what effect they
shall produce in or on society at large. The greatest benefit which they
can confer upon society is to be what they ought to be in all their
domestic relations; that is, to be what they ought to be, in all the
comprehensiveness of the term, as adapted to the present state of
society. Let no woman fancy that she can, by any exertion or services,
compensate for the neglect of her own peculiar duties as such. It is by
no means my intention to assert that women should be passive and
indifferent spectators of the great political questions which affect
the well-being of community; neither can I repeat the old adage, that
"women have nothing to do with politics." They have, and ought to have
much to do with politics. But in what way? It has been maintained that
their public participation in them would be fatal to the best interests
of society. How, then, are women to interfere in politics? As moral
agents; as representatives of the moral principle; as champions of the
right in preference to the expedient; by their endeavours to instil into
their relatives of the other sex the uncompromising sense of duty and
self-devotion, which ought to be _their_ ruling principles! The immense
influence which women possess will be most beneficial, if allowed to
flow in its natural channels, viz. domestic ones,--because it is of the
utmost importance to the existence of influence, that purity of motive
be unquestioned. It is by no means affirmed that women's political
feelings are always guided by the abstract principles of right and
wrong; but they are surely more likely to be so, if they themselves are
restrained from the public expression of them. Participation in scenes
of popular emotion has a natural tendency to warp conscience and
overcome charity. Now, conscience and charity (or love) are the very
essence of woman's beneficial influence; therefore every thing tending
to blunt the one and sour the other is