Volume II Part 18 (1/2)

I answer, because the questions are one and the same. We are not now discussing merely the right of suffrage for the African, or his status as a new-born citizen. Claiming his rights compels us to discuss the whole underlying question of government. This is the case in court. But when the judge shall have given his decision, that decision will cover the whole question of civil society, and the relations of every individual in it as a factor, an agent, an actor....

All over the world, the question to-day is, Who has a right to construct and administer law? Russia--gelid, frigid Russia--can not escape the question. Yea, he that sits on the Russian throne has proved himself a better democrat than any of us all, and is giving to-day more evidence of a genuine love of G.o.d, and of its partner emotion, love to man, in emanc.i.p.ating thirty million serfs, than many a proud democrat of America has ever given.

(Applause.) And the question of emanc.i.p.ation in Russia is only the preface to the next question, which doubtless he as clearly as any of us foresees--namely, the question of citizens.h.i.+p, and of the rights and functions of citizens.h.i.+p. In Italy, the question of who may partake of government has arisen, and there has been an immense widening of popular liberty there. Germany, that freezes at night and thaws out by day only enough to freeze up again at night, has also experienced as much agitation on this subject as the nature of the case will allow. And when all France, all Italy, all Russia, and all Great Britain shall have rounded out into perfect democratic liberty, it is to be hoped that, on the North side of the fence where it freezes first and the ice thaws out last, Germany will herself be thawed out in her turn, and come into the great circle of democratic nations.

Strange, that the mother of modern democracy should herself be stricken with such a palsy and with such lethargy! Strange, that in a nation in which was born and in which has inhered all the indomitableness of individualism should be so long unable to understand the secret of personal liberty! But all Europe to-day is being filled and agitated with this great question of the right of every man to citizens.h.i.+p; of the right of every man to make the laws that are to control him; and of the right of every man to administer the laws that are applicable to him. This is the question to-day in Great Britain. The question that is being agitated from the throne down to the Birmingham shop, from the Atlantic to the North Sea, to-day, is this: Shall more than one man in six in Great Britain be allowed to vote? There is only one in six of the full-grown men in that nation that can vote to-day.

And everywhere we are moving toward that sound, solid, final ground--namely, that it inheres in the radical notion of manhood that every man has a right which is not given to him by potentate nor by legislator, nor by the consent of the community, but which belongs to his structural idea, and is a divine right, to make the laws that control him, and to elect the magistrates that are to administer those laws. It is universal.

And now, this being the world-tide and tendency, what is there in history, what is there in physiology, what is there in experience, that shall say to this tendency, marking the line of s.e.x, ”Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther?” I roll the argument off from my shoulders, and I challenge the man that stands with me, beholding that the world-thought to-day is the emanc.i.p.ation of the citizen's power and the preparation by education of the citizen for that power, and objects to extending the right of citizens.h.i.+p to every human being, to give me the reasons why. (Applause). To-day this nation is exercising its conscience on the subject of suffrage for the African. I have all the time favored that: not because he was an African, but because he was a man; because this right of voting, which is the symbol of everything else in civil power, inheres in every human being. But I ask you, to-day, ”Is it safe to bring in a million black men to vote, and not safe to bring in your mother, your wife, and your sister to vote?” (Applause). This ought ye to have done, and to have done quickly, and not to have left the other undone. (Renewed applause).

To-day politicians of every party, especially on the eve of an election, are in favor of the briefest and most expeditious citizenizing of the Irishmen. I have great respect for Irishmen--when they do not attempt to carry on war! (Laughter).

The Irish Fenian movement is a ludicrous phenomenon past all laughing at. Bombarding England from the sh.o.r.e of America! (Great laughter). Paper pugnation! Oratorical destroying! But when wind-work is the order of the day, commend me to Irishmen!

(Renewed laughter). And yet I am in favor of Irishmen voting.

Just so soon as they give pledge that they come to America, in good faith, to abide here as citizens, and forswear the old allegiance, and take on the new, I am in favor of their voting.

Why? Because they have learned our Const.i.tution? No; but because voting teaches. The vote is a schoolmaster. They will learn our laws, and learn our Const.i.tution, and learn our customs ten times quicker when the responsibility of knowing these things is laid upon them, than when they are permitted to live in carelessness respecting them. And this nation is so strong that it can stand the incidental mischiefs of thus teaching the wild rabble that emigration throws on our sh.o.r.es for our good and upbuilding. We are wise enough, and we have educational force enough, to carry these ignorant foreigners along with us. We have attractions that will draw them a thousand times more toward us than they can draw us toward them. And yet, while I take this broad ground, that no man, even of the Democratic party (I make the distinction because a man may be a democrat and be ashamed of the party, and a man may be of the party and not know a single principle of democracy), should be debarred from voting, I ask, is an Irishman just landed, unwashed and uncombed, more fit to vote than a woman educated in our common schools? Think of the mothers and daughters of this land, among whom are teachers, writers, artists, and speakers! What a throng could we gather if we should, from all the West, call our women that as educators are carrying civilization there! Thousands upon thousands there are of women that have gone forth from the educational inst.i.tutions of New England to carry light and knowledge to other parts of our land. Now, place this great army of refined and cultivated women on the one side, and on the other side the rising cloud of emanc.i.p.ated Africans, and in front of them the great emigrant band of the Emerald Isle, and is there force enough in our government to make it safe to give to the African and the Irishman the franchise? There is. We shall give it to them.

(Applause). And will our force all fail, having done that? And shall we take the fairest and best part of our society; those to whom we owe it that we ourselves are civilized: our teachers; our companions; those to whom we go for counsel in trouble more than to any others; those to whom we trust everything that is dear to ourselves--our children's welfare, our household, our property, our name and reputation, and that which is deeper, our inward life itself, that no man may mention to more than one--shall we take them and say, ”They are not, after all, fit to vote where the Irishman votes, and where the African votes?” I am scandalized when I hear men talk in the way that men do talk--men that do not think.

If therefore, you refer to the initial sentence, and ask me why I introduce this subject to-day, when we are already engaged on the subject of suffrage, I say, This is the greatest development of the suffrage question. _It is more important that woman should vote than that the black man should vote._ It is important that he should vote, that the principle may be vindicated, and that humanity may be defended; but it is important that woman should vote, not for her sake. She will derive benefit from voting; but it is not on a selfish ground that I claim the right of suffrage for her. It is G.o.d's growing and least disclosed idea of a true human society that man and woman should not be divorced in political affairs any more than they are in religious and social affairs. I claim that women should vote because society will never know its last estate and true glory until you accept G.o.d's edict and G.o.d's command--long raked over and covered in the dust--until you bring it out, and lift it up, and read this one of G.o.d's Ten Commandments, written, if not on stone, yet in the very heart and structure of mankind, _Let those that G.o.d joined together not be put asunder_. (Applause.)

When men converse with me on the subject of suffrage, or the vote, it seems to me that the terminology withdraws their minds from the depth and breadth of the case to the mere instruments.

Many of the objections that are urged against woman's voting are objections against the mechanical and physical act of suffrage.

It is true that all the forces of society, in their final political deliverance, must needs be born through the vote, in our structure of government. In England it is not so. It was one of the things to be learned there that the unvoting population on any question in which they are interested and united are more powerful than all the voting population or legislation. The English Parliament, if they believed to-day that every working man in Great Britain staked his life on the issues of universal suffrage, would not dare a month to deny it. For when a nation's foundations are on a cla.s.s of men that do not vote, and its throne stands on forces that are coiled up and liable at any time to break forth to its overthrow, it is a question whether it is safe to provoke the exertion of those forces or not. With us, where all men vote, government is safe; because, if a thing is once settled by a fair vote, we will go to war rather than give it up. As when Lincoln was elected, if an election is valid, it must stand. In such a nation as this, an election is equivalent to a divine decree, and irreversible. But in Great Britain an election means, not the will of the people, but the will of rulers and a favored cla.s.s, and there is always under them a great wronged cla.s.s, that, if they get stirred up by the thought that they are wronged, will burst out with an explosion that not the throne, nor parliament, nor the army, nor the exchequer can withstand the shock. And they wisely give way to the popular will when they can no longer resist it without running too great a risk. They oppose it as far as it is safe to do so, and then jump on and ride it. And you will see them astride of the vote, if the common people want it. But in America it is not so. The vote with us is so general that there is no danger of insurrection, and there is no danger that the government will be ruined by a wronged cla.s.s that lies coiled up beneath it. When we speak of the vote here, it is not the representative of a cla.s.s, as it is in England, worn like a star, or garter, saying, ”I have the king's favor or the government's promise of honor.” Voting with us is like breathing. It belongs to us as a common blessing. He that does not vote is not a citizen, with us.

It is not the vote that I am arguing, except that that is the outlet. What I am arguing, when I urge that woman should vote, is that she should do all things back of that which the vote means and enforces. She should be a nursing mother to human society. It is a plea that I make, that woman should feel herself called to be interested not alone in the household, not alone in the church, not alone in just that neighborhood in which she resides, but in the sum total of that society to which she belongs; and that she should feel that her duties are not discharged until they are commensurate with the definition which our Saviour gave in the parable of the good Samaritan. I argue, not a woman's right to vote: I argue woman's _duty to discharge citizens.h.i.+p_.

(Applause.) I say that more and more the great interests of human society in America are such as need the peculiar genius that G.o.d has given to woman. The questions that are to fill up our days are not forever to be mere money questions. Those will always const.i.tute a large part of politics; but not so large a portion as. .h.i.therto. We are coming to a period when it is not merely to be a scramble of fierce and belluine pa.s.sions in the strife for power and ambition. Human society is yet to discuss questions of work and the workman. Down below privilege lie the ma.s.ses of men.

More men, a thousand times, feel every night the ground, which is their mother, than feel the stars and the moon far up in the atmosphere of favor. As when Christ came the great ma.s.s carpeted the earth, instead of lifting themselves up like trees of Lebanon, so now and here the great ma.s.s of men are men that have nothing but their hands, their heads, and their good stalwart hearts, as their capital. The millions that come from abroad come that they may have light and power, and lift their children up out of ignorance, to where they themselves could not reach with the tips of their fingers. And the great question of to-day is, How shall work find leisure, and in leisure knowledge and refinement? And this question is knocking at the door of legislation. And is there a man who does not know, that when questions of justice and humanity are blended, woman's instinct is better than man's judgment? From the moment a woman takes the child into her arms, G.o.d makes her the love-magistrate of the family; and her instincts and moral nature fit her to adjudicate questions of weakness and want. And when society is on the eve of adjudicating such questions as these, it is a monstrous fatuity to exclude from them the very ones that, by nature, and training, and instinct, are best fitted to legislate and to judge.

For the sake, then, of such questions as these, that have come to their birth, I feel it to be woman's _duty_ to act in public affairs. I do not stand here to plead for your _rights_. Rights compared with duties, are insignificant--are mere baubles--are as the bow on your bonnet. It seems to me that the voice of G.o.d's providence to you to-day is, ”Oh messenger of mine, where are the words that I sent you to speak? Whose dull, dead ear has been raised to life by that vocalization of heaven, that was given to you more than to any other one?” Man is sub-base. A thirty-two feet six-inch pipe is he. But what is an organ played with the feet, if all the upper part is left unused? The flute, the hautboy, the finer trumpet stops, all those stops that minister to the intellect, the imagination, and the higher feelings--these must be drawn, and the whole organ played from top to bottom!

(Applause.)

More than that, there are now coming up for adjudication public questions of education. And who, by common consent, is the educator of the world? Who has been? Schools are to be of more importance than railroads--not to undervalue railroads. Books and newspapers are to be more vital and powerful than exchequers and banks--not to undervalue exchequers and banks. In other words, as society ripens, it has to ripen in its three departments, in the following order: First, in the animal; second, in the social; and third, in the spiritual and moral. We are entering the last period, in which the questions of politics are to be more and more moral questions. And I invoke those whom G.o.d made to be peculiarly conservators of things moral and spiritual to come forward and help us in that work, in which we shall falter and fail without woman. We shall never perfect human society without her offices and her ministration. We shall never round out the government, or public administration, or public policies, or politics itself, until you have mixed the elements that G.o.d gave to us in society--namely, the powers of both men and women.

(Applause.) I, therefore, charge my countrywomen with this _duty_ of taking part in public affairs in the era in which justice, and humanity, and education, and taste, and virtue are to be more and more a part and parcel of public procedure. * * * *

In such a state of society, then, as the present, I stand, as I have said, on far higher ground in arguing this question than the right of woman. That I believe in; but that is down in the justice's court. I go to the supreme bench and argue it, and argue it on the ground that the nation needs woman, and that woman needs the nation, and that woman can never become what she should be, and the nation can never become what it should be, until there is no distinction made between the s.e.xes as regards the rights and duties of citizens.h.i.+p--until we come to the 28th verse of the third chapter of Galatians. What is it? [turning to Mr. Tilton, who said, ”I don't know!”] Don't know? If it was Lucy Rushton, you would! (Great laughter).

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female; for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.

And when that day comes; when the heavenly kingdom is ushered in with its myriad blessed influences; when the sun of righteousness shall fill the world with its beams, as the natural sun coming from the far South fills the earth with glorious colors and beauty, then it will come to pa.s.s that there shall be no nationality, no difference of cla.s.ses, and no difference of s.e.xes. Then all shall be one in Christ Jesus. Hold that a minute, please [handing Mr. Tilton a pocket Testament from which he had read the foregoing pa.s.sage of Scripture]. Theodore was a most excellent young man when he used to go to my church; but he has escaped from my care lately, and now I don't know what he does.

(Laughter).

I urge, then, that woman should perform the duty of a citizen in voting. You may, perhaps, ask me, before I go any further, ”What is the use of preaching to us that we _ought_ to do it, when we are not permitted to do it?” That day in which the intelligent, cultivated women of America say, ”We have a right to the ballot”

will be the day in which they will have it. (Voices--”Yes.” ”That is so”). There is no power on earth that can keep it from them.

[Applause]. The reason you have not voted is because you have not wanted to. [Applause]. It is because you have not felt that it was your duty to vote. You have felt yourselves to be secure and happy enough in your privileges and prerogatives, and have left the great ma.s.s of your sisters, that shed tears and bore burdens, to s.h.i.+rk for themselves. You have felt that you had rights more than you wanted now. O yes, it is as if a beauty in Fifth Avenue, hearing one plead that bread might be sent to the hungry and famis.h.i.+ng, should say, ”What is this talk about bread for? I have as much bread as I want, and plenty of sweetmeats, and I do not want your loaves.” Shall one that is glutted with abundance despise the wants of the starving, who are so far below them that they do not hear their cries, not one of which escapes the ear of Almighty G.o.d? Because you have wealth and knowledge and loving parents, or a faithful husband, or kind brothers, and you feel no pressure of need, do you feel no inward pressure of humanity for others? Is there no part of G.o.d's great work in providence that should lead you to be discontented with your ease and privileges until you are enfranchised? You ought to vote; and when your understanding and intellect are convinced that you ought to do it, you will have the power to do it; and you never will till then.

I. Woman has more interest than man in the promotion of virtue and purity and humanity. Half, shall I say?--Half does not half measure the proportion of those sorrows that come upon woman by reason of her want of influence and power. All the young men that, breaking down, break fathers' and mothers' hearts; all those that struggle near to the grave, weeping piteous tears of blood, it might almost be said, and that at last, under paroxysms of despair, sin against nature, and are swept out of misery into d.a.m.nation; the spectacles that fill our cities, and afflict and torment villages--what are these but reasons that summon woman to have a part in that regenerating of thought and that regenerating of legislation which shall make vice a crime, and vice-makers criminals? Do you suppose that, if it were to turn on the votes of women to-day whether rum should be sold in every shop in this city, there would be one moment's delay in settling the question? What to the oak lightning is that marks it and descends swiftly upon it, that woman's vote would be to miscreant vices in these great cities. [Applause]. Ah, I speak that which I do know.

As a physician speaks from that which he sees in the hospital where he ministers, so I speak from that which I behold in my professional position and place, where I see the undercurrent of life. I hear groans that come from smiling faces. I witness tears that when others look upon the face are all swept away, as the rain is when one comes after a storm. Not most vocal are our deepest sorrows. Oh, the sufferings of wives for husbands untrue!

Oh, the sufferings of mothers for sons led astray! Oh, the sufferings of sisters for sisters gone! Oh, the sufferings of companions for companion-women desecrated! And I hold it to be a shame that they, who have the instinct of purity and of divine remedial mercy more than any other, should withhold their hand from that public legislation by which society may be scoured, and its pests cleared away. And I declare that woman has more interest in legislation than man, because she is the sufferer and the home-staying, ruined victim.