But now that they are awake they ask, Is not this sufficient?  Not at all If an agent who has cheated you surrenders reluctantly one half your stolen goods, you do not stop there and say, “It is enough.  Your intention is honorable.  Please continue my agent with increased pay.”  On the contrary, you say, “Your admission of wrong is a plea of guilty.  Give me the rest of what is mine.”  There is no defence like self-defence, no protection like self-protection.

All theories of chivalry and generosity and vicarious representation fall before the fact that woman has been grossly wronged by man.  That being the case, the only modest and honest thing for man to do is to say, “Henceforward have a voice in making your own laws.”  Till this is done, she has no sure safeguard, since otherwise the same men who made the old barbarous laws may at any time restore them.

It is common to say that woman suffrage will make no great difference; that women will think very much as men do, and it will simply double the vote without varying the result.  About many matters this may be true.  To be sure, it is probable that on questions of conscience, like slavery and temperance, the woman’s vote would by no means coincide with man’s.  But grant that it would.  The fact remains,—­and all history shows it,—­that on all that concerns her own protection a woman needs her own vote.  Would a woman vote to give her husband the power of bequeathing her children to the control and guardianship of somebody else?  Would a woman vote to sustain the law by which a Massachusetts chief justice bade the police take those crying children from their mother’s side in the Boston court-room a few years ago, and hand them over to a comparative stranger, because that mother had married again?  You might as well ask whether the colored vote would sustain the Dred Scott decision.  Tariffs or banks may come or go the same, whether the voters be white or black, male or female; but when the wrongs of an oppressed class or sex are to be righted the ballot is the only guaranty.  After they have gained a potential voice for themselves, the Sir Samuel Romillys will remember them.

WOMANLY STATESMANSHIP

The newspapers periodically express a desire to know whether women have given evidence, on the whole, of superior statesmanship to men.  There are constant requests that they will define their position as to the tariff and the fisheries and the civil-service question.  If they do not speak, it is naturally assumed that they will forever after hold their peace.  Let us see how that matter stands.

It is said that the greatest mechanical skill in America is to be found among professional burglars who come here from England.  Suppose one of these men were in prison, and we were to stand outside and taunt him through the window:  “Here is a locomotive engine:  why do you not mend or manage it?  Here is a steam printing-press:  if you know anything, set it up for me!  You a mechanic, when you have not proved that you understand any of these things?  Nonsense!”