An English member of Parliament said in a speech, some years ago, that the stupidest man had a clearer understanding of political questions than the brightest woman.  He did not find it convenient to say what must be the condition of a nation which for many years has had a woman for its sovereign; but he certainly said bluntly what many men feel.  It is not indeed very hard to find the source of this feeling.  It is not merely that women are inexperienced in questions of finance or administrative practice, for many men are equally ignorant of these.  But it is undoubtedly true of a large class of more fundamental questions,—­as, for instance, of some now pending at Washington,—­which even many clear-headed women find it hard to understand, while men of far less general training comprehend them entirely.

Questions of the distribution of power, for instance, between the executive, judicial, and legislative branches of government,—­or between the United States government and those of the separate States,—­belong to the class I mean.  Many women of great intelligence show a hazy indistinctness of views when the question arises whether it is the business of the general government to preserve order at the voting-places at a congressional election, for instance, as the Republicans hold; or whether it should be left absolutely in the hands of the state officials, as the Democrats maintain.  Most women would probably say that so long as order was preserved, it made very little difference who did it.  Yet, if one goes into a shoe-shop or a blacksmith’s shop, one may hear just these questions discussed in all their bearings by uneducated men, and it will be seen that they involve a principle.  Why is this difference?  Does it show some constitutional inferiority in women, as to this particular faculty?

The question is best solved by considering a case somewhat parallel.  The South Carolina negroes were considered very stupid, even by many who knew than; and they certainly were densely ignorant on many subjects.  Put face to face with a difficult point of finance legislation, I think they would have been found to know even less about it than I do.  Yet the abolition of slavery was held in those days by many great statesmen to be a subject so difficult that they shrank from discussing it; and nevertheless I used to find that these ignorant men understood it quite clearly in all its bearings.  Offer a bit of sophistry to them, try to blind them with false logic on this subject, and they would detect it as promptly, and answer it as keenly, as Garrison or Phillips would have done; and, indeed, they would give very much the same answers.  What was the reason?  Not that they were half wise and half stupid; but that they were dull where their own interests had not trained them, and they were sharp and keen where their own interests were concerned.