in communities, but in the primeval woods, where the available rights of women will be small.
The question whether female suffrage on an extended scale is good for the whole community is probably identical, practically speaking, with the question whether it is good for us to have free institutions or not. Absolute monarchy is founded on personal loyalty. Free institutions are founded on the love of liberty, or, to speak more properly, on the preference of legal to personal government. But the love of liberty and the desire of being governed by law alone appear to be characteristically male. The female need of protection, of which, so long as women remain physically weak, and so long as they are mothers, it will be impossible to get rid, is apparently accompanied by a preference for personal government, which finds its proper satisfaction in the family, but which gives an almost uniform bias to the political sentiments of women. The account commonly accepted, of the reactionary tendency which all admit to be generally characteristic of the sex, is, that they are priest-ridden. No doubt many of them are priest-ridden, and female suffrage would give a vast increase of power to the clergy. But the cause is probably deeper and more permanent, being, in fact, the sentiment inherent in the female temperament, which again is formed by the normal functions and circumstances of the sex. And, if this is the case, to give women the franchise is simply to give them the power of putting an end, actually and virtually, to all franchises together. It may not be easy to say beforehand exactly what course the demolition of free institutions by female suffrage would take. In the United States probably some woman's favorite would be elected President, and reëlected till his power became personal, and perhaps dynastic. But there can be little doubt that in all cases, if power were put into the hands of women, free government, and with it liberty of opinion, would fall.
In France, it is morally certain that at the present moment, if votes were given to the women, the first result would be the restoration to power of the Bourbons, with their reactionary priesthood, and the destruction of all that has been gained by the national agonies of the last century. The next result would be a religious crusade against German Protestantism and Italian freedom.
But would the men submit? Would they, in compliance with the edict of the women, and in obedience to a woman's government, haul down the tricolor, hoist the white flag, bow their necks to the yoke of reaction, and march against the victors of Sedan in a cause which they detest? This question points to another serious consideration. It is true that law is much stronger now than it was in primitive or feudal times, and a woman is more under its protection and less under the private protection of her husband and her kinsmen. But law, after all, though the fact may be rough and unwelcome, rests at bottom on the force of the community, and the force of the community is
