commerce and manufacture—is really a Democracy. She speaks through her own chosen representatives; these make the laws that govern the realm, and in obeying those laws, she is really obeying herself.
If this were indeed so, if the whole nation—men and women—did really consent to the laws by which we are governed, we could not complain.
But is it so? We know very well that it is not.
What is wrong? the inquirer asks. Why is it that with all the wealth, refinement, and culture of our twentieth century we lack that which would be more precious to us than all the wealth of the world happiness, peace, contentment. Why? Because our lives are a discord. Because we are living a lie. And I make bold to prophesy with the divine poet Shelley that—
"Never shall peace and human nature meet
Till, free and equal, man and woman greet
Domestic peace."
Broadly speaking, that for which we are fighting now is the emancipation of woman; her social freedom; her intellectual freedom; her economic freedom; her political freedom; and we believe that it is through the attainment of the rights of citizenship that all these doors will be opened to us.
I wish now, briefly, to show what, as I believe, the effect would be on society generally and on woman primarily if these her demands were granted; what, in fact, woman will be in the new era.
I think first of woman as mother, the independent,
