to the State prison and the gallows, are also eligible to Congress. Not the family, but the citizens is the social unit; for both politics and religion make individual moral being a law unto itself. Because woman is a citizen, not by the courtesy of man, but by the will of God, the fact of existence, all offensive institutions and personalities are now on trial before this fair judge.
Equality the best policy.Having shown the injustice of ruling woman without her consent, its impolicy is apparent; for what is morally wrong cannot be practically right, or innocently approved. If she has a soul, if she is a party to be consulted, her legal self-responsible equality cannot be denied, for there is no middle ground between chatteldom and freedom. The change proposed, the recognition of one half the race, hitherto ignored, is indeed momentous, though dreadful only to those who fear to do right, and trust the consequences—but forget its disastrous alternative. "The worst thing that can befall one guilty of sin, is not to be punished for it;" mindful of this fact, nature ordains her laws, more honored in the breach than the observance, to be self-executing; every evil from a civil war to a bruised finger warns us not to do so again. Enforced bondage of blacks at the South sent death to Northern homes, and those who mobbed abolitionists, by the unseen omnipotence of an idea, were hurled in embattled legions against slaveholders in the tune of "glory hallelujah." In the aberration of moral as of physical laws we get a clue to the true normal course. The festive growth of crime in those savage wilds called cities; the tragic life of women, and deadly collision of man with man; the widespread harvest of disease, deformity, insanity, degeneracy; the increasing prevalence of sexual evils before which statesmanship is baffled, religion powerless and science dumb—these retributive results are the kindest answer nature can give to a practical which disowns divinity in its fairest human form. In the prevailing ignorance of what true affectional intercourse is, and the studied avoidance of domestic ethics both by scholars and moralists, suffrage is of course but the initiative, the beginning of wisdom. Women should not be too solicitous about men's sins, for they have plenty of their own to answer for. The angels we hear so much about, like men, eat, drink and catch cold, and like men, in an emergency, will lie and steal. Appealing from women to woman we aim to establish a principle, not especially to vindicate persons, and merely assert her right to opportunity and fair dealing; angel or friend, she is entitled to work out her own salvation, to be and to do as well as to suffer.
Present practice defeats the policy it is intended to serve. To those who think women should be perpetually watched and taken care of we commend the following Specimen fruit of their oriental theory fresh from China, and described in the San Francisco Bulletin:
A remarkable spectacle was the landing of the women and girls, of whom there were two hundred and forty on board. It was like landing a drove of sheep or cows. At all points of the compass were men to drive them, and they came of the boat in squads of fifteen or twenty each. The policemen and Chinese "bosses" kept each squad together and drove the entire crowd into a corner under a shed, where they stood watched as closely as ever was guarded a gang of slaves in the South. If a Chinawoman, resident here, approached too near, she was seized and pushed away: and if any of the new comers left the crowd, she was driven back, or seized by the back of the neck and shoved to her place again. Most of those who come are young girls, many not over twelve of fifteen years of ages, and nine-tenths, at least, for purposes of prostitution. Into seven or eight cars reserved to transport them to the Chinese quarters, these creatures were driven in squads and hauled to a point on Jackson street. The women then ran the gauntlet again. Thealley, which is one of the narrowest and filthiest in the city, was lined with Chinamen and women, as the strangers were driven through it, up some old rickety steps into the Dupont street theatre, and in the pit of that wretched place were again herded. Here they were assorted, marked over, and sent to the "six companies" to which they were consigned.
