will prove to be like those of the past, the irreclaimable slaves of inherited prejudices, working for political and social reaction, making class feeling and even personal selfishness the basis of all their actions, and dragging modern civilisation down again into the slough of barbarous antiquity. But, fathers assembled, it will then be too late to retrace the false step we shall have taken; no power on earth, perhaps no power anywhere, will be able to bottle up again the evil genius we shall have let loose; and it is for this reason that I feel constrained to reserve my vote in favour of the Definition, at any rate until the general sense of the Council shall have pronounced decidedly against me.’ It was a relief to Cardinal Power’s feelings that his turn to speak came next. He drew out of the breast of his robe a small statuette of a female figure, presumably a Madonna, and held it on high in his right hand as he faced the assembly.
‘Domina illuminatio mea et salus mea; quem timebo? Domina protectrix vitæ; a quo trepidabo? Si consistaut adversum me castra, non timebit cor meum; si exsurgat adversum me prœlium, in Hâc ego sperabo. Why does my brother of Paris fear the power of liberated and elevated womanhood? That we do not yet know what it is, I grant; but all the evidence we have on the subject points one way, which is this, that just in proportion as man has raised woman, so she has raised him; and only as he has degraded her has she debased him. The barbarism which the Archbishop of Paris deprecates is the effect and token, not of predominant feminine influence, but of its absence; except, indeed, where that influence has been perverted; then the effects are undoubtedly worse than if it were absent. The slave develops low cunning because it is his only resource, and the status of women in the world hitherto has been a gilded and painted slavery. If there be danger to be apprehended from giving power to women, it is on that account
