if power were put into the hands of the 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 male. Force, as civilization advances, is more guided by reason and open recourse to it becomes less frequent; but the general consciousness that the force is there, in the last resort, is still the foundation of government, representative as well as other kinds. No woman can imagine that her sex can execute, or in case of rebellion re-assert the law; for that they must look entirely to the men. The men would be conscious of this, and if any law were made exclusively in the interests of the women, and in contradiction to the male sense of justice, they would refuse to carry it into effect. In the United States there have been intimations, on the part of the women, of a desire to make a very lavish use of capital punishment, untrammelled by the technical rules of evidence, for offences or supposed offences against the sex. The men, would of course, refuse execution; law would be set at defiance, and government would be overturned. But the bad effects of the public consciousness that executive force—the rude but indispensable basis of law—
