excellence, intellectual or moral, of the two moieties of humanity, would be equally barren and irrelevant. The only question is as to the proper spheres of the man and woman; and assuredly, by unsexing women, we should do no homage to their sex.
It is alleged that female influence would mitigate the violence of party politics. But what ground have we, in reason or experience, for believing that women, if introduced into the political arena, would be less violent than men? Hitherto they have been free from political vices, because they have generally taken no part in politics, just as home has been an asylum from political rancour because political division has not been introduced between man and wife. But the chances are that, being more excitable, and having, with more warmth and generosity of temperament, less power of self-control, women would, when once engaged in party struggles, be not less, but more violent than men. All our experience, in facts, points this way, In the reign of Terror, and in the revolt of the Commune, the women notoriously rivalled the men in fury and ferocity. The same was the case in the late American Civil War. What has been the effect of public life on the character of the women who have thrown themselves into it in the United States can be doubted by no human being; and our experience of female agitations in this country seems to tell pretty much the same tale. That party politics require mitigation, and perhaps something more, may be readily admitted; but we are not likely to make the cauldron boil less fiercely by flinging into it female character and Home.
That Home would escape disturbance it is surely difficult to believe. We are told that a difference of religion between man and wife does not produces unhappiness. The fact may be doubted when the difference is strong. But religion is an affair of the other world; and it does not, at all events it need not, bring people into direct, much less into public collision in this world. A man and his wife taking opposite sides in politics would be brought into direct and public collision, especially if they happened to be active politicians,
