Page:Female suffrage (Smith).djvu/34

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FEMALE SUFFRAGE.

masters, this may be partly because continuance in the calling is an element of value, and women are taken off by marriage. That a New-Yorker will persist, out of regard for the aristocracy of sex, in paying a man a high price for his labour when he can get the work done as well for less money by a woman, is not much to be apprehended. But that legislatures, male or female, could equalize wages, few will be credulous enough to believe, though it is possible that the attempt might be made.

As to domestic cruelty, if it can be stopped by any extension of the criminal law, there is surely not the slightest reason for believing that male legislatures are unwilling to perform that duty, though of course criminal legislation in this case, as in all others, to be effective, must keep terms with reason and justice. In fact, in this matter, women are probably better in the present hands than they would be in their own. The source of these infamies and horrors, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, is drink; and if the member for Marylebone, instead of tampering with the relations between the sexes, will turn his mind to the improvement and extension of the legislation commenced under the late Government against intemperance, he will deserve in the highest degree the gratitude of women in general, and especially of those who have the greatest claim to our sympathy.

The grievance is often stated as affecting not the persons but the property; it is said to be very hard that property should be unrepresented because it is owned by a woman. The property, if it understands its own interest, will hardly insist on emasculating the Government of the country. But the fact is, that property generally is not represented in England, though there is a property qualification, now of an inconsiderable kind, for the suffrage. The estate of a great landowner, except so much of it as constitutes the lowest qualification for the suffrage, is no more represented than the house of the dowager. Influence wealth possesses in the hands of men; but so it does in the hands of women.

Nothing, however, to the writer, could seem clearer than that the Female Suffrage movement, both in England and in