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November 13, 1852.] THE LEADER. 1091
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(ton CnmtriL
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[i.v tiiis department, as alt, opinions,...
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THE RELATION OF WOMEN TO POLITICAL. REFO...
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THN CRYSTAL 1'ALACK AND DKSECRATJON OF T...
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Transcript
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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The War Op Ideas. Submitted To Anti-Slav...
intelligent but precarious hired service of whites , I I -h ° ll not renise to show him that when their free papers 8 lia ma ( j 0 out , it will still be their interest to remain on ff ggtate ; and that the oldest planters of Jamaica are convinced ' that it is cheaper to pay wages than to own 8 The special arguments here may pass : they may or ot he the right ones ; but in the consideration of th e class whose convictions have to be conquered by the . raV we have the line of success chalked ^ out by a much easildid ll
naster ' s hand . How more y O ' Conne win the applause of the New World philanthropists . ' Greatest of liars ,, vilest of hypocrites ! " shouted that imme nse professor of invective . . " Tyrants , base wretches , Murderers , you belong not to us ! " This heap and facile denunciation of Slaveholders , which in nowise altered their determination , but rather intensified it , won the everlasting remembrance of the Liberator , where it may be seen reprinted in No . 8 , for February last , as a parallel menace to the Magyar
visitor in Boston . When Lloyd Garrison praises the great Celtic Monarch of invective for this dire outpouring , he actn the part of the boy who fancies that the terror is in the war whoop of the savage , unmindful of the quieter muskets of the civilized infantry , whose unostentatious execution blows whoop and tomahawk to the devil . Ion .
November 13, 1852.] The Leader. 1091
November 13 , 1852 . ] THE LEADER . 1091
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[I.V Tiiis Department, As Alt, Opinions,...
[ i . v tiiis department , as alt , opinions , however exteejie ai ; e allowkd an expression , thju editob necessarii / x : holds himself responsible i'ob none . ] fhere is no learned man . but will confess he hath much proiit . odbyvoadinp < controversies , his senses awakened . anil ms . lud ^ meui sharpened . It ' , then , it be profitable for him to read , why should it not , at least , be tolerable ior his adversary to write . —Milton .
The Relation Of Women To Political. Refo...
THE RELATION OF WOMEN TO POLITICAL . REFORM . ( To the Editor of the Leader . ) ^ kke all men refined and disciplined , there would be ' 10 need to say anything about the relation of women to political reform or any other reform . They would I'iKe their right position as water finds its own level . Unfortunatel y , refined and disciplined men are the exception—so exceptional , that they may be pronounced rare . Women are more refined , but , if possible , less disciplined . The mother , it is said , moulds the child into '
keep->» tf her dwarfed to this conventional standard , efleo"wlly dwarf * himself . It seems that , before refined a disciplined men can cease to bo ( lie exception , " ' onion must be raised above their present standard . 1 ' or i ( , h they ( juha liuriee tho iminortyl niindo . " "him ; there can be any chance of this , woman must ' •¦ •' iitlio a freer atmosphere . Ah it is , her intellect and •' motions aro , lH 1 : i . il ( l y hu ;( , . , ,,. 1 )()( l y . . lll ( i lill 0 ( i ; s . ^ " 'on an d weakness caused by the conventional c : on"" 'iiii'iit are as great in the one case as in the other i / iivwiivi \ if \ i / ¦¦
. * . ^ j - ^*«»» j * * * , ' «* . j mm ¦ ¦ I'm »»» -- * » (] i Jll ( l 1 wonion , and men too , havt : a freer life—until j | " W ( "'"l recognises what , individually , it so well 1 Y ' *" ' W ° " ^ ' nav aH , s for men and women will ' n " '"" " to ho ih ' R > » " ( 1 < " n'i > ln » in » < he earth ¦ ' " > injr . s after their own likeness . /» • --- — ' « laujii u \ vii 11 ivt ; i i ( - . in .
< i- a < le " Wll <) l () H ()( i ' il system , including our system of "cfi * - ' ' '< n '' lul . Y hard upon woiimn , narrowing her Ho \ v Vl " H 'U '< 1 ° ' ) Ktrucf higher independence : not so much iii ; iji " heretofore , bvit still immensely . I think that | ,.. ' , ^ ' l ) r () 1 ) ulil y most , of the evils tluiLbcseL women aro l iiilh '" '' *'"' "" dependent position , pecuniarily , ho-<< 'ini I 'I '" J M ) lillit" » H . V- To have a dependent is a great Mm iJt " < U Ul " 1 mw < 1 <) f UH - Wllll ( ' (<) llU lMlIow n'Min I- '" lltl " limy k '''i < l'itions to the worst ? 'Nio tioilH N !• < lUIH _ worst are almost tho only public inuioawhut ia pus . sinir beneath tho ourfacu of society .
What women suffer can only be made known by themselves , and will not be uttered . We may dimly guess how the proud chafe beneath the goad , and , humiliated and outraged , make some wild dash at escape , to be outlawed and ineffaceably branded with conventional infamy ; to be relentlessly trampled down , lower and lower , driven from every hold upon the virtuous past ; humanity , womanhood , trampled out , or so defaced that little but the fiend remains to pay back to society , pollution , for its rigour and its scorn . We may dimly guess the many gradations from this worst upwards to the best . Some do halt on the road , and happily find some harbour of refuge , at least for a time . And we may also guess how many a patient mother leads a life
of endurance without hope , of suffering without relief . It is not said that there are not many women that live happily and well , but that under different conditions they might live a higher and a purer life . It is said that women endure misery , ill-health , and outragethat they are dwarfed in intellect , in their emotions , and in body—as they would not permit themselves to be were they not dependent . That women suffer much , all know who have eyes to see . The worst never comes above the surface , but merely the startling . It is not intended to develop the whole of this large subject here , but to indicate the relation of women to one important question , that of political reform . To do that may be of some practical service .
We write and talk many fine platitudes about our civilization . It is said , the condition of woman in a nation marks the progress of the nation in civilization . Remember this , and ask what idea , five hundred years hence , when historical students search our archives , will be formed of the position and condition of women in this nineteenth century ? N " o doubt the student would find a tendency to encourage the advancement of women , and when , on the one hand , he met with the works of Miss Martineau , and , on the other , the account of a trial for criminal conversation , where the husband sues for damages for
the'loss of the services of his wife , what conclusion would be drawn from this anomaly ? When it is perceived that the property qualification necessary to ensure a vote does not extend to women ; that neither maiden , nor wife , nor widow , however large their possessions , can claim the privilege of exercising any direct personal influence on the Government which disposes of their property for revenues and other purposes without their having the power to say yea or nay in the matter ;—when this is seen , will not the judgment given be somewhat derogatory to our civilization .
Will not woman appear more as the handmaid than as the helpmate , when it is seen how she is left in the power of the man ? Men make the laws , a fact which none will doubt who comprehend their relation to women . Men are tried by a jury of men ; women not by a jury of women , hut of men . The remark occurred in the Household Words , " that some of the verdicts of late trials of women would probably have been different had women sat on the jury . " It is a question whether most men can comprehend a woman ' s case as fully , or judge it as fairly , as it should be .
Men , and women too , talk as if Christianity had conferred liberty and equality upon women : forgetting that the Uomati matron held quite as dignified a position , tho Grecian wife in some instances a higher ; forgetting that , among tho Teutons , women were not only wives , but friends and counsellors ; forgetting that , in this Christianized nineteenth century , with the exception of the county of Kent , the law of primogeniturebrands them as unequal ; forgetting that , should a woman possessed of property marry , . she loses all legal power in its disposal ; the property becomes the man's . It is forgotten that , . should the husband turn brute or sot , nnd the wife of necessity leave him , the law enables him to strike a , more painful blow than that ; of brute violence . Tho law crushes the maternal heart .
Should the wife neck an asylum , the man brute can violate her presence and her person whenever caprice or hide may urge him , unless an expensive and public process be gone through , open only to the rich . When the historian comprehends that the polluting stream of unfortunate women that wander through our streets at night is an institution necessary for the nuiintennnee of order—t hat , good Christian men , fathers of women , dure to think prostitution a necessity of civilization , nnd to think it chimerical to attempt its preventionwill not women appear us socially degraded as ' theyaro politically negatived ? If women wiw this mutter clearly , would not women think it time , as brave Mrs . Jnmeson and thought fid Harriet , Martineau do , tofako this quest ion in hand V At present women dan ; not , for four of what / tho world- —that is , man—would say .
The inequality between man and woman as at present recognised by the laws and partially liy custom , is n remnant of that barbarism we all decry . Seeing it day by day , being familiar with it from infuncv , wo do not
perceive the injustice or the wrong till some brutal deed startles us , or some social catastrophe sharpens our perception of the anomalous position and painful inequality of the sexes . Women must fight their own battle , and do it without extravagance or intemperance if they wouM earn success . Existing evils should be sufficient to induce women not only to countenance and aid reform , but to become active reformers on their own account . Women ought to be as materially interested in political reform as the men . They suffer with the men , and should work with them to attain that political power to alter tlie state of things which keeps them
the serfs of wealth , and often clothes and feeds them worse than the actual slave . It is true that political agitation has been too often connected with debasing influences . There has been too much passion , too much intemperance in speech and act , too much talk about brotherhood , and too little practice of it , to induce women to look favourably on political agitation . The women were right without knowing why , in expecting that if politics were good for anything , they should make those who advocate them better men . Women feel that a vote is not much after all , however right and just it is to have it . Will the possession of the
franchise insure employment at remunerative wages ? Will it replenish the cupboard ? Women have not seen that it would . They feel ( blindly it may be ) the worthlessness of the bawling democrat , the inutility and weakness of the denunciator , and the danger that , in appealing against tyrannous authority , the habit may be acquired of appealing against all authority . It is only by showing that political reform leads , —is the first step to social amelioration—that a woman's heart can he toriched , or her convictions gained . Show 7 her that political reform is the sure precursor of social amendment—which means the removal of the wretched
uncertainty of employment—a guarantee of the means of subsistence—a change from the one room , where modesty gets half worn out , where cleanliness is impossible , where notions of decency incommode , and where comfort exists of that kind only which arise * from the flexibility of human nature in adapting itself to circumstances ; which means sinking to the level of those circumstances . A change from this , which so often sends the husband and tho son to the public house , to some degree of comfort with room to live and leisure to think and love , as well as time for work , is a , reform that woman could lake to heart .
YV by should not English women march with us in noble fellowship towards the hopeful future ? Let women earn their position as equals . Sister , wife and mother , why not friend , counsellor , and reformer ? It is not so , however . Women at present neither know their duty nor their interest , and men have hardly known the worth of woman ' s aid , or they would have sought it more effectually . Spartan women fVlt with the men—" Honour gone , all ' s gone . " They were the true friends of the men . Hut our women , as Kbenezer lOlliot says , —¦
" Urge their husbands to submit to laws which , interdicting our best affections , convert marriage into a crimo and a curso multiplied by the number of its births . " When shall this be altered "? Charlkh Vhedeuw Nrcnui . T . H .
Thn Crystal 1'Alack And Dksecratjon Of T...
THN CRYSTAL 1 'ALACK AND DKSECRATJON OF TIIIO SABI 5 AT 1 I . ( To tho J ' Jditor of the luatfrr . ) Silt , — The proposed opening of the Crystal 'Palace upon the Sabbath-day , appears , at present , to he the . source of considerable anxiety to a large body of the religionists of this country , who assert that if a portion of the only day in the week upon which the poor working-man has a moment of leisure , be spent , in the admiration ol ' Home of the most beautiful and relined works of artistic genius , and in tho inspection of some , of ( he finest productions of human ingenuity and skill , it will inevitably lead to the most falal immorality , and to tin ; most , terrible ! consequeneeshereuflcr . Meetings have been hold in which this subject has been discussed by some of our most eminent ministers and religious men : the Rev . John Angoll . lames , Mr . K . Haines , and many others too numerous to nieiiLion , have unanimously given it sis their opinion that , if ( his magnificent building ho opened on the Sitbbalh , it will puvc the way to infinitely worse (( esecration in other quartern ; that tho Sabbath of lO . igland will , at , no distant period , be kept as it is in I ' ranee and other continental countries , and
therefore ( lovernnient must Ik- petitioned to prevent so shocking and fearful a profanation of that sacred day , which the Lord hutli Met apart for his own peculiar worship . I had almost thought ( hut a purer and morn sincere service would ho rendered to the Alniighfy , by tht ! admiration , amounting to reverence , which intelligent , men would besfow upon ( ho works of those eminent individuals , whose mighty genius this hid no IUsing i ,- > believed to lmvo created limn all tho fonnul ^ iruyorH
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Nov. 13, 1852, page 15, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_13111852/page/15/
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