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32 Quaker Women . painter now , through knowledge , prizes that which the miner then , through ignorance , despised . A parallel case ( the simile is unworthy of my subject ) will occur when the noble energies and genial feelings of woman are once fairly in action on the affairs of life . Men will laugh at their prejudiced progenitors , as the painter now smiles at the ignorant miner ; and , exulting in the possession of female aid , pity the age which wanted it .
What disposition to political strife there is now existing lies with the Conservatives ( they are losing the nuts and the husks . ) The liberal Whig and the enlightened Radical are showing a spirit which will shed an undying distinction on the present day . The
men of England and Scotland have proved themselves , without violence , invincible : —may the men of Ireland join the fraternity and act as well;—but they , like women , exist under the operation of circumstances and prejudices , which make the mischief for which they are blamed . It is not such instances as those of Louisa of Savoy , or Margaret of Angouleme , or of others far greater who have figured on the field of politics , from which opinions of the sex can justly he drawn . Political great women ,, like the same order of men , are rarely other than mere puppets ; some merry-andrew , who stands out of sight , is pulling the wires which prompt their
performances . Examples , which may index a sex , must be sou ght amon g those in whom nature has had most fair play ; and no matter what their field of action , to that field we must look for the evidence of what nature , so treated , has enabled them to do . This field is to be found in common life ; but few think it worth while , for the conduct of men , far less for the conduct of women , to explore it . Such moralists ( more often maligners ) exhibit some such a proof of wisdom as the naturalist would display , who , instead of plunging into field and forest , preferred * peeping
into the gilded cages of parroquets and cockatoos . Men have long held the pike and the pen ; and the world hath seen much bloodshed and inkshed : the one has been used to justify the other . But the day has come when the pike is being superseded by the pen ; when the high spirit necessar y to wield the one is striking down the strong arm which can only lift the other . The fine essence of the female mind was pr isoned up so long as it could not come abroad without being mingled with tobacco and gunpowder smoke ; but as all sorts of ruffianisms subside , that essence will more and more steal forth and contribute to confirm and endear the intellectual daylight which is gaining on the world .
The writer on ' Women of Business' sounds an alarum with the names of Napoleon , Byron , and Talleyrand , who are described as having preferred the dove to the serpent . ( What an absence of self-love this showed !) If lions and tigers ever learn to write , what counterstatements we shall have to put against
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1835, page 32, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2641/page/32/
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