Men are born politicians; just as they are born masons, and carpenters, and soldiers, and sailors. Not so women. Their thoughts and feelings are given to other matters. The current of their chosen avocations runs in another channel than that of politics--a channel generally quite out of sight of politics; it is an effort for them to turn from one to the other. With men, on the contrary, politics, either directly or indirectly, are closely, palpably, inevitably blended with their regular work in life. They give their attention unconsciously, spontaneously; to politics. Look at a family of children, half boys, half girls; the boys take instinctively to whips and guns and balls and bats and horses, to fighting and wrestling and riding; the girls fondle their dolls, beg for a needle and thread, play at housekeeping, at giving tea-parties, at nursing the sick baby, at teaching school.
That difference lasts through life. Give your son, as he grows up, a gun and a vote; he will delight in both. Give your daughter, as she grows up, a gun and a vote, and, unless she be an exceptional woman, she will make a really good use of neither. Your son may be dull; but he will make a good soldier, and a very tolerable voter.
Your daughter may be very clever; but she would certainly run away on the battle-held, and very probably draw a caricature on the election ticket. There is the making of an admirable wife and mother, and a valuable member of society, in that clever young woman. She is highly intelligent, thoroughly well educated, reads Greek and Latin, and has a wider range of knowledge and thought than ninety-nine in a hundred of the voters in the same district; but there is nothing of the politician in her nature. She would rather any day read a fine poem than the best political speech of the hour. What she does know of politics reaches her through that dull but worthy brother of hers. It is only occasionally that we meet women with an inherent bias for politics; and those are not, as a rule, the highest type of the sex--it is only occasionally that they are so. The interest most women feel in politics is secondary, factitious, engrafted on them by the men nearest to them. Women are not abortive men; they are a distinct creation. The eye and the ear, though both belonging to the same body, are each, in a certain sense, a distinct creation. A body endowed with four ears might hear remarkably well; but without eyes it would be of little use in the world. A body with four eyes would have a fourfold power of vision, and would consequently become nearly as sharp-sighted as a spider; but without hearing its powers of sight would avail little. In both cases, half the functions of the human being, whether physical or mental, would be very imperfectly performed. Thus it is with men and women; each has a distinct position to fill in the great social body, and is especially qualified for it. These distinct positions are each highly important. And it is reasonable to believe that, by filling their own peculiar position thoroughly well, women can best serve their Creator, their fellow-creatures, and themselves. No doubt you may, if you choose, by especial education from childhood upward, make your girls very respectable politicians, as much so as the majority of your sons. But in that case you must give up your womanly daughters--you must be content with manly daughters. This essential difference between the sexes is a very striking fact; yet the advocates of female suffrage constantly lose sight of it; they talk and write as if it had no existence. It is not lack of intellect on the part of women, but difference of intellect, or rather a difference of organization and affinities giving a different bias to the intellect, which is the cause of their distinct mental character as a sex. And, owing to this essential difference, the great majority of women are naturally disinclined to politics, and partially unfitted for action in that field.
FEMALE SUFFRAGE.
