I know an able and high-minded woman of foreign birth, who courageously, but as I think mistakenly, calls herself an atheist, and who has for years advocated woman suffrage as the only antidote to the rule of the clergy.  On the other hand, an able speaker in a Boston convention soon after advocated the same thing as the best way of defeating atheism, and securing the positive assertion of religion by the community.  Both cannot be correct:  neither is entitled to speak for woman.  That being the case, would it not be better to keep clear of this dangerous ground of prediction, and keep to the argument based on rights and needs?  If our theory of government be worth anything, woman has the same right to the ballot that man has:  she certainly needs it as much for self-defence.  How she will use it, when she gets it, is her own affair.  It may be that she will use it more wisely than her brothers; but I am satisfied to believe that she will use it as well.  Let us not attribute infallible wisdom and virtue, even to women; for, as dear Mrs. Poyser says in “Adam Bede,” “God Almighty made some of ’em foolish, to match the men.”

It is common to assume, for instance, that all women by nature favor peace; and that, even if they do not always seem to promote it in their social walk and conversation, they certainly will in their political.  When we consider how all the pleasing excitements, achievements, and glories of war, such as they are, accrue to men only, and how large a part of the miseries are brought home to women, it might seem that their vote on this matter, at least, would be a sure thing.  Thus far the theory:  the fact being that we have been through a civil war which convulsed the nation, and cost half a million lives; and which was, from the very beginning, fomented, stimulated, and applauded, at least on one side, by the united voice of the women.  It will be generally admitted by those who know, that, but for the women of the seceding States, the war of the Rebellion would have been waged more feebly, been sooner ended, and far more easily forgotten.  Nay, I was told a few days since by an able Southern lawyer, who was long the mayor of one of the largest Southern cities, that in his opinion the practice of duelling—­which is an epitome of war—­owes its continued existence at the South to a sustaining public sentiment among the fair sex.

Again, where the sympathy of women is wholly on the side of right, it is by no means safe to assume that their mode of enforcing that sentiment will be equally judicious.  Take, for instance, the temperance cause.  It is quite common to assume that women are a unit on that question.  When we look at the two extremes of society,—­the fine lady pressing wine upon her visitors, and the Irishwoman laying in a family supply of whiskey to last over Sunday,—­the assumption seems hasty.  But grant it.  Is it equally sure, that when woman takes hold of that most difficult of all legislation,