If work were more equally divided between the sexes, some women would, of course, receive more of the good things of the world.  But women generally would not do so.  The tendency, then, would be to force young women out upon their own exertions.  Fathers would soon learn to think that their daughters should be no more dependent on them than their sons; men would expect their wives to work at their own trades; brothers would be taught to think it hard that their sisters should lean on them, and thus women, driven upon their own resources, would hardly fare better than they do at present.

After all it is a question of money, and a contest for that power and influence which money gives.  At present, men have the position of the Lower House of Parliament—­they have to do the harder work, but they hold the purse.  Even in England there has grown up a feeling that the old law of the land gives a married man too much power over the joint pecuniary resources of him and his wife, and in America this feeling is much stronger, and the old law has been modified.  Why should a married woman be able to possess nothing?  And if such be the law of the land, is it worth a woman’s while to marry and put herself in such a position?  Those are the questions asked by the friends of the rights of women.  But the young women do marry, and the men pour their earnings into their wives’ laps.

If little has as yet been done in extending the rights of women by giving them a greater share of the work of the world, still less has been done toward giving them their portion of political influence.  In the States there are many men of mark, and women of mark also, who think that women should have votes for public elections.  Mr. Wendell Phillips, the Boston lecturer who advocates abolition, is an apostle in this cause also; and while I was at Boston I read the provisions of a will lately left by a millionaire, in which he bequeathed some very large sums of money to be expended in agitation on this subject.  A woman is subject to the law; why then should she not help to make the law?  A child is subject to the law, and does not help to make it; but the child lacks that discretion which the woman enjoys equally with the man.  That I take it is the amount of the argument in favor of the political rights of women.  The logic of this is so conclusive that I am prepared to acknowledge that it admits of no answer.  I will only say that the mutual good relations between men and women, which are so indispensable to our happiness, require that men and women should not take to voting at the same time and on the same result.  If it be decided that women shall have political power, let them have it all to themselves for a season.  If that be so resolved, I think we may safely leave it to them to name the time at which they will begin.