Mr. Parkman has no valid ground for assuring his readers that the granting of suffrage to women would bring into political efficiency women of the worst and most undesirable class, and leave "those of finer sensibilities and more delicate scruples" in what he would consider a masterly inactivity. In these remarks, and many others, Mr. Parkman shows a want of acquaintance with the character of the women engaged in the suffrage cause, which is singular, even in an antagonist. The question whether, in the case supposed, the vicious and ignorant would go to the polls, and the intelligent and virtuous stay away from them, is one often brought before a legislative hearing. At one of these, in which arguments on both sides had been heard, Mr. Garrison rose and said: "It seems to me that the present occasion is in itself an answer to this question. Here on the one side are character, intelligence, education petitioning for suffrage; and on the other are ignorance and vulgarity petitioning against it." than are Mr. Parkman's predictions about "the bad time coming." This reign of peace and justice will be greatly promoted by the influence and action of women, who have everything to gain from it. While it can efface no substantial feature of either sex, it will secure fair play to both. To borrow one of Mr. Parkman's antitheses, it will bring us the concrete embodiment of the abstract truth uttered by St. Paul, that in the Christian harmony there is neither male nor female, but equal freedom for either sex to bear its burdens and perform its duties according to its own best wisdom and highest resolve.
In his portrayal of the female politician of the future, Mr. Parkman shows an unusual power of conjuring up, from the abyss of the unknown, unlovely female phantoms with which to electrify the minds of his readers. Let them not mistake this, as he obviously does, for a true spirit of prophecy. Imagination can create such forms at will, and can easily set imaginary female voters to destroy an imaginary state. But this is not its noblest use. The future, like the past, can be read from an adequate or inadequate point of view. He who fails to seize the sense of the present can give no true account either of what has been or of what shall be. The true prophet discerns the signs of the times, the deep, normal tendencies of human nature, which are ever more and more toward amelioration, and the greater good of the greater number. That the future of human society is to be more and more dedicated to the peaceful development of human resources, that the reign of justice is gradually and permanently to supplant the reign of violence -- these are prophecies far more ancient and weighty
- Source of this article by Julia Ward Howe:
NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.
No. CCLXXVI.
NOVEMBER, 1879.
THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WOMAN QUESTION.
