lety, and malice of Satan. In this grand contest it will serve little purpose to show that we are friendly to civil and religious liberty; we must take higher ground and show from incontrovertible facts and arguments that Evangelicalism is in its very nature and tendency in the last degree hostile to every species of rational liberty, and that it is only on Catholic ground that either civil or religious liberty can be sustained. We must hurl back upon these Evangelical canters and snifflers the charges which they falsely allege against us and our religion. Let there be no timidity, no trimming, no compromise. They are the party opposed to civil and religious liberty, ingrained tyrants and despots, who are ready to march to power over the grave of all that is dear and sacred to the human heart, all that is liberal and ennobling in human culture, all that is cheerful and recreating in human society, all that is true and holy in religion. We can speak to the public as well as they, and we must undeceive those whose confidence they have abused, and rally anew the real friends of British and American freedom.

We can do this if we will but heal our divisions, and venture to depart from the old routine of controversy, and meet the question as it is practically presented to-day. We must dare look it, in its present form, in the face, and approach it with strong, fresh, and fearless thought. Consult the old writers for principles we must, but in their application, in the forms of our expression, we must not fear to be original, however we may shock a superannuated pedantry or a cowardly imbecility. Our friends across the water are doing much, and doing it nobly. We are amazed at the marvellous fecundity of the English press. Let Ireland, who must cease to call herself "unhappy Ireland," feel that in the present crisis the hopes of Catholics in England and here turn to her. Let her, from her advantageous position, be true to herself, be bold, energetic, dignified, commanding, as becomes a Catholic kingdom, and this Evangelical party, composed of unbelievers and fanatics, assisted as it may be, by satanic cunning and malice, will fail of its purpose, and British and American freedom be saved from the grasp of its deadliest and only foes. Let American and British Catholics deserve success by their free and manly conduct, by their firm and heroic spirit, and they may count on success; for then Almighty God himself, and all the hosts of heaven, will be on our side, and fight for us.

THE WOMAN QUESTION.

ARTICLE I.

[From the Catholic World for May, 1869.]

THE Woman Question, though not yet an all-engrossing question in our own or in any other country, is exciting so much attention, and is so vigorously agitated, that no periodical can very well refuse to consider it. As yet, though entering into politics, it has not become a party question, and we think we may discuss it without overstepping the line we have marked out for ourselves-that of studiously avoiding all party politics; not because we have not the courage to discuss them, but because we have aims and purposes which appeal to all parties alike, and which can best be effected by letting party politics alone.

In what follows we shall take up the question seriously, and treat it candidly, without indulging in any sneers, jeers, or ridicule. A certain number of women have become, in some way or other, very thoroughly convinced that women are deeply wronged, deprived of their just rights by men, and especially in not being allowed political suffrage and eligibility. They claim to be in all things man's equal, and in many things his superior, and contend that society should make no distinction of sex in any of its civil and political arrangements. It will not, indeed, be easy for us to forget this distinction so long as we honor our mothers, and love our wives and daughters, but we will endeavor in this discussion to forget it so far, at least as to treat the question on its merits, and make no allowance for any real or supposed difference of intellect between men and women. We shall neither roughen nor soften our tones because our opponents are women, or men who encourage them. women in question claim for women all the prerogatives of men; we shall therefore take the liberty to disregard their privileges as women. They may expect from us civility, not gallantry.

The

We say frankly in the outset that we are decidedly opposed to female suffrage and eligibility. The woman's rights women demand them both as a right, and complain men, in refusing to concede them, withhold a natural

that

right, and violate the equal rights on which the American republic professes to be based. We deny that women have a natural right to suffrage and eligibility; for neither is a natural right at all for either men or women. Either is a trust from civil society, not a natural and indefeasible right; and civil society confers either on whom it judges trustworthy, and on such conditions as it deems it expedient to annex. As the trust has never been conferred by civil society with us on women, they are deprived of no right by not being enfranchised.

We know that the theory has been broached latterly, and defended by several political journals, and even by representatives and senators in congress, as well as by The Revolution, the organ of the woman's rights movement, that suf frage and eligibility are not trusts conferred by civil society on whom it will, but natural and indefeasible rights, held directly from God or nature, and which civil society is bound by its very constitution to recognize, protect, and defend for all men and women, and which they can be deprived of only by crimes which forfeit one's natural life or liberty. It is on this ground that many have defended the extension of the elective franchise and eligibility to negroes and the colored races in the United States, and hold that congress, under that clause of the constitution authorizing it to guaranty to the several states a republican form of government, is bound to enfranchise them. It may or may not be wise and expedient to extend suffrage and eligibility to negroes and the colored races hitherto, in most of the states, excluded from the sovereign people of the country; on that question we express no opinion, one way or the other; but we deny that the negroes and colored men can claim admission on the ground either of natural right or of American republicanism; for white men themselves cannot claim it on that ground.

Indeed, the assumption that either suffrage or eligibility is a natural right is anti-republican. The fundamental principle, the very essence of republicanism is, that power is a trust to be exercised for the public good or common weal, and is forfeited when not so exercised, or when exercised for private and personal ends. Suffrage and eligibility confer power to govern, which, if a natural right, would imply that power is the natural and indefeasible right of the governors the essential principle of all absolutism, whether autocratic, aristocratic, monarchical, or democratic. It would

imply that the American government is a pure, centralized, absolute, unmitigated democracy, which may be regarded either as tantamount to no government, or as the absolute despotism of the majority for the time, or its right to govern as it pleases in all things whatsoever, spiritual as well as secular, regardless of vested rights or constitutional limitations. This certainly is not American republicanism, which has always aimed to restrain the absolute power of majorities, and to protect minorities by constitutional provisions. It has never recognized suffrage as a personal right which a man carries with him whithersoever he goes, but has always made it a territorial right, which a man can exercise only in his own state, his own county, his own town or city, and his own ward or precinct. If American republicanism recognized suffrage as a right, not as simply a trust, why does it place restrictions on its exercise, or treat bribery as a crime? If suffrage is my natural right, my vote is my property, and I may do what I please with it; dispose of it in the market for the highest price I can get for it, as I may of any other species of property.

Suffrage and eligibility are not natural, indefeasible rights, but franchises or trusts conferred by civil society; and it is for civil society to determine in its wisdom whom it will or will not enfranchise; on whom it will or will not confer the trust. Both are social or political rights, derived from political society, and subject to its will, which may extend or abridge them as it judges best for the common good. Ask you who constitute society? They, be they more or fewer, who, by the actual constitution of the state, are the sovereign people. These, and these alone, have the right to determine who may or may not vote or be voted for. In the United States, the sovereign people has hitherto been, save in a few localities, adult males of the white race, and these have the right to say whether they will or will not extend suffrage to the black and colored races, and to women and children.

Women, then, have not, for men have not, any natural right to admission into the ranks of the sovereign people. This disposes of the question of right, and shows that no injustice or wrong is done to women by their exclusion, and that no violence is done to the equal rights on which the American republic is founded. It may or it may not be wise and expedient to admit women into political, as they are now admitted into civil, society; but they cannot claim

admission as a right. They can claim it only on the ground of expediency or that it is necessary for the common good. For our part, we have all our life listened to the arguments and declamations of the woman's rights party on the subject, have read Mary Wollstonecraft, heard Fanny Wright, and looked into The Revolution, conducted by some of our old friends and acquaintances, and of whom we think better than many of their countrymen do; but we remain decidedly of the opinion that harm instead of good, to both men and women, would result from the admission. We say not this because we think lightly of the intellectual or moral capacity of women. We ask not if women are equal, inferior, or superior to men; for the two sexes are different, and between things different in kind there is no relation of equality or of inequality. Of course, we hold that the woman was made for the man, not the man for the woman, and that the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, not the wife of the husband; but it suffices here to say that we do not object to the political enfranchisement of women on the ground of their feebleness, either of intellect or of body, or of any real incompetency to vote or to hold office. We are Catholics, and the church has always held in high honor chaste, modest, and worthy women as matrons, widows, or virgins. Her calendar has a full proportion of female saints, whose names she proposes to the honor and veneration of all the faithful. She bids the wife obey her husband in the Lord; but asserts her moral independence of him, leaves her conscience free, and holds her accountable for her own deeds.

Women have shown great executive or administrative ability. Few men have shown more ability on a throne than Isabella, the Catholic, of Spain; or, in the affairs of government, though otherwise faulty enough, than Elizabeth of England, and Catharine II. of Russia. The present queen of the British Isles has had a most successful reign; but she owes it less to her own abilities than to the wise counsels of her husband, Prince Albert, and her domestic virtues as a wife and a mother, by which she has won the affections of the English people. Others have shown rare administrative capacity in governing religious houses, often no less difficult than to govern a kingdom or an empire. Women have a keener insight into the characters of men than have men themselves, and the success of female sovereigns has, in great measure, been due to their ability to dis