will fail to receive the courtesy of men as before. The ballot confers power on those who are endowed with it, and power always commands respect. To be weak is to be miserable, and the enfranchised woman will be more respected than ever before. A gentleman is always courteous, and a boor is always a boor, and from gentlemen, women of no condition. have aught to fear.

But women do not know enough to vote. This excuse has done duty from time immemorial in disfranchising some class. The historian Bancroft tells us that "the original charter of Delaware put the government into the hands of a royal council, on the ground that politics lie beyond the profession of merchants.'" England made the same objection to the admission of Jews into politics, in the days of Macaulay. The average woman of to-day is better educated than the average man, for the girl stays longer in school than the boy, and more thoroughly pursues a more extensive course of study. She is more interested in home, family life, and church, and rarely muddles her brain with strong drink or tobacco, and exceeds the average man in morality, intelligence, law-abiding, and character. "And," says George W. Cable, "if our mothers are not fit to vote, they ought to stop bearing sons."

But politics are necessarily corrupting, and will contaminate women. Then why not disfranchise men, and put the government into the hands of one ruler, like the Czar of Russia, or the Sultan of Turkey? Would that accomplish the purification of politics desired by the good men of the nation? "Lift your caucus to the level of your parlor!" was the advice of Wendell Phillips, when the low standards of political life were deplored. Introduce the womanly element, the good wives and mothers of the land, into the world of politics, and its moral elevation will begin.

Women should not vote, because they cannot fight. In the days of feudalism, women were not allowed to hold real estate because they could not fight to defend it. But the right to vote in our Republic is not made to depend on the ability to fight. If it were, it would disfranchise half the voting men of the nation. All men over forty-five years of age would be counted out, as they are considered past the fighting age. Of these, there are 97,000 in the single State of Massachusetts. So would all clergymen, because of the

moral service they are supposed to render. The published record of United States Military Statistics shows that more than a quarter of the men, who enlisted, and were examined by the surgeons, during our late Civil War, were found to be physically unfit for service, and were not mustered into the army. When a nation goes to war, it claims other service of its citizens, both men and women, than fighting. Ten per cent. of an army is detailed to serve the rest, as cooks, tailors, etc., and they do no fighting. And the hundreds of thousands of women who served their country during the last war, by work in the sanitary and Christian Commissions, who nursed in the hospitals, maintained at home the sentiment of loyalty to the government, and upheld steadily the supreme moral force necessary to success, were as important as the army itself.

But the unjust laws for women are being repealed without the vote of women. We grant that immense changes have already been made in the laws for women. They have been made by the Woman Suffrage agitation, however, and no changes were proposed till women began to demand the ballot. Some of the laws that most oppress women, still defile the statute books of the various States. Only six of the States of the Union allow the married mother to be an equal legal owner and guardian of her minor children, with her husband. In all other States the father has their legal control and ownership. The laws everywhere declare the wife's services belong to the husband, and according to them no money value, only stipulating that she shall receive at his hands such board and clothing as he chooses to furnish, thus making her a pauperized dependent upon him. If she have leisure and ability to earn money, in fully half the States of the Union, the law gives the husband her earnings, also. They are his, because he owns the wife and her services. In almost all respects, the laws give to the husband almost complete and irresponsible power over the wife, which it is never safe to bestow on anyone. Is it strange that there is unhappiness in married life, and frequency of divorce?

It was "taxation without representation" that directly brought on the Revolutionary War. Our fathers would not pay taxes unless they were represented, and declared that to pay taxes when they were denied representation would be "slavery," "robbery," and "tyranny." But women are

taxed all over the Republic, without being allowed representation. The women of Massachusetts alone, pay annual taxes to the extent of more than $2,000,000. How vast the aggregate of the taxes paid by all the unrepresented women of the United States! Why, the Stamp Act, over which our fathers flamed in righteous indignation and refused to pay, so that the British Government yielded and withdrew it, was not expected to put into the treasury more than $500,000! Is it not plain that women need the ballot for their own protection?

Only by complete enfranchisement which will place women on an equal legal footing with the men of the nation, can their Centuries of Dishonor be brought to an honorable close. Nor will this accomplish any quick-coming millenium. It will only bring in the beginning of the end, when manly men and womanly women, equal in rights, but differing in function, shall work together for the accomplishment of righteousness and justice in national, as in family life. The best and noblest men of the world are found in our Republic. In the mighty warfare which they are waging for the good against the evil in the nation, they are fearfully hindered by an army of their own sex, who crowd the prisons, and surge through to the dram-shops. Let them reinforce themselves with the votes of the wives and mothers in the homes, and the women in the schools and churches. And the great reforms, which now seem to require a century for their accomplishment, will hasten to success in a brief score of years.

A THREATENED INVASION OF RELIGIOUS

FREEDOM.

BY HUDSON TUTTLE.

FOR many years the cry has been raised by an organization. known as the National Reform Association, that the Constitution of the United States does not recognize the existence of God, or enforce the observance of the Christian religion. This association, at first composed of a few unknown persons, by its continuous and blatant demands became a subject of witticism by the press, and its members were proclaimed cranks whose preposterous scheme need not awaken any uneasiness as to its success. But there was method in their crankiness, which ran in a groove parallel to the desires of all zealous Protestant church members. There was enough bigotry left in the ordinary ministerial mind to stimulate the desire for recognition of their beliefs. The cause grew from year to year and its conventions were attended by larger delegations, until the secular press, quick to feel the set of the tide, no longer sneered, but advocated in a quiet way or was silent. Strangely silent! Is not the danger as menacing, and the measure as foolish as at the beginning? Paradoxical as it may seem, the silence of the press measures the strength of the movement.

The full purpose of the reformers was expressed in the following resolution offered at a convention held in Philadelphia at an early period of the movement, at which Judge Strong of Washington presided.

"In view of the controlling power of the Constitution in shaping state as well as national policy, it is of immediate importance to public morals and to social order to secure such an amendment as will indicate that this is a Christian nation and place Christian laws, institutions, and usages, in our government on an undeniable legal basis in the fundamental law of our nation, especially those which secure a proper oath and which protect society against blasphemy, Sabbathbreaking, and polygamy." One of the speakers struck the

key-note of the meeting when he said: "As at present respecting the authority of God in our Constitution we are a nation of Atheists; if we adopt the resolution of Dr. McIlvaine we become Deists; if we abide by the report submitted, we stand before the world a Christian nation."

Recently the Christian Statesman, the organ of the movement, said that the watchwords have been for twenty-five years: "Christianity the religion of the nation, and the Bible the text-book of our common Christianity and in all the schools." Again it said: "Give all men to understand that this is a Christian nation and believing without Christianity we perish, we must by all means maintain our Christian character. Inscribe this character on our Constitution. Enforce on all who come among us the laws of Christian morality."

This "enforcement" means the subjugation of a great majority to the will of a bigoted minority. Of the sixty millions of people in this nation, not twenty millions take any active interest in religion of any sect; not half that number attend church. This one-third demand the right to rule the other two-thirds, and to prescribe for them what they shall believe, and what disbelieve. For this end they assert that the nation is not religious and can only become so by a change in its organic law, by which it shall be labelled Christian.

We have completed a full century of government, began as an untried experiment, and the result has been the most successful the history of the world has ever recorded. Our nationality withstood the shock of internecine war the magnitude of which has no parallel. In these hundred years it has made material and spiritual progress with which nowhere else in past or present is there comparison. The various sects have dwelt together under the shadow of a flag which gives equality to all and allows domination to none. this and yet God is not in the Constitution or Jesus Christ recognized by name. Why then is it necessary at this late date, after perfect and permanent success, to make such recognition?

All

The Constitution has received the unqualified praise of the best statesmen of this country and of Europe, as an instrument by which the balance of power is wonderfully preserved and all contingencies provided for with marvellous prescience.