le Boyd," "Frank Miller," and "Major Cushman."[415]

Doubtless women are stronger physically than they were a half-century
ago, when it was considered unladylike to exercise. If you will read the
novels of that time, you will find that the heroine faints on the
slightest provocation or weeps copiously, like Amelia in _Vanity Fair_,
whenever the situation demands a grain of will-power or of
common-sense. But to-day women seldom faint or weep in literature; they
play tennis or row. When, in 1844, Pauline Wright Davis lectured on
physiology before women in America and displayed the manikin, some of
her auditors dropped their veils, some ran from the room, and some
actually became unconscious, because their sense of delicacy was put to
so sharp a test.

It should be borne in mind, in connection with the contention that the
privileges of a citizen ought to be accorded only to those persons who
are physically capable of helping to defend the community by force, that
no such principle is applied in fixing the existing qualifications for
male citizenship. A large number of the voters of every community are,
on the ground either of advanced years or of invalidism, physically
disqualified for service as soldiers, sailors, or policemen. This group
of citizens includes a very large proportion of the thinking power of
the community. No intelligently directed state would, however, be
prepared to deprive itself of the counsels, of the active political
co-operation, and of the service from time to time in the responsibility
of office, of men of the type of Gladstone (at the age of seventy-five),
of John Stuart Mill (always a physical weakling), of Washington (serving
as President after he was sixty), on the ground that these citizens were
no longer capable of carrying muskets in the ranks.

Any classification of citizens, any privileges extended to voters,
ought, of course, to be arrived at on a consistent and impartial
principle.

Further, under the conditions obtaining in this twentieth century,
governments, whether of nations, of states, or of cities, are carried on
not by force but by opinion. In the earlier history of mankind, each
family was called upon to maintain its existence by physical force. The
families the members of which (female as well as male) were not strong
enough to fight for their existence were crushed out. Par into the later
centuries, issues between individuals were adjusted by the decision of
arms. Up to w