e flatterers, who conceal it in the drawing-room, and only utter it
freely in the lecture-room, the club, and the "North American Review."
Contempt at least arouses pride and energy. To be sure, in the face of
history, the contemptuous tone in regard to women seems to me untrue,
unfair, and dastardly; but, like any other extreme injustice, it leads to
reaction. It helps to awaken women from that shallow dream of
self-complacency into which flattery lulls them. There is something tonic
in the manly arrogance of Fitzjames Stephen, who derides the thought that
the marriage contract can be treated as in any sense a contract between
equals; but there is something that debilitates in the dulcet counsel given
by an anonymous gentleman, in an old volume of the "Ladies' Magazine" that
lies before me,--"She ought to present herself as a being made to please,
to love, and to seek support; _a being inferior to man, and near to
angels_."

IX

OBJECTIONS TO SUFFRAGE

"When you were weak and I was strong, I toiled for you. Now you are
strong and I am weak. Because of my work for you, I ask your aid. I
ask the ballot for myself and my sex. As I stood by you, I pray you
stand by me and mine."--CLARA BARTON.

[Appeal to the returned soldiers of the United States, written from
Geneva, Switzerland, by Clara Barton, invalidated by long service in
the hospitals and on the field daring the civil war.]

THE FACT OF SEX

It is constantly said that the advocates of woman suffrage ignore the fact
of sex. On the contrary, they seem to me to be the only people who do not
ignore it.

Were there no such thing as sexual difference, the wrong done to woman by
disfranchisement would be far less. It is precisely because her traits,
habits, needs, and probable demands are distinct from those of man, that
she is not, never was, never can, and never will be, justly represented by
him. It is not merely that a vast number of human individuals are
disfranchised; it is not even because in many of our States the
disfranchisement extends to a majority, that the evil is so great; it is
not merely that we disfranchise so many units and tens: but we exclude a
special element, a peculiar power, a distinct interest,--in a word, a sex.

Whether this sex is more or less wise, more or less important, than the
other sex, does not affect the argument: it is a sex, and, being such, is
more absolutely distinct from the other tha