t a Great Charter. Tommy cannot
plead a Habeas Corpus against going to bed; and an infant cannot be
tried by twelve other infants before he is put in the corner. And as
there can be no laws or liberties in a nursery, the extension of
feminism means that there shall be no more laws or liberties in a state
than there are in a nursery. The woman does not really regard men as
citizens but as children. She may, if she is a humanitarian, love all
mankind; but she does not respect it. Still less does she respect its
votes. Now a man must be very blind nowadays not to see that there is a
danger of a sort of amateur science or pseudo-science being made the
excuse for every trick of tyranny and interference. Anybody who is not
an anarchist agrees with having a policeman at the corner of the street;
but the danger at present is that of finding the policeman half-way down
the chimney or even under the bed. In other words, it is a danger of
turning the policeman into a sort of benevolent burglar. Against this
protests are already being made, and will increasingly be made, if men
retain any instinct of independence or dignity at all. But to complain
of the woman interfering in the home will always sound like complaining
of the oyster intruding into the oyster-shell. To object that she has
too much power over education will seem like objecting to a hen having
too much to do with eggs. She has already been given an almost
irresponsible power over a limited region in these things; and if that
power is made infinite it will be even more irresponsible. If she adds
to her own power in the family all these alien fads external to the
family, her power will not only be irresponsible but insane. She will be
something which may well be called a nightmare of the nursery; a mad
mother. But the point is that she will be mad about other nurseries as
well as her own, or possibly instead of her own. The results will be
interesting; but at least it is certain that under this softening
influence government of the people, by the people, for the people, will
most assuredly perish from the earth.

But there is always another possibility. Hints of it may be noted here
and there like muffled gongs of doom. The other day some people
preaching some low trick or other, for running away from the glory of
motherhood, were suddenly silenced in New York; by a voice of deep and
democratic volume. The prigs who potter about the great plains are
pygmies dancing round