to be said for it, and that republics had
hitherto been remiss in not officially acknowledging the social primacy
of woman, but, in fact, distinctly inviting her to a back seat in public
affairs. We should then have appealed to our thoughtful readers to give
the matter their most earnest attention, and with the conservatism of
all serious inquirers we should have urged them to beware of bestowing
the suffrage on a class of the community disposed so boldly to own its
love of the splendors of the state. Would it be sage, would it be safe,
to indulge with democratic equality a sex which already had its eyes on
the flattering inequality of monarchy? Perhaps at this point we should
digress a little and mention Montesquieu, whose delightful _Spirit of
Laws_ we have lately been reading. We should remind the reader, who
would like to think he had read him too, how Montesquieu distinguishes
between the principles on which the three sorts of government are
founded: civic virtue being the base of a republic, honor the ruling
motive in the subjects of a monarchy, and fear the dominant passion in
the slaves of a despotism. Then we should ask whether men were prepared
to intrust the reins of government to women when they had received this
timely intimation that women were more eager to arrive splendidly than
to bring the car of state in safety to the goal. How long would it be,
we should poignantly demand, before in passing from the love of civic
virtue to the ambition of honor, we should sink in the dread of power?"

Our visitor was apparently not so deeply impressed by the treatment of
the subject here outlined as we had been intending and expecting he
should be. He asked, after a moment, "Don't you think that would be
rather a heavy-handed way of dealing with the matter?"

"Oh," we returned, "we have light methods of treating the weightiest
questions. There is the semi-ironical vein, for instance, which you must
have noticed a good deal in us, and perhaps it would be better suited to
the occasion."

"Yes?" our visitor suggested.

"Yes," we repeated. "In that vein we should question at the start
whether any such praise of monarchy had been spoken, and then we should
suppose it had, and begin playfully to consider what the honors and
distinctions were that women had enjoyed under monarchy. We should make
a merit at the start of throwing up the sponge for republics. We should
own they had never done the statesmanlike qualities of