cipate woman as many men will go. It was Ibsen, not Mrs. Ibsen, who wrote the "Doll's House." It was women, not men, who ostracized George Eliot. The slavishness begotten in women by the régime of man is what we have most to fight against, not the slave-driving instinct of the men—now happily becoming obsolete, or even changing into a sincere desire to do equal justice. But what we must absolutely insist upon is full and free recognition of the fact that, in spite of everything, the race and the nation must go on reproducing themselves. Whatever modifications we make must not—interfere with that prime necessity. We will not aid or abet women as a sex in rebelling against maternity, or in quarreling with the constitution of the solar system. Whether we have wives or not and that is a minor point about which I, for one, am supremely unprejudiced—we must at least have mothers. And it would be well, if possible, to bring up those mothers as strong, as wise, as free, as sane, as healthy, as earnest, and as efficient as we can make them. If this is barren paradox, I am content to be paradoxical; if this is rank Toryism, I am content for once to be reckoned among the Tories.—Fortnightly Review.
NEW PHASES IN THE CHINESE PROBLEM. |
By WILLARD B. FARWELL.
THE whirligig of politics, rather than that of time, undoubtedly brought about the hasty passage by Congress of the so-called "Chinese Exclusion Act." Being simply "a supplement" to the act of May 6, 1882, which expires by its own limitation on the 6th of May, 1892, it can of course only be regarded as a temporary measure; and unless other legislation of like character, but more well considered and permanent in its operation, is had before May 6, 1892, the country will then be as open to the free and unrestricted immigration of the Chinese as it was prior to the treaty of 1881, and the act to execute its provisions to which this is a supplement. The passage of this measure by Congress, and its approval by the President, suggest new phases in the Chinese problem. First among them all is, Will exclusion exclude, as provided in the machinery of this act? To find an intelligent answer to this question, it is necessary first to understand the causes and motives which impel the Chinese to migrate from their native country. Until this phase of the question is fairly presented, the difficulties involved in excluding the Chinese by legislative methods will not be rightly estimated by Congress or by the country at large.
With an area of 1,297,999 square miles, China possessed a pop-