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and deference with which she has hitherto been so generously endowed; she will be treated rather as man than as woman; "she cannot have the advantages of both sexes at once." Nature, not legislators, has assigned to the two sexes their respective spheres, as we shall prove in another chapter, in which the "woman question" will be argued more at length.
We have shown that the very evils we deplore, and which it is sought to reform, have arisen from laxity and negligence of home duties. How, then, can we hope to reform them by still further increasing this laxity and neglect? If what we have said of domestic training be true, it will be seen how necessary it is to render mothers more faithful and vigilant, instead of weakening their interest and obligation to become so. Observe the families of those women who devote almost their entire time and attention to even meritorious and essentially feminine, but outside works—how neglected and proverbially wild and ungovernable are the children. Everyone says of such a woman, "She does good in a general way, but neglects her poor family, who have the prior claim, to her attention." But how is it with those women who neglect these sacred duties to follow schemes of ambition or of pleasure? They are justly regarded as monstrosities. Extend the suffrage to woman, throw her into the political arena, set her squabbling and scheming for office, and you multiply indefinitely the number of monstrosities. The evils of child-murder, of unnatural repugnance to offspring, will, for obvious reasons, be prodigiously increased; so the attainment of women's rights will prove the establishment of babies' wrongs.
Suppose a case: Mrs. Le Baron is elected to a lucrative and honorable office. She finds, to her infinite disgust, that she is "as ladies (used to) love to be, who love their
