t.
THE CENTENNIAL SITUATION OF WOMAN.
ADDLE ss
OF
HON. ALEXANDER E. BULLOCK,
AT THE COMMENCEMENT ANNIVERSARY OF
MOUNT HOLYOKE SEMI/NARY,
MASSACHUSETTS,
JUNE 22, 1876.
WORCESTER:
PRINTED BY CIIARLES HAMILTON,
CENTRAL EXCHANGB.
1876.
II922 -  
ADDRESS.
IF I were to adapt my theme precisely to this
presence and this occasion, I should perhaps confine
myself to some of the methods employed in educating the sex to which this institution has been set
apart.  But a good reason for thrusting this duty
aside may be found in my own unfitness for it,
arising by no means from a want of interest in the
subject,- for that interest, even if it had been dim
before, your countenances alone would brighten today,-but springing rather from my habits of life
and occupation, which have not held me in objective
intimacy with that delicate inquiry, the most important of our time. Neither does this day nor this
school need me in that duty, which has been so well
discharged by your speakers of former years,
especially and most completely by the President of
this institution, to whose studies and labors your
sex is under many and great obligations, and mine
is under more and greater obligations. Whilst,
therefore, I aim to keep myself in sympathy with the
spirit of your anniversary, you will permit me to
W OR15JUL36
OA~n 
9',I- I  f -
8 
Address.
turn away from the exact reasoning and analysis,
supported by a professional experience, which that
duty would require,-and as a loyal citizen of
America, speaking to her equally loyal daughters,
to invite you within that magical centennial circle,
from which in this present year all our institutions
and experiences pass out in review. The restrictions of the hour will permit me to touch only in a
desultory manner upon a broad consideration of the
situation of woman at the close of another centenary.
The progress of civilization and the advance of the
whole race in the course of a century covers for the
most part meliorations in which both sexes share
alike, nor in a just sense can there be any benefit
for the one which is not also a benefit for the other;
and yet in certain fields of improvement women
have been so distinctively the beneficiaries'of the
last hundred years, that their condition in this particular stands apart from the general adyancement
of mankind, and challenges our special attention.
The position of the sex in the view of social
science, as factors in our systems of political economy and industry, takes precedence in every discussion of the situation.  The merely sentimental
relations of what is called woman's mission, the
treatment of her as a poetical being whose primary
office is to attract and charm, are essentially modified
iii this later age by the lessons of a practical and
4 
Her Advance in Political Economy.
working world. We are met in the outset by the
conspicuous fact, that at the present time in Great
Britain and in our own country, which in this respect
I adopt as the best exponents of modern civilization,
a very large proportion of women, under the liberal
methods of our industry, are earning their living;
and although this may seem a topic of ungentle features to be presented before young ladies mounting
on the wings of exhilaration to more airy spheres, it
nevertheless represents the most importaut advance- 
ment which their sex has made in the events of
the century. The significant part of it is, that they
have made this advance for themselves, and that
men have not made it for them. In the earlier ages
their position was the natural result of their inferiority in physical strength; and accordingly handmaids rather than helpmates, slaves rather than
companions, are not only historical characters of
savage life, but are actual and existing characters in
the lowest and least educated portions of civilized
life. I am aware that in our traditions and our
literature it has been the accepted phrase,  that
woman is maintained by father, or husband, or
brother.  This theory is a type of real existence in
exceptional circles at all times, and has much to
recommend it. Certainly it is attractive to a man of
cultivated tastes, that he may turn aside from the
dusty avenues of his own daily offices, and refresh
5 
Address.
himself by the very presence of a refined and spiritual being, whom he treats sometimes as a saint and
sometimes as a spoiled child; nor is this practice
apt to be rejected by the saint or the child. But in
point of fact, speaking of the sex as a whole, this has
never been more than a partial truth, and wherever
it has been true at all, it has not been generally
to their advantage.  In periods when there were
only the gentlewoman and the low-born woman, the
one was indeed maintained by the other, but the
one also belonged to the other, or to the master of
both; and self-dependence, whether ideal or actual,
was as unknown as the electric telegraph. In the
progress of time the uprising of a middle class, and
the introduction of shop-keeping and textile manufactures, stimulated the dead level of female life
and in the subsequent growth of this middle class,
which in every nation has come to be the social bulwark, in the varied division of industries, ill the
widening opportunities to assert and maintain their
individuality, women have escaped the pernicious
condition which formerly darkened the best portions
of Europe, under which, for want of occupation for
independent maintenance, the daughters were shut
in to the alternative of an enforced marriage or an
enforced convent,-and whatever else woman was
made for, I do not believe she was made for a
marriage or a nunnery against her will.
6 
Her Place in Modern Industries.
Now  in this extent of her emancipation,-if I
employ the right phraseology,-the last hundred
years have witnessed a constantly increasing exaltation in her situation as a component of our civil economy, which surpasses the attainment of five or ten
preceding centuries. Iler part in the business of
life, diffusing its influence over all common and all
cultivated ranks, and changing the entire form of
society, is one of the amazing facts of our time.
Twenty years ago-I have not seen the later returns
of six millions of women above twenty years of
age in England and Scotland, it was found that
three millions, or one half of the whole number,
were special in the industries and were independent
supporters,-and some writers expressed the opinion
that there were not fifty thousand in England who
were not in some manner industrial and self sustaining. I regret that from the returns of our own
census I cannot derive a clear and satisfactory
statement, but it is obvious to all of us that the
result would not be unlike the English conclusion.
No doubt the industries of female life in Massachusetts, leaving out.the department of agriculture,
bear a close resemblance to those of England, and
the lesson derived from them is a characteristic of
this generation. Under our changed and more
liberal political economy the need and supply of
female industry has proved to be one of the most
7 
Address.
active agencies of social improvement, and has
advanced the sex to independence and equality.
This has not come from their own assertion or ambition, but it has been the growth of their necessities
and their virtues.  It has grown up out of the commercial spirit of the age, which has been their
educator and benefactor. While man, heretofore
arbiter of the social law, of his own volition would
have preserved woman in the fancied unworldliness
with which his reading and imagination associated
her, the genius of modern commerce has led her out
into its fair and open field, where the magnets of a
hundred occupations attract her, and in following
them neither is the bloom of her character sullied, nor
her place in the household abandoned, nor her religion profaned. Occupation, widened in its variety and
raised in its quality, presents her everywhere on
high ground under the divine and human economy,
and presents her nowhere lowered in the scale of
immortal  being.  Emerged  from  seclusion and
dependence to the light of active life, she yet holds
in her own hand the veil of her own protection. Her
steps are out over the state. She is mistress of the
advancing corps of educators, —she ranks among
the enlightened authors of poetic and didactic creations,-she assists with clean hands" the power of
the press, the modern regulator,-she is the indispensable adjunct and sometines the principal in at
8 
Revolution in her  Civil Rights.
least one of the learned professions,-she draws her
passionate intuitions in imperishable colors over the
field of art,-she transfers finest perceptions over
the finger to handiwork of utility and beauty,-she
raises manufactures by withdrawing them from the
shop to the house,-she takes possession of the
doors of trade and establishes what is orderly and
becoming for the rule of the place,-she transmutes
her own spirit and taste by daily labor into the
national character,-she alike creates and adorns
whatever of hospitality we elljoy, she makes the
law of beauty the law of the table, she makes home
a refuge, a school and an altar. It is an era of
woman brought to independence by the unwritten,
irreversible laws of political economy,-of her
advancement under the influences of a commercial
age.  The last fifty years have seen old barriers
broken down, which can never be restored, new
avenues opened, which can never be closed, over
which her advancing step has not been so much the
movement of her design, as it has been the fulfilment of her destiny. This hand of social reform
has been gentle but resistless.
This great change in the social condition has not
been effected without corresponding change in the
civil rights of women. In Great Britain much has
been gained by equitable legislation in half a century,
and much remains yet to be accomplished before a
9 
Address.
just legal relation will be established between the
sexes. In our own commonwealth the progress in
this province of legal reform has been such as to
leave little remainingi to be desired. I dare say
some of the younger states may be in the lead of
us in this respect, but without knowing precisely
how that may be, I am warranted in selecting Massachusetts as presenting a model of the legal status of
the rights of women, and as a representative of the
general tendency of American legislation. The condition of the rights of married women under the law
has been a fruitful subject of discussion for a long
period, but at last in our own state at least, it must
be admitted that the sceptre of the master, whether
the sceptre and the master be real or imaginary, has
substantially departed. For a general statement,
a hundred years ago the common law of England
was the prevailing rule here, and in that law there
was a degree of unjust inequality which cannot and
ought not to be defended. It bore some flavor of
the early time, when the physical weakness of
woman appears to have been the measure of her
rights,-it tasted more distinctively of the feudal
ages, when chivalry invested her with a sort of ideal
dignity but continued to handle her with gloves of
mail,-it carried a part of the spirit of Teutonic
equality and more of Roman equity, to which some
of her present immunities, including that of dower,
10 
Revolution in hIer Civil Rights.
may be traced back for their origin. But as a rule,
upon her marriage, it swept into the hands of her
husband the main body of her personal property and
personal rights. I allow that he in turn incurred
some serious incuinbrances and liabilities, but they
by no means corresponded in importance to those
which she surrendered. Without doubt the theory
of his possession, was held to fit the theory of her
protection. But after all that can be said in explanation or extenuation, for the greater portion of her
civil rights, a century since, a woman married was
in a state of civil subjection which according to the
analogies of other improvements ought to have been
removed a century before that time. But in the
spirit of freedom of modern commerce, and in the
power of education, this injustice from root to
branch has mostly been swept away. By successive
stages of legislation, commencing almost immediately after the adoption of the state constitution in
178(), followed up from interval to interval, and culminating in the sweeping law of 1874, the whole
force of these inequalities has yielded before the
paramount equities of the situation; and to-day the
personality, the independence of woman, in civil
rights under  the law, stands out the crowning
achievement of this commonwealth. If the making
of the laws had been in her own hands, I do not
believe that they could be more beneficent.
11 
Address.
Nor has her relation to marriage been less generously touched by the hand of time. According to
the old usages of England, of which the sanction
and obligation is not yet gone by, the ecclesiastical
laws and the ecclesiastical courts were infected by
the spirit of the Papal Church, and that spirit
always fell upon women in matrimony with the
force of a vermilion edict. I know it may be said,
that in dealing with the two persons in this relation
of life, the same rule reached to both parties within
the bond, and yet, such is man and such is woman,
in their different spheres of liberty and action, that
contumely, tyranny or wrong in that sacred relation
found five sufferers on the weaker side, where it
found one on the stronger side.  The  questions
which arise in marital alienation involve not solely
the right of woman to her property and her children,
-though that is grave enough for most broad and
solemn justice,-but they involve her right to herself, to her self-respect, to a good place in the social
scale, to her "maiden meditation," to the freedom of
her heart, and the holiness of her love. It may be
granted, that in the spirit of the espousal she is
bound by a sacramental tie; but it is not an eternal
compact under wrong. In our own recent time
Prussia, Austria and France have been struggling
for the recognition of marriage as a civil contract,
and the German mind is winning the day from
12 
Maa'riage and its Right.,.
Rome to justice.  In no American state, so far as I
know, has marriage ever been treated in the European sense as a sacrament, nor is there any possibility that it ever will be so treated; but in some of
the older states of this Union, at the time referred
to, the right to a release from an unnatural or perverted alliance was treated with a severity, which as
with a flaming sword would fain drive the ill-starred
pair back to an impossible paradise. Here again
the silent forces of political economy have been the
pioneers of the legal reform.   So many  and so
grave were the civil incongruities of enforced union,
where its spirit had been extinguished by neglect or
abuse, so frequent and serious the conflict in the
relative positions of both persons in cases of separatioin not recognized by law, so impossible under
the ancient laws equitably to adjust irreconcilable
questions as to children and property, that more
liberal and humane statutes were called in to cut the
knot and to furnish relief and remedy. I believe
that we are now living under a more just and suitable construction of marital relations, than any century has before enjoyed.   The  reform has been
broad in the interest of women. In the diverse
treatment of the subject under the jurisdiction of so
many states no doubt it is difficult to close the door
against all immoral effects; but taking the state in
which we reside for our field of observation, I amn
13 
Address.
convinced that the welfare of women in marriage
has been promoted, in the last forty years, more
nearly to a perfect condition, than could have been
conceived under the ancient systems of the world.
Their immunity of person and property, their right
to release from oppression practiced under the certificate of a wedding, their opportunities of return
to their own industry, their own affections and their
own religion, are advanced to a degree which suits
to their moral and social necessities; which accords
with a civilization built up on the overthrow of
ecclesiastical dogmatism and superstition, too long
received under the name of conservatism.
But the chief motive cause in the elevation of the
sex during the last part of the century, has been
the quickening power of education. If the RQformation of the sixteenth century sent forth any
triumphant lesson to pervade the world, it was the
opinion that the right of private judgment must be
accompanied by the education of those who are to
employ it; But though the sentiments of Luther
tended in that direction, so unfamiliar was that age
with the conception of woman rising above her
recognized sphere, that it remained for later time to
bring home to her the beneficence of the vital principle upon which alone complete Protestantism can
stand. Conventual houses bore some fruit of education, but it was intended and was kept limited in its
14 
Modern Education the Exaltation of Woman.
uses; the birds might practice their voices within,
but they might not send out their heavenly airs over
the waiting communities. And not until the work
of the protestant reformers had been supplemented
by political freedom, not until free exp)ression of
thought had been circulated by the wings of commerce, was the way prepared for this later blessing.
And it was a long time in coming. Chivalry had
cast about a chosenlfew of its heroines an artificial
glare, but it was the flame of gallantry and not the
light of knowledge.  The superstitions of the church
for hundreds of years dropped around the mass of
the sex a drapery of exclusion and ignorance which
was impenetrable to light.  The church has been to
them, in too many instances, a mysterious and
uncertain guardian. We are accustomed to say
that their social exaltation has come out of christianity, and so I believe,-but not altogether out of
its professional ministers and teachers. Even in our
time, the church has been a doubtful guide for conducting them to the culture which would alike animate their industries and irradiate their homes. We
have been told that the late unfortunate Empress of
the French, under inspiration of the southern custodian of the conscience of France, was industrious
over the spiritual condition of her charge, including
the imperial consort; but I have never heard that
she received from the same consecrated source any
15 
Address.
instructions to aid in raising up six or eight millions
of benighted peasant women out of gross ignorance
by the magical touches of education. My clerical
fiiends around me will pardon me for the suggestion,
that even in our generation protestant clergymen,
in treating this delicate subject, may have too often
overlooked the ways of worldly wisdom.  If onehalf of the force of learning and intellect, which in
assemblies and synods, in councils and pulpits, has
been expended upon the question whether a man
with three or four motherless children may or may
not marry the sister of the deceased wife, had been
devoted to the living, impending question, of educating all the girls in the village with sweet graces
for wives and tender fitness for mothers, perhaps
christianity would not have lost any credit as the
renovater, nor its preachers any honor as benefactors. The result of a different procedure has
been, what might have been expected, that the
widowers in apparently increasing numbers have
continued to marry the sisters, and maidens in
numbers altogether too large have neglected to
educate themselves for married life. But protestant
christianity, selecting other agencies of influence,
has brought its enginery to bear upon the work of
female education. The great spiritual hero of the
Reformation sounded the key-note for the uprising
of the sex, and commercial communities, stimulated
16 
Aristocratical European Culture.
by the spirit of true religion, and the conscious
power of education, have helped the movement
forward never to go back.
More than a century ago, there was among a few
of the supreme women of Europe a culture of
which the splendor has descended to us in tradition
and letters. It came from a conventual and aristocratical education, which in some respects has rarely
been surpassed. For elegance and refinement of
the written and spoken word, for wit enforced by
animal spirits, for talent enlivened by ardor of imagination and sustained by constitutional gaiety even
in the shadow of old age, a limited number of the
women of France, of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, have left a celebrity which still abides in
literature and society.  For truthful expression and
natural manners the letters of Madame  de S6vigne
have long been a social classic in Europe, and have
been deemed so worthy of study in our country that
Mr. Everett warmly commended them to the young
ladies of Massachusetts. Several others attained to
similar fame in conversation and letter-writing, a
province in which women are natural authors. The
letters of Mesdames du Deffand and de Choiseul,
and Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, not to extend the
list, have made their sex illustrious in the annals of
genteel education. In and around the English
court life in the last age were memorable literary
17
i 
Addr-es,s.
exemplars. But this development was confined to at
small class, and was more brilliant than worthy of
imitation. Many of the characters were such types
of their sex as Horace Walpole was a type of ours.
They trifled with the solemn realities of duty, and
employed intellect to flatter the weakness and the
vices of society. It was a culture of graces and
not of  the reason and the heart, —which "turned
mortal life into a fine dream, and presented death
as but a drooping of the garlands of a feast from
which the guests have departed." It was an era of
theatric pageant of life, in which the modest millions
of the ranks of the sex could have no part to act.
Anything like the need of an open field for the education of the greater number, was not recognized
in the opinion of that day, and that recognition was
slow in appearing.
The present American system of female education
is the result of a long conflict with unenlightened
public sentiment, a triumph over prejudices which
have had no analogy in the other ways of our life.
The river which sweeps with graceful curvature
under the ceaseless challenge of yonder sentinel of
the valley, bringing to your doors the lessons of an
undying master, the incitations of a perpetual poem,
is the witness and interpreter of my topic. Upon
either of its shores all other advancements were
made full six scores of years before this one. Every
18
41 
General Education of Women.
successive invention or discovery of agriculture
was brought to use in the cultivation of this alluvion,
— every stage of applied science was quickly seized
and appropriated by the practical and mechanical
arts, —inquisitive and progressive theology under
Edwar(ls and his successors sounded through generations up and down the Connecticut,-civil freedom
and political science was never without a patron
and teacher in  liawley and Strong, in Mills and
Bates, in Allen and Ashmun, —genius of worldwide fatme gathered boys at its feet for instruction
on the heights of Northampton', —all the churches
and all the ministers within a forty-mile circle put
themselves for ten years under self-denying ordinances, until a college for young men should be set
in the swelling landscape of Amherst; —while, in all
that long lperiod, the idea of a seminary for the education of young women, existed, I suppose, among
the eternal decrees, —certainily fifty years ago it
existed nowhere else.  In Englaindthe condition was
not less deplorable. In the comparatively recent
life-time of Sydney Smith female education was so
utterly disregarded, that in one of the most vigorous
papers of that extraordinary man, he sought to
enlist for the subject the interest of his countrymen
by a course of arguments which we have now so far
outgrown, that if I were to employ them here to-day
you would deem them scarcely above platitudes
19
i 
Address.
and truisms. The difficulty in the way was an
indurated and concealed popular belief of the inutility and inexpediency of encouraging culture in
the sex, a belief so rooted in the prejudices of
men, that in some  natures it still exists lurking
as a subtle poison, unacknowledged because publicity in our day would be shame. It is no longer
respectable to be indifferent to this subject; and
whenever in any work of reform that stage is
reached, the victory is already  won.   The first
dawn of this moral revolution was in Massachusetts, and the civilized world concedes the fact by
adopting the example. When free education for
both sexes, as a municipal duty to be enforced
by law, became here the public interpretation of
state  obligation,  the  finger  of  transfiguration
touched the destiny of woman, nor can any reaction
ever set it back. Limited for generations by the
public poverty, it has for generations been increasing
with the public wealth and the relaxation of ancient
prejudice, until a respectable standard of culture is
now required by law in equal degree for the one
sex and the other.   The  cloud of prejudice has
lifted from public opinion, the vision of duty has
expanded, the scope of legislation has widened, and
to-day all over the United States the acknowledged
right of equality in the mental relations of the sexes
is a part of the atmosphere we breathe.
20 
Direct Aid from the Treasury.
In adopting the rule of aiding' from the treasury
of the state the higher seminaries of female education, some of the newer states have larger claims to
gratitude than our own commonwealth.  We  may
rejoice that in the West, along those parallels of
latitude which the bracing air of freedom and intelligence pervades, where the influences that are to
control the future of this country are rapidly taking
grace and culture, government patronage opens its
gates to the largest development of the daughters.
In some of those imperial commonwealths the doors
of state universities are thrown wide open to both
sexes. I equally regret that the past error of Miassachusetts, in this respect, cannot now be retrieved.
While her legislature at intervals through several
generations made public grants to the colleges for
boys, it left the daughters alone to the thinner
diet of the common schools. It may be doubted
whether ever again it will be a part of our public
policy, to make grants from the treasury to the
higher seminaries of either sex, and probably henceforth they must rely upon private liberality, -nor
am I by any means confident that in the enlarged
wealth of the time this will not be the just policy.
It is chiefly observable that this kind of legislation
should stop, precisely at the time when the girls'
colleges are emerging in divinest array from an
age of neglect.   And  since this is likely to be
21
4 
Address.
our future public policy, I take special pleasure
in saying that the last act of the legislature of
Massachusetts granting money from the treasury
to a collegiate institution, was an act alike of
indemnity and expiation. On a morning in the
winter of 1867, when it happened to me to be inll
the executive office, I received at the state-house
the visit of two ladies, the one  already then  a
munificient patroness of this institution, and  the
other actively connected with its administration,
who solicited my co-operation in an endeavor to
obtain an act of legislative assistance for Mount
Holyoke Seminary. I was deeply impressed by
their plea that the commonwealth had never given
a dollar to any female seminary. Referring them
to a few gentlemen in both houses who might
greatly assist them, it only remained for me to
assure them, quite in disregard of the proprieties
of my office, that if they- would procure the passage of the bill through the legislature, it should
be signed as quickly as I could read it.  I can
sincerely say, with pride for myself but with greater
pride for Massachusetts, that probably no magistrate ever wrote his name with more alacrity than
I felt in affixing mine to an act, which, by the
payment of forty thousand dollars out of the
treasury to this institution, cast over our coat of
arms a fresh light, the light of justice.
22
.I!
II 
Women  Ed'ucating the State.
Nothing in the methods of social progress is
more propitious than the surrender of the pro  fession of teaching to women.  For some years after
the adoption of the constitution they were ineligible
to this office,,and if admitted to perform its duties
in the public schools, I believe, they could not by
process of law collect their salary.  Not only has
this wrong been removed, but in our day an entire
revolution has overtaken this occupation. In part
for reasons of political economy, in part because
of a more just estimate of their sex as natural
educators, women now constitute nine-tenths of the
whole corps of public instructors in the state; they
fill the same office in the Normal schools, in all the
High schools, in all the higher seminaries; in short,
they are supreme everywhere in our education, save
in the Technical and Classical schools and the Col leges. No change so broad and radical as this has
been witnessed in any other field of social science
in modern time.   For the future, our citizenship,
our magistracy, our history is under their hands.
If we contemplate this vast corps on their several
planes of power, whether in domestic training or
in public instruction, directing the early impressible
years as they can be directed only in the sacred
retirement of home, or by  a genius fit for the
occupation conducting the incitements of the class room, we must acknowledge that the women of this
23
i
i
i
I 
Address.
generation are performing their part for the preservation of this government.   Some persons are
doubtless present, who in their walks in Rome have
gazed with pride upon the genius of a few of their
countrywomen, projected in the image of marble;
but I point you to thousands of your countrywomen, in all portions of this land, who are moulding        human nature in the spiritual image, which
shall survive when marble shall have crumbled.
And since this beneficent work has fallen into their
hands, it is well for our country that their superiority as educators is especially in the domain of
the moral sentiment, for never before has our
political condition stood in greater need of those
influences. Whenever a blight spreads over the
political morals of a people, the remedy has to
come   from the next  generation.   It is possible
only to a limited extent to modify the evil in men
hackneyed in the abuses of public trust; the hope
of purification is chiefly to be found in a new
blood. It is the memory of ennobling instructions
which youth carries into manhood, that supplies
the        promise of our free institutions.   The high
qualities of Lord Denman, the soul of honor in
every relation he touched, were traced to the
governess of his boyhood; and when advanced in
his career as Lord Chief Justice of England, he
still related with the simplicity of a child his night
24
IS
1
i 
Modern Homagefo- TVoman superior to the old.
dreams of Mrs. Barbauld. I look abroad over the
fields traversed by the graduates of this institution,
now rapidly aproaching two thousand, and I behold
them at their work on the national character,- I
see them defiling into all the states of the union,
infusing the middle ranks of our life with gentleness and strength of culture, — instructors, with
Lmtitia Barbauld, inculcating the sentiments which
will draw around the future citizen the conscious
solemnities of responsibility, and purify his discharge of private or public trust, - in the family,
with Miss Sedgwick, gracing domestic duties by
the relief of studies,-with Caroline Herschel, supplementing the care of the household with the
gaze of the heavens, - in the occasional offices of
compassion and benevolence as effectually fulfilling
the mission of the Lord, as Dorothea Dix or Elizabeth Fry, as Mlary Pickard or Sarah Pellatt, -in
the common lot of existence, by their elevation of
the written and spoken word, as truly promoting
the dignity of their own sex and commanding the
respect of the other, as if they bore the name of
Edgeworth or More, of Jameson or Aiken;-and
I follow this influence through the ever lengthening
progression of time, until it is lost to sight in the
depth of ages.
Such are some of the chief exponents of the
benefits which the century has brought to the sex.
25 
Address.
There is a more general but not less impressive
feature of her advance in the respect of this age.
In this moral and social eminence there is also a
higher esteem and homage for her individuLality,
for her being, simply as woman, than at any
former period.   Never was there a time before
when she was so encompassed by spontaneous
honor and veneration.  More  conspicuously now
than ever before, she is reverenced for herself,because she exists. If it might have been feared
that her going forth into the ways of commerce
and arts and many industries would dethrone her
from the pedestal on which past ages had placed
her, experience has shown that her divinity is now
encircled by a broader homage than those ages ever
knew. It is true, this instinctive deference for her
has always existed, lodging itself in the heart of
every period, Varying with diversities of nations or
customs or manners, adapting itself to all the revolutions of thought which have shaken religions and
codes, ever standing out as a thing distinct from
all other things, - deference for woman.   Jt is
equally true, that this manifests itself in our time
by acknowledging  female  ascendency in higher
methods and on higher levels than existed in the
days of northern invasion, or gallantry of Provence,
or self-assertion in revolutionary Paris.  There is
no doubt that in the gothic periods women made
21
i
I 
Ie,spect for her inspired by our Literature.
a great advance as the recipients of an exaggerated
yet genuine adoration, but the modern is the higher
and larger style. If in that time they were shielded
by gallantry as dependent in their weakness, they
are now shielded in equality of rights by the sword
of the law, by the hand of man, by the opinion of
society. If they were then revered because of their
qualities without attainments, they are now revered
because of their qualities unfolded by education.
If the ancient chivalry threw its arms around them
as beings not desecrated by the utilities, the chivalry
of our day hedges them with the legions of its law
and the angels of its commerce. If the Troubadours adored them for the goddesses they were
not, christian men respect them for the women they
are. If in the ancient joust knights shivered their
lances for beauties whose wits were invented several
centuries afterwards by Walter Scott, modern gentlemen would die in earnest for the immortal beauty
of womanhood. If in the period of middle-age
romance the higher few received those courtesies,
the code of modern society raises and guards the
whole.
Historically woman is at the acme of her power.
The age is in full accord with her, and on whatever
ground she steps she commands the sympathy of mankind. Nor to chivalry, nor to law, nor to commerce
is her place in all hearts-to be exclusively ascribed.
27 
I 
Address.
The inspiration of the masters of thought has spread
through modern literature, and from stage to stage
has sounded the notes of her progress. The mysteries of her being have met their interpretation
in the profound insight and pure conceptions of
Milton. Incomparably beyond all others, Shakespeare has uncovered her capacities both for good
and for evil, the excesses and the limitations of her
nature, the side of her vanity and the side of her
glory.   In comparatively recent years the bookshelves have been stocking with commentaries from
both sexes on the female characters of the great
dramatist, until Juliet and Ophelia, Desdemona and
Cordelia, Portia and Beatrice, Lady Macbeth and
Katharine of Arragon are familiar as the living.
His interpretation of her, piercing as the light of
the diamond, is caught up and radiated from every
sphere of active thought, from the pulpit and the
bar, from novels which are histories and from histories which are novels, from schools, from cottages,
from the shops, and his myriad-mind pleads everywhere her cause. How deeply he has touched the
fountains of the human heart in all classes, and how
closely he has brought man into intelligent syinmpathy with woman, the stage bears daily witness
whenever applause runs from seat to seat over his
grand words in her behalf, for love and mercy, for
justice - and  retribution.   Addison has been her 
Equality of the Sexes.
amiable satirist and kindly instructor. Burns still
feels the chords of the race with her pathos and
plaintive love. I forbear to extend the catalogue.
Whilst Swift and Pope and Johnson, who were
incapable of being amiable or just to woman, retire
from her support, Milton and Shakespeare, Addison
and Burns, are read by constantly increasing numbers; the nobility and naturalness, the dignity and
tenderness of their sentiments, laid at the shrine of
her affections and her wrongs, have passed into the
common mind of this age and have become a part
of its humane judgment. Over all these inspiring
influences, which have aided to bring mankind to
the justice of her relations, the lessons of the
Master of our holy religion preside and govern,
qualifying, exalting, combining them into a harmonious public opinion.
One of the conclusions from the discussions of
the century appears to be the settlement of the
question of the intellectual equality of the sexes.
If you ask how it has been settled:- by the conclusion that there is no question which ever can or
ought to be settled at all.  If the disputations of
the last hundred and fifty years over this question
could be collected, the curiosities of literature would
be vastly swollen.   After bringing the lens of
Scotch metaphysics to bear upon it Dugald Stewart
decided that all intellectual differences are the
29 
Address.
consequence of difference in education, and Lord
Jeffrey, model in learning and fairness of judgment,
inclines in the same direction. Other critics equally
profound have as positively maintained the opposite
opinion. A female writer of marked acumen and
liberal learning who has made valuable contributions to our literature, Mrs. Jameson, expresses
the opinion, that "the intellect of woman bears
the same relation to that of man as her physical
organization; it is inferior in power, and different
in kind.   In men  the intellectual faculties exist
more  self-poised  and  self-directed, more  independent of the rest of the character, than we
find them in women;  with whom talent, however
predominant, is in much greater degree modified
by the sympathies and by moral causes."   The
sum  total  of  the  general  belief of  the  most
enlightened of both sexes appears to be, that
there is a difference of kind in their natural
endowments, and that there is for each an appropriate field for development and action.   I think
we may agree this morning, that woman is the
superior  in  nice  perception  of minute  circuinmstances, in the force and promptitude of her sympathy, in the courage of her affections and moral
sentiments, in all the qualities depending upon
excitability of nerve, in her capacity for noble
and devoted attachment, in patience, quickness
30 
Reciprocal Sup)eriority of thle Sexes.
and tact, and in a talent which is nct defined
by the metalIhysicians, and which men sometimes
find embarrassing to themselves, the gift of second
sight.  I shall leave for you to determine, whether
the sterner sex  does  or does not excel in the
power of close and logical reasoning, in the capacity for investigating questions involving complex
and indeterminate elements, in perseverance rather
than patience, in concentrated power of attention,
in sustained reach of combination and generalization, in creative force, in breadth of judgment and
scope of imagination.   To what extent education
can modify the diversities which exist, whatever
they may be, it is unnecessary to inquire, since
the approving judgment of our day has on the
whole accepted the fact that such diversities do
not impair the relative influence of either sex,
that neither class of forces is higher than the
other in the scale of mind, and that both are
essential for the greatest success of the race. In
the warfare of life the cavalry and the artillery
must co-operate in the achievement of victory.
It is an interesting feature of this subject, that
while metaphysicians and partizans have been agitating this question of equality of endowments,
each sex has in practice uniformly recognized the
superiority of the other. Women always imitate
men in intellectual display, always  take pride in
st 
Address.
being deemed their equals, always receive from
their hand the wreath of honor with complacency;
men always seek the critical approval of women,
receive their satire as the very edge of truth, care
more for the galleries than for the floor, and never
feel sure of success if their penetrating eye withholds its acknowledgment.  The finer qualities pay
tribute to the coarser; the higher qualities predominate over the greater. This practice does not
much proceed from mere gallantry or from badinage; it is the rule of conduct of sincere and serious
life. It is the triumph of moral power over the
intellectual. This reciprocal recognition of superioirity, each sex as to the other, is an unerring
indication that in ordering the operations of the
social system divine Providence established over
it this mystic law.  It is the tie which binds men
and women  in the solemn unities of life.  It is
the happy fiction, if you please, it is the moral
unreality, under which each sex is ever courting
an exaggerated estimate of itself from the other,
-and "goes to the courtship as its prayer,"
under which each  sex  ever concedes it to the
other, and is more blessed in giving than in receiving.   Under human necessity the laws of states
confine certain offices of duty to the stronger,
in no derogation of the right or dignity of the
weaker; and in turn, by those subtile and beneficent
. S2.~
p 
Reciprocal Superiority of the Sexes.
influences which nature gave them, which man
would not take away if he could, and could not
take away if he would, the weaker become the
superior, and overshadow alike the law-maker and
the law. There is a harmonious inequality, which
is better than the most perfect equality.   The
great christian lyrist has wrought the mysterious
incongruities and contradictions of the sexes into
matchless shape of reconciliation.   After assigning to the lips of Adam in paradise the strongest
expressions of his own superiority in mind and
inward faculties, in accord, he says, with the prime
end of nature, he allows our progenitor to break
forth in another and loftier strain:
— "Yet when I approach
Her loveliness, so absolute she seems,
And in herself complete, so well to know
Her own, that what she wills to do, or say,
Seems wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best.
All higher knowledge in her presence falls
Degraded. Wisdom, in discourse with her,
Loses, discountenanced, and like folly shows.
Authority and reason on her wait,
As one intended first, and not after made
Occasionally; and to consummate all,
Greatness of mind, and nobleness, their seat
Build in her loveliest, and create an awe
About her, as a guard angelic placed."
.8 
Address.
I think the experience of this age has confirm~(l
the opinion of former time as to the relation of
woman to the conduct of public affairs. I am iiot
speaking of the particular portion of this subjc(t
which is involved in the question of her exercise ol
the right of suffrage.   It is my conviction, on  a
review of the past, that as the common judgment of
both men and women was before adverse to su(h
participation in public affairs, the experience of' the
century has not changed that opinion.   Ill my
apprehension this conclusion is founded in good
reason and just sentiment. A most discriminating
female writer, who has not been backward in asserting the dignity of her sex, has said, that "women,
however well read in. history, never generalize in
politics, never reason from any broad and general
principles, or from past events, their causes and
their consequences,-but are political through their
affections, prejudices, hopes, fears and personal coilnections." And you will permit me to inquire, who
ever saw a woman set to work to discuss such questions as the proper duties and limitations of legislation, the complex mischief of certain laws and
policies, the causes of national wealth, the relations
of foreign trade and domestic industry, the field of
agriculture and manufactures, the finance and the
currency, the laws of population, the management
of poverty and inendicity, the theories of taxation,
84
I 
Woman in Public  Affairs.
the consequences of the public debt, and all public
matters upon which the welfare of a state depends.
It is not a sufficient answer to this inquiry, to say
that she has been kept out of the practice of politics, because, while she has never been prohibited
firom the study of civil economy, she has never cast
the light of reflective wisdom over any one of its
fields.  Women have ranged with free volition over
the whole domain of speculative thought, and the
fact that they have either avoided the severities of
political economy or have added nothing of value
to it, is their own voluntary tribute to the wisdom
of the division of duties under which society has so
long existed.  And distribution of political service
indifferently among men and women is so suggestive of confusion, awkwardness and impossibility of
progress in domestic life, that the piercing instinct
of the female mind very generally rejects it.
This opinion of the sex has become more firmly
established by the experiments which have been
made in the opposite direction during the century.
In the higher circles of the society of France, at
a timhe not now remote, the most intellectual of
its women attempted to participate in directing
public affairs, and the result has been transmitted
to us.  They wielded a short, brilliant and fatal
power.   From their boudoirs and drawing rooms
went forth the resultant force of wit enforced by
35.: 
A (dress.
beauty, and fallacy masked by flattery.  Policies
which desolated the kingdom were stimulated in
the salons of Paris, and from the councils of female
partizans came the orders to shed the purest blood
of both sexes.   The eagle eye of Napoleon took
the lesson at a glance, he employed the agency of
women  for their power at intrigue, and soignes
les femmes were often his ominous words to his
departing enibassadors.   Under the despotic and
aristocratic governments they have more than once
undertaken such a share in politics, but it has been
a service in the interest of diplomacy and intrigue.
The example descended to the common ranks, and
the political female clubs of Paris, numbering many
thousands of members, even more disorderly than
the disorderly clubs of men, were finally suppressed
by government - for cause.  It is a subject for
gratulation, that in this perversion of their nature
to incompatible functions both the higher and comnmon orders of the sex in the United States have
seen no inducement to claim the right or imitate the
example. We cannot fail to behold in contrast the
mass of women under the older governments, and
under our own. There has not been a more revolting spectacle than the mobs of women run mad
with politics, in the first French revolution, in
London in 178(), in Paris again at the close of
the last war with Prussia, in which everything of
36 
An Experinient and the Result.
the possible hideous cast its shadow upon history.
But, according  to  the  light within them, they
moved on the lower plane in the same sphere in
which their more cultivated exemplars moved on
the higher plane; and such will ever be the relation of the higher example to the inferior imitation.
Different has been the conduct of the women of
America.  In the more elevated and educated ranks
they have never brought their accomplishments and
virtues into the arena of political turmoil. From
the days in which Mrs. Hancock, the wife of the
President of the Congress, amid the excitements
of that trying epochl, exemplified the modesty, the
dignity and the discretion which John Adams has
transmitted to us for her memnorial, down to our
own time, they have followed more pure and comely
methods of influence.  And their example, also, has
not been without its following. Among the whole
mass of the women of the United States the order
of social existence has been exempt from the rude
display of political action. Amid the passions of
our politics we too have passed through many
mobs, but who ever heard of an American woman
appearing on that dread theatre in her Amazonian
armor? But while they instinctively avoid exposing both soul and body to the uncongenial attrition
of political affairs, they have not failed, in periods
of greatest excitement, within the pale of their
37 
Addr-ess.
fitness but to farthest extent of human benevolence, to discharge the noblest of all duties to the
state. In the awful period of the late war, leaving
to man the sterner obligations of patriotism, woman
was yet in every, work of mercy, in the weakened
household, in sanitary preparation, in the labors of
the hospital, in the house of prayer, at the burial
of the brave.
I trust we have not yet receded so far from the
days of Dr. Franklin's benignity and wisdom, that
his influence, so pre-eminent over the other sex in
his lifetime, may not still be cherished with tender
regard by their successors.  In one of his letters to
a granddaughter he gave this quaint and candid
advice: "You are very prudent not to engage in
party disputes. Women should not meddle with
party politics, except in the endeavor to reconcile
their husbands, brothers and friends, who happen to
be of contrary sides. If your sex keep cool, you
may be the means of cooling ours the sooner, and
restoring more speedily that social harmony among
fellow-citizens which is so desirable after long and
bitter dissensions." I desire to echo Dr. Franklin's
good counsel, in the hope that men may continue to
feel, for another century at least, that in consulting
a wife, a mother, or a sister on these subjects of
excitement, they are appealing from their own passions and prejudices, and not to them, embodied in
38 
A   WTord from Fira.,cklin and Addison.
a second self. I trust that the members of this
institution will concur with me in wishing far off
the day when their ranks, like too many of the
young men in their own schools, shall be swept into
the vortex of dispute about public men and public
affairs. If, however, there be any who look with
favor upon such employment of their time, I beg
leave to ask theii listening ear to a pleasantry of
Addison:  "There is nothing so bad for the face as
party-zeal.  It gives an ill-natured cast to the eye,
and a disagreeable sourness to the look; besides,
that it makes the lines too strong, and flushes them
worse than brandy.  I have seen a woman's face
break out in heats, as she has been talking against
a great lord, whom she never saw in her life; and,
indeed, I never knew a party-woman that kept her
beauty for a twelve-month.   I would  therefore
advise all my female friends, as they value their
complexion, to let alone all disputes of this nature;
though, at the same time, I would give free liberty
to all superannuated motherly partizans to be as
violent as they please, since there will be no danger
either of their spoiling their faces, or of their gaining converts."
If it be asked, what then is woman's sphere:-the
answer has already been furnished by her own intelligent judgment and practice under the best civilization which the world has had.  The  choice has
9 
Address.
rested with  her, and  she  has  not made  it in
doubt or hesitation.   She  has  properly refused
to be limited or controlled by certain worn-out
catch-phrases, of which one would shutit her up for
life as a nurse to the sick-chamber, and another
would consign her to silence as a prude, or to
seclusion as a nun. She is right in agreeing with
Sydney Smith, that woman cannot afford to be
compassionate from eight o'clock in the morning
to twelve o'clock at night. The modern economies
have met her on this ground, and have thrown open
to her the most respectable, the most delicate and
the most responsible occupations; and she has
taken to them with an exhilaration that belongs only
to the noblest nature.  She is satisfied,-it is only
the inquisitor, still ringing the question of her
sphere, who is dissatisfied.  She adheres to the
standard by which the graces of her character have
been measured in the advancing ideas of the last
half century.  It is her choice to regard herself as
an integral part of the plan of social and domestic
order, out of which it is no wish of hers to be
agitated and jostled into arenas alien to her nature.
It is within her own consciousness that woman is
the core and centre of a nation of homes; it is within her own knowledge that history, literature and
religion show the advancement of a nation to be in
its homes. This is a trite doctrine, but not triter
40 
The Social and Esthetic Adjuster.
than the solar system, or the geological formations,
nor any the less important. After trial, the family
institution is the world's method; without the
appropriate distribution of its duties, that must dissolve away; and therefore whatever weakens her
empire there, puts in peril the whole vast fabric.
She is the adjuster of society, the standard of its
moral sanctions and its purest sentiments, the beginning and the end of its natural and acquired
esthetics.  It is in the daily and smaller habitudes
of life that all classes find the average of their stimulations and pleasures; and her presence there is
inspiration, her direction there is better than law and
good as a perpetual song. She is the ingenious
manager of the national manners, which we underestimate.  "Manners,"-said Burke-"  Manners are
of more importance than laws. The law touches us
but here and there, now and then. Manners are what
vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase,
barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform,
irreversible operation, like that of the air we
breathe. They give the whole form and color to
our lives. According to their quality, they aid
morals, they supply them, or they destroy them."
I may add, that woman is their queen and their
law-giver.   In no country so much  as in ours
is it needed to bear in mind, that according to her
quality will be their quality.  In no other country
41
.0 
Address.
is it so essential that her influence over the manners
of the people be assisted by adding to her natural
refinement the effects of education, by preserving
her born decorum from the tarnish of whatever is
unifeminine.
This anniversary fitly takes the lesson that the
heroic element of woman is in moral sentiment.
Whatever of the renown of women of the century
now survives, comes mostly from that domain.
Their place in the judgments of civilization has
been determined by the rule which the author of
their being established as the pledge of the security
of society. This rule is often relaxed by men in
judging their own sex, but it is observed both by
men and women in judging the other sex. The
renown of eminent men often partakes of the glare
of great achievement, while moral obliquities are
condoned or overlooked.   Women with  a juster
religious sense judge their own sex by the moral
test, and their decision is taken up by the voice
of the ages. The genius of Napoleon still captures
the admiration of mankind, in spite of his crimes;
but the Semiramis of the North, Catharine of Russia, of consummate genius, having led an empire out
of mediocrity into the first places of power, is
seldom mentioned without a shudder. Of two
modern queens of nations, not unequal in natural
and acquired talent, the successor of the patroness
42 
Her Heroic Element.
of the discoverer of a new world lives in general
contempt, while she of our mother country is
descending the years in the light of benignant
fame. The heroism of woman is a moral heroism,
it is a principle and not a passion. Her courage is
of duty and not of ambition, and her passive fortitude is lodged among the proverbs of the world.
The maid of Orleans is triumphant as a historical
character, because she kept her innocence and rode
under a banner spiritually consecrated. When the
two emperors, and the marshals of France, and the
charge of the six hundred shall have been forgotten,
the name of Florence Nightingale will still travel
on to the posterities.   When mankind shall not
much remember the woman of genius ill diplomacy
and arms, who held the ascendancy of Germany, her
weaker daughter of France will still move all hearts
by the sublime meekness and divine forgiveness
which made immortal two years of martyrdom. Of
all that female array of Paris, brilliant in intellect,
which made even an epoch of blood almost attractive, the memorials which remain after ninety years,
are the memorials of christian fortitude in suffering.
The gay salon of Madame Roland, which controlled
an administration, is passing into oblivion, and her
own name lives only in the heroic invocation which
she uttered for all time, as the chariot bearing her
to the scaffold wheeled under the statue of Liberty.
43 
Address.
In all times and in all spheres the glory of womanhood is in the moral sentiments.
The limitations of this occasion compel me to
draw these remarks to a close. There are many
things one would desire to say, which must be
omitted.  It only remains for me, with the parting
word, to remind those whom I have the honor to
address, that enlarged responsibilities come always
with widening spheres of opportunity. If the fireedomi of civil rights has opened to the sex the gates
of a new world, they are to enter not only to possess
it, but to organize and embellish it. If equality of
privilege and honor in all industry is before them,
the universal law of decorum follows there, not only
to protect them, but to be itself preserved.  If
almost the whole education of the race has come
under their charge, let them be mindful that the
hand moulding the image of the age be set to the
finest touches of art under the purest inspirations of
spirit. If in conceded homage and deference they
occupy an eminence heretofore unknown, let them
acknowledge it with the fragrant courtesy of their
nature. Above all, I would counsel them against
being misled into that false theory, the worst of our
time, which implies antagonism between the sexes.
Women are not a class; they are co-ordinate factors
in the divine problem of immortal being; they are
elements in the systems of the world, out of which
44 
Conclusion.
they can neither be decomposed, nor be resolved
into independency of existence.  The accord between the sexes is the accord of mutual supremacy
and of mutual allegiance.
"The woman's cause is man's.  They lrise or sink
Together, dwarfed or godlike, bond or free:
For she that out of Lethe scales with man
The shining steps of Nature, shares with man
His iights, his days, moves with him to one goal,
Stays all the fair young planet in her hands If she be small, slight-natured, miserable,
How shall men grow?
let her make herself her own
To give or keep, to live and learn anid be
All that not harms distinctive womanhood.
For woman is not undeveloped man,
But diverse: coild( we make her as the man,
Sweet love were slain: his dearest bond is this,
Not like to like, but like in difference:
Yet in the long years liker must they grow;
The man be more of woman, she of man;
He gain in sweetness and in mor,-l height,
Nor lose the wrestling thews that throw the world;
She mental breadth, nor fail in childward care,
Nor lose the childlike in the larger mind;
Till at the last she set herself to man,
Like perfect music unto noble words.
Then comes the statelier Eden back to men;
Then reign the world's great bridals, chaste and calm,
Then springs the crowning race of humankind."
45