FEMALE EDUCATION.

[An Address before the Newburyport Female High School.]

I ACCEPTED, without a moment's delay, the invitation of the principal of this school to deliver the customary address on this, the fifteenth anniversary of its establishment. My presence here in connection with public instruction is not a proper subject for comment by myself; but I have now come, allow me to say, with unusual alacrity, that we may together recognize the claims of an institution which furnishes the earliest evidence existing among us of a special design on the part of the public to provide adequate intellectual and moral training for the young women of the state.

Those movements which have accomplished most for religion, liberty, and learning, have not been sudden in their origin nor rapid in their progress. Christianity has been preached eighteen hundred years, yet it is not now received, even intellectually, by the larger part of the human race. Magna Charta is six centuries old, but its principles are not accepted by all the nations of Europe and America;

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and it is not, therefore, strange that a system of public instruction, originated by the Puritans of New England, should yet be struggling against prejudice and error. In Asia woman is degraded, and in Europe her common condition is that of apparent and absolute inferiority. When America was settled she became a participator in the struggles and sufferings which awaited the pioneers of civilization and liberty on this continent, and she thus earned a place in family, religious, and even in public life, which foreshowed her certain and speedy disenthrallment from the tyranny of tradition and time. Her rights with us are secure, and the anxiety and boisterous alarm exhibited by some strong-minded women, and the horror-fringed apprehensions and prophecies of some weak-minded men, are equally unreasonable and absurd. Woman is sharing the lot of humanity, and therewith she ought to be content. Man does not remove the burden of ignorance and oppression from his sex, merely, but generally from his kind. At least, this is the experience and promise of America. If woman does not vote because she is woman, so and for the same reason she is not subject to personal taxation. It is an error to suppose that voting is a privilege, and taxation, ever and always, a burden. Both are duties; and the privilege of the one and the burden of the other are only incidental and

subordinate. The human family is an aggregation of families; and the family, not the man nor the woman, is the unit of the state. The civil law assumes the existence of the family relation, and its unity where it exists; hence taxation of the woman brings no revenue to the state that might not have been secured by the taxation of the man; and hence the exercise of the elective franchise by the woman brings no additional political power; for, in the theory of the relation to which there are, in fact, but few exceptions, there is in the household but one political idea, and but one agent is needed for its expression. The ballot is the judgment of the family; not of the man, merely, nor of the woman, nor yet, indeed, always of both, even. The first smile that the father receives from the child affects every subsequent vote in municipal concerns, and likely enough also in national affairs. From that moment forward, he judges constables, selectmen, magistrates, aldermen, mayors, school-committees, and councillors, with an altered judgment. The result of the election is not the victory or defeat of the man alone; it is the triumph or prostration of a principle or purpose with which the family is identified.

Is it said that there is occasionally, if not frequently, a divided judgment in the household upon those questions that are decided by the ballot? This

must, of course, be granted as an exceptional condition of domestic life; but, for the wisest reasons of public policy, whose avoidance by the state would be treachery to humanity, the law universal can recognize only the general condition of things. So, and for kindred but not equally strong reasons, the elective franchise is exercised by men without families, and denied to those women who by the dispensations of Divine Providence are called to preside in homes where the father's face is seen no more. But why, in the eye of the state, shall the man stand as the head of the family, rather than the woman? Because God has so ordained it; and no civil community has ever yet escaped from the force of His decree in this respect. Those whose physical power defends the nation, or tribe, or family, are naturally called upon to decide what the means of defence shall be. Is not woman, then, the equal of man? We cannot say of woman, with reference to man, that she is his superior, or his inferior, or his equal; nor can we say of man, with reference to woman, that he is her superior, or her inferior, or her equal. He is her protector, she is his helpmeet. His strength is sufficient for her weakness, and her power is the support of his irresolution and want of faith. Woman's rights are not man's rights; nor are man's rights the measure of woman's rights. If she should assert her

independence, as some idiosyncratic persons desire, she could only declare her intention to do all those acts and things which woman may of right do. Given that this is accomplished, and I know not that she would possess one additional domestic, political, or public right, or enjoy one privilege in the family, neighborhood, or state, to which she is not, in some degree, at least, already accustomed.

These views and reflections may serve to illustrate and enforce the leading position of this address — that we are to educate young women for the enjoyments and duties of the sphere in which they are to move. We speak to-day of public instruction; but it should ever be borne in mind that the education of the schools is but a part, and often only the least important part, of the training that the young receive. There is the training of infancy and early childhood, the daily culture of home, with its refining or deadening influences, and then the education of the street, the parlor, the festive gathering, and the clubs, which exert a power over the youth of both sexes that cannot often be controlled entirely by the school.

Womanhood is sometimes sacrificed in childhood, when the mother and the family fail to develop the womanly qualities of modesty, grace, generosity of