minority, as in the supposed case of woman suffrage, had not only the belief but the certainty that it could master the majority. It may not be creditable to human nature that if we would have a stable government it is necessary to keep the balance of power on the side of law; but the business of government is to shape itself to the actual and not the ideal or millennial condition of mankind.

There is another reason why the giving of the suffrage to women would tend to civil discord. In the politics of the future, the predominant if not the engrossing questions will be to all appearance those of finance and the relations of labor and capital. From the nature of their occupations, as well as other causes, women in general are ignorant of these matters, and not well fitted to deal with them. They require an experience, a careful attention, a deliberation and coolness of judgment, and a freedom from passion, so rare that at the best their political treatment is full of difficulty and danger. If these qualities are rare in men, they are still more so in women, and feminine instinct will not in the present case supply their place. The peculiar danger of these questions is, that they raise class animosities, and tend to set the poor against the rich and the rich against the poor. They become questions of social antagonism. Now, most of us have had occasion to observe how strong the social rivalries and animosities of women are. They far exceed those of men. If, in the strife between labor and capital, which, without great self-restraint on both sides, is likely to be a fierce one, women should be called to an active part, the effect would be like throwing pitch and resin into the fire. The wives and daughters of the poor would bring into the contest a wrathful jealousy and hate against the wives and daughters of the rich, far more vehement than the corresponding passions in their husbands and brothers.

Another bad effect of extending suffrage to women would be to reduce each ballot to half its present value. The value of each is according to the influence it carries with it; and the voter who feels his share of influence cut down one half is apt to feel his interest in the discharge of political duties diminished in similar proportion. A closely limited male suffrage brings nearly every voter to the polls; under a universal male suffrage many fail to come, and their carelessness would redouble if the suffrage were diluted again by admitting all the women; or, so to speak, if political stocks were watered till they were worth just one half to each stockholder. Then the office-seekers and their tools would be as busy as

ever; while disinterested citizens would feel it hardly worth while to contribute their diminished mite to the result of an election. More than ever, politics would become a game of the mean and the grasping. One of our critics thinks that, because we admit that our present political condition is bad, we ought to call upon women, high and low, to try their hands in it. But the fact that it is bad is no reason for making it worse.

This last remark will pass, no doubt, as an effect of that "distrustful solicitude" which one of our critics contrasts with the "more manly hopefulness" that "trusts all the virtue of the community to take care of all the vice of the community," the moral being that indiscriminate suffrage should be given to women without looking too closely to consequences. But has the virtue of communities always taken care of their vice? Has not the world been filled with triumphant wrong; and have republics and democracies never fallen into anarchy and despotism? What makes and saves nations is not the blind and fatuitous security which our friend calls "manly hopefulness," an imbecile confidence that walks with eyes turned to the clouds till it finds itself sprawling in the mire. That faith is manly which can see as well as dare, not that which dares because it can not see. It is by such manhood that liberties are won-by watching, forecast, and conflict, through year after year and age after age; and by watching, forecast, and striving, they must be preserved. There is no more dangerous weakness in American nature than that sickly notion that we have only to believe, and let things take their course. The virtue of the community can take care of its vice if it will; but it can not do so by hope alone, repeating in silver tones that all is well, as it sails into the darkness of the future without compass, or chart, or an eye to the peril before it. This is not manliness, it is childish folly. The virtue that would conquer must stand in arms, always vigilant, always bold, yet never rash. It can not sit with hands folded, lulled by such high-sounding nonsense as our friend quotes in his closing lines.

Our critics have failed to see, or seeing have chosen to ignore, that their chief reasons and ours are built upon foundations totally different. We have affirmed that their foundation is unsound. It was for them to prove the contrary. Instead of doing so, they have only repeated what they and their fellow suffragists think they can never say too often about principles, rights, and the Declaration of Independence. In short, they have neither defended their own base

one.

of argument nor attacked ours. Their favorite method is a simple Out of certain utterances of past times they evolve ideas which the authors of those utterances never meant to convey; then blow these ideas to their utmost inflation, call them principles, and demand that they shall be universally embodied in practice whether for good or evil.

The real issue is this: Is the object of government the good of the governed, or is it not? A late writer on woman suffrage says that it is not. According to her, the object of government is to give his or her rights to everybody. Our critics do not venture either on this flat denial or this brave assertion, but only hover about them with longing looks. Virtually, they maintain that the object of government is the realization of certain ideas or theories. They believe in principles, and so do we; they believe in rights, and so do we. But, as the sublime may pass into the ridiculous, so the best principles may be transported into regions of folly or diabolism. There are minds so constituted that they can never stop till they have run every virtue into its correlative weakness or vice. Government should be guided by principles; but they should be sane and not crazy, sober and not drunk. They should walk on solid ground, and not roam the clouds hanging to a bag of gas.

Rights may be real or unreal. Principles may be true or false; but even the best and truest can not safely be pushed too far, or in the wrong direction. The principle of truth itself may be carried into absurdity. The saying is old that truth should not be spoken at all times; and those whom a sick conscience worries into habitual violation of the maxim are imbeciles and nuisances. Religion may pass into morbid enthusiasm or wild fanaticism, and turn from a blessing to a curse. So the best of political principles must be kept within bounds of reason, or they will work mischief. That greatest and most difficult of sciences, the science of government, dealing with interests so delicate, complicated, and antagonistic, becomes a perilous guide when it deserts the ways of temperance.

Our critics' idea of government is not practical, but utterly unpractical. It is not American, but French. It is that government of abstractions and generalities which, as we once said before, found its realization in the French Revolution, and its apostle in the depraved and half-crazy man of genius, Jean Jacques Rousseau. The French had an excuse for their frenzy in the crushing oppression they had just flung off and in their inexperience of freedom. We

have no excuse. Since the nation began we have been free, and our liberty is in danger from nothing but its own excesses. Since France learned to subject the ideas of Rousseau to the principles of stable freedom embodied in the parliamentary government of England and in our own republicanism, she has emerged from alternate tumult and despotism to enter the paths of hope and progress.

The government of abstractions has been called, sometimes the a priori, and sometimes the sentimental method. We object to this last term, unless it is carefully defined. Sentiments, like principles, enter into the life of nations as well as that of individuals; and they are vital to both. But they should be healthy, and not morbid; rational, and not extravagant. It is not common sense alone that makes the greatness of states; neither is it sentiments and principles alone. It is these last joined with reason, reflection, and moderation. Through this union it is that one small island has become the mighty mother of nations; and it is because we ourselves, her greatest offspring, have chosen the paths of Hampden, Washington, and Franklin, and not those of Rousseau, that we have passed safe through every danger, and become the wonder and despair of despotism.

Out of the wholesome fruits of the earth, and the staff of life itself, the perverse chemistry of man distills delirious vapors, which, being condensed and bottled, exalt his brain with glorious phantasies, and then leave him in the mud. So it is with the unhappy suffragists. From the sober words of our ancestors they extract the means of mental inebriety. Because the fathers of the republic gave certain reasons to emphasize their creed that America should not be taxed because America was not represented in the British Parliament, they cry out that we must fling open the floodgates to vaster tides of ignorance and folly, strengthen the evil of our system and weaken the good, feed old abuses, hatch new ones, and expose all our large cities-we speak with deliberate convictionto the risk of anarchy.

We have replied to our critics, but must decline further debate. We do not like to be on terms of adverse discussion with women or with men who represent them, and we willingly leave them the last word if they want it. Whatever we may have to say on the subject in future will not be said in the way of controversy.

FRANCIS PARKMAN.

ROMANISM AND THE IRISH RACE IN THE

UNITED STATES.

PART II.

THE Catholic states of Europe refused toleration to Protestants. England, after a sharp experience of Papal intolerance, retaliated on the Catholics, chained them up with penal laws, and so left them. The great Laplace, speaking on the subject to an Englishman not long before he died, said: "You have got the Catholics down in your country; take care you do not let them get up again." Could England have thought only of herself, she might have taken the advice, and have left her laws unrepealed. Had she done so, there would have been no Catholic revival. Peers would not have gone over to the Church of Rome, if they would have forfeited their seats in the House of Lords. Their eldest sons would have thought twice before taking a step which would have given their estates to their younger brothers. Even the clergy and the fine ladies would have hesitated, if conversion, instead of being a mere migration from one fashionable community to another, had brought penal consequences with it. It was Ireland which forced forward Catholic emancipation. We had to choose between emancipation and rebellion. We took the former as the lesser evil of the two. We dressed it up in fine phrases, as if we regarded it as a tardy act of justice. We professed unnecessary penitence for our fathers' bigotry, and the Roman Catholics, as members for the Irish constituencies, became a power in the state. Their bishops, who in the days of oppression had been modestly grateful when the laws against them were allowed to sleep, sprang into power and political consequence with their army of Irish voters behind them. The chains were broken, and it remained to see how they would act.