Excellent characteristics both; but unhappily, if the influence of womenis valuable in the encouragement it gives to these feelings in general, inthe particular applications the direction it gives to them is at least asoften mischievous as useful. In the philanthropic department more particularly,the two provinces chiefly cultivated by women are religious proselytism andcharity. Religious proselytism at home, is but another word for embitteringof religious animosities: abroad, it is usually a blind running at an object,without either knowing or heeding the fatal mischiefs -- fatal to the religiousobject itself as well as to all other desirable objects -- which may be producedby the means employed. As for charity, it is a matter in which the immediateeffect on the persons directly concerned, and the ultimate consequence tothe general good, are apt to be at complete war with one another: while theeducation given to women -- an education of the sentiments rather than ofthe understanding -- and the habit inculcated by their whole life, of lookingto immediate effects on persons, and not to remote effects on classes ofpersons -- make them both unable to see, and unwilling to admit, the ultimateevil tendency of any form of charity or philanthropy which commends itselfto their sympathetic feelings. The great and continually increasing massof unenlightened and shortsighted benevolence, which, taking the care ofpeople's lives out of their own hands, and relieving them from the disagreeableconsequences of their own acts, saps the very foundations of the self-respect,self-help, and self-control which are the essential conditions both of individualprosperity and of social virtue -- this waste of resources and of benevolentfeelings in doing harm instead of good, is immensely swelled by women's contributions,and stimulated by their influence. Not that this is a mistake likely to bemade by women, where they have actually the practical management of schemesof beneficence. It sometimes happens that women who administer public charities-- with that insight into present fact, and especially into the minds andfeelings of those with whom they are in immediate contact, in which womengenerally excel men -- recognise in the clearest manner the demoralisinginfluence of the alms given or the help afforded, and could give lessonson the subject to many a male political economist. But women who only givetheir money, and are not brought face to face with the effects it produces,how can they be expected to foresee them? A woman born to the present lotof women, and content with it, how should she appreciate the value of self-dependence?
She is not self-dependent; she is not taught self-dependence; her destinyis to receive everything from others, and why should what is good enoughfor her be bad for the poor? Her familiar notions of good are of blessingsdescending from a superior. She forgets that she is not free, and that thepoor are; that if what they need is given to them unearned, they cannot becompelled to earn it: that everybody cannot be taken care of by everybody,but there must be some motive to induce people to take care of themselves;and that to be helped-to help themselves, if they are physically capableof it, is the only charity which proves to be charity in the end.
These considerations show how usefully the part which women take in theformation of general opinion, would be modified for the better by that moreenlarged instruction, and practical conversancy with the things which theiropinions influence, that would necessarily arise from their social and politicalemancipation. But the improvement it would work through the influence theyexercise, each in her own family, would be still more remarkable.
It is often said that in the classes most exposed to temptation, a man'swife and children tend to keep him honest and respectable, both by the wife'sdirect influence, and by the concern he feels for their future welfare. Thismay be so, and no doubt often is so, with those who are more weak than wicked;and this beneficial influence would be preserved and strengthened under equallaws; it does not depend on the woman's servitude, but is, on the contrary,diminished by the disrespect which the inferior class of men always at heartfeel towards those who are subject to their power. But when we ascend higherin the scale, we come among a totally different set of moving forces. Thewife's influence tends, as far as it goes, to prevent the husband from fallingbelow the common standard of approbation of the country. It tends quite asstrongly to hinder him from rising above it. The wife is the auxiliary ofthe common public opinion. A man who is married to a woman his inferior inintelligence, finds her a perpetual dead weight, or, worse than a dead weight,a drag, upon every aspiration of his to be better than public opinion requireshim to be. It is hardly possible for one who is in these bonds, to attainexalted virtue. If he differs in his opinion from the mass -- if he seestruths which have not yet dawned upon them, or if, feeling in his heart truthswhich they nominally recognise, he would like to act up to those truths moreconscientiously than the generality of mankind -- to all such thoughts anddesires, marriage is the heaviest of drawbacks, unless he be so fortunateas to have a wife as much above the common level as he himself is.
For, in the first place, there is always some sacrifice of personal interestrequired; either of social consequence, or of pecuniary means; perhaps therisk of even the means of subsistence. These sacrifices and risks he maybe willing to encounter for himself; but he will pause before he imposesthem on his family. And his family in this case means his wife and daughters;for he always hopes that his sons will feel as he feels himself, and thatwhat he can do without, they will do without, willingly, is the same cause.
