THE New Zealand Herald. AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 1893.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXX, Issue 9306, 15 September 1893, Page 4

THE New Zealand Herald. AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 1893.

The granting of the franchise to women in this colony will, without doubt, form a great object lesson not Only to the sister eolonies but to the mother country itself, where the movement for enfranchising Women is making great strides, notwithstanding the opposition of the Premier, Mr. Gladstone. In the mother country the status of woman has been greatly improved by her admission to the Municipal and School 'Board Suffrages, her activity in the various efforts of social and moral regeneration ; her work on the Boards of Guardians; and her success in the higher fields of education. The leaders of each of the great political parties, Liberal and Conservative, into which the electors of Great Britain are divided, are utilising the services of women for political purposes, and calling upon them to aid what they believe to be the i right side in politics. The granting of j the franchise to women is the com- ; mencement of " Politics in the Home." Mrs. Henry Fawcett, who for nearly a quarter of a century has been the advocate of women's suffrage, contends that the difference between men and women is precisely the reason on which, to a large extent, the claim for representation is based. If men and women were precisely alike, the representation of men would be sufficient, but not being alike, that wherein they differ is unrepresented under the present system. The motherhood > of women, either actual or potential, is one of the facts of everyday life which must be recognised ; and, as to women as mothers is given the charge of the home and the care of the children, she demands that the home and the domestic side of things should count for more than they do to-day. The lessons which Mrs. Fawcett enjoins upon- her fellow-countrywomen—whom she hopes are about to be enfranchised —are those which might be expected from a woman of high culture : — Do not give up one jot or tittle of your womanliness, your love for children, your care for the sick, your gentleness, your self-control, your obedience to conscience and duty; for all these things are terribly wanted in politics. We want women with their knowledge of child life to especially devote themselves to the law as it affects children, to children's training in our pauper schools, to the question of boarding-out, to the 'employment of children of tender years, and the bearing of this employment on their after life, to the ; social condition of children and young persons , of both sexes in the lower stratum of our towns and villages, to the exaample set by the higher classes to the lower, to the housing of the poor, to the provision of open spaces and recreation grounds, to the temperance question, to laws relating to health and morals, and the bearing of all these things and many others upon the home and upon the virtue and the purity of the domestic life of our nation. If woman is to have a place in the councils of the nation, all parties will agree that these are the questions upon which she has a special right to have a vote, as the guardian of the child life of the nation. If the nation is but an aggregate of home?, then the home side and the political side of things may be usefully joined. The woman, at all events, who has to give up her sons to ! the sword, and offer them in tribute to the Moloch of war, will never be dazzled by military glory, or enter upon a campaign " with a light heart." The granting of the female franchise may be a leap in the dark, but its advocates may retort that so have been many of the reforms which are now the glory of English history and our race. If a right to have a voice in the affairs of the nation is a matter not of sex but of citizenship, then there is but one course open— Because right is right, To follow right were wisdom in the scorn , Of consequence. I " Singular to say, it is left to a woman to offer the strongest opposition to the : enfranchisement of her sex, and even ! the " Grand Old Man " has thought fit to honour with a commendatory letter the German pamphlet on "The Dangers of the Emancipation of Women,' written by Madame Adele Crepaz. Madame Crepaz's idea is that an English matron's position should be something like that occupied by the German /raw, while Mr. Gladstone has acquired his views on the mission of woman from watching, for. years, Mrs. Gladstone's preparation of egg-flip for his great political addresses, and her solicitude over the whereabouts of his top-coat, muffler, and umbrella. The former can hardly find words of scorn sufficiently strong to reproach tho<v women who are coming into new fields of labour, usurping man's place, "in those department which, considering his superior brain power, properly belong to him, and departing from her natural vocation. She looks upon her life's duty, not as woman, but, claiming equal rights with man as a human being, forgetful of the Laws of Nature which ascribe to each sex their own share of work." After trouncing the English and American women, who desire to be enfranchised, Madame Crepaz deals with the physiological arguments, and lays down the dictum that the very brain of woman has been weighed in the balance and found wanting, man's larger brain being a clear proof of his intellectual superiority. In 1872 Professor Bischoff in his pamphlet on ■''The Study and Practice of Medicine by Women," gave it as the result of his anatomical researches that the female brain was, inferior to that of the male, and incapable of higher development. Hence he concluded that "By divine and natural regulation the female sex is wanting in qualification for the study and practice of sciences, and above all of natural science and medicine." About 1877 Professor Rudinger, a pupil of Professor Bischoff, and his successor in the professorial , chair at Munich, endeavoured to prove that the new-born male child possessed a higher developed brain than the female. Some years later, Professor Bruhl, Professor of the Zootomical Institute of the Vienna University, published a lecture "On the Brain of the Vertebrate with special reference to that of Woman." Professor Bruhl considered that Professor Bischoff s statements were "a grave physiological and moral offence against one-half of mankind, who, just as much as the other (male) half, are most certainly destined for the perfection, and for bringing about the progress* in the present and in the future of the genus homo sapiens." He pointed i out that not a single real and striking difference had ever been pointed out; that the only part of the brain telling on mental ability is its cortical substance; that it is impossible for the anatomist to separate this cortical substance from the other parts of the brain ; that for ' that very reason it. is impossible to determine, by anatomical inspection, the intellectual value of a brain, ; as records show that men who admittedly have achieved great; things ..in one or other ; of the different. departments of " mental labour, have differed widely as to the weight or size of their brains. Cuvier's brain weighed 1861 grammes;

Gauss's, 1492 J Professor Herman's, th< great classical scholar, only 1358 ; and the mineralogist, Hausmann'a, no mori; than 1276 grammes. Professor Brnh contends that it is utterly unscientific to speak of any anatomical different between male and female brains. " In! struct your girls properly," says thn Professor in reply to Professor Rudtngert "and in a hundred years people will have only a compassionate smile foi anatomical researches like those of Professorßudinger." The Times some years ago said woman's mission in the world was to scatter rose leaves on man's path ; he) destiny was marriage, and her function maternity ; but the march of eventi has proved too rapid for the greai Thunderer of Printing-house Square. Our Auckland Women's Franchise League is willing to undertake "the roses business," on one particular occasion only, but hereafter it seems, $3 a co-equal, we have got to accejjt woman simply as a "comrade" in the world's work, and in politics, as it another sphere, take her " for better or ! for worse." 1 1 „_