WOMAN AND HER WORK.

Colonist, Volume II, Issue 110, 9 November 1858, Page 4

WOMAN AND HER WORK.

(From the New York Tribune.) The Rev. Dr. Chapin lectured to a large audience, at Mozart Hall, on the above subject. He said th at the originality of any thought is secondary to its truth. If it is old, it should be welcomed" on account of respect due to age. His subject led him to consider whether woman is potentially what she ought to be. The relation between man and woman is the most beautiful expression of the great law of nature. Woman is simply fhe equal of man—nothing more, nothing less. We have no right to determine what is woman's sphere by any arbitrary prejudice. I cannot recognise any such fact as man's rights or woman's rights; I only recognise human rights. Woman's orbit is the orbit of her humanity, and hence she ought to be man's equal—equal before the world, before the law, as she is before God. And let no one be disturbed by visions of strong-minded women, with spectacles, lecturing on Kansas. The question is, what is truth, and not what are the imaginable consequences. Man may run against God's will, but cannot alter it. I urge that, woman should actually be something more than she has been held to be. She has been placed above the soale and cast below it; she has been man's slave and his empress. In one place you may see her the poor drudge of the wash-tub or the needle, working to support a drunken husband; in another place we see her in some parlor, listening to the confectionary of small-talk furnished by some dandy. Society around us is but little more than a modification of these two pictures. What we want is some way of deliverance for woman from being a mere slave, and something more substantial than those accomplishments which make her a mere gewgaw. The legal argument has already been presented, so I shall pass on to the subject of woman's education. Woman ought to be rendered less dependent upon man. Our present state of society too often so trains her as to make marriage an absolute necessity. lam glad if there is some advance in this respect; lam glad if women and clergymen are regarded as something else than respectable paupers. Woman can become what she should be, and do what she should do, only by a genuine education. I cannot see why there should be a very sharp discrimination between the education of boys and girls. If a certain kind of learning will develop the intellect of the boy, why not of the girl ? You may say woman cannot be a Newton or a Shakespere. Well, if she can't she won't; and so where's the harm ? (Laughter.) Why should a woman with a liberal education be less fitted for the duties of a wife or mother ? If in the cultivated mind there is a reserved force for emergencies, why should woman be debarred from that blessed skill that unlocks the treasuries of truth and opens communion with the distant and the dead ? In many cases woman is brought up not to a selfreliance, but simply to make a settlement for life. We all have a horror of female gamblers; but how many women are really gamblers for a lucky match ? Do we wonder there is often the gambler's loss as well as his hazard ? In the world's version, it is not charity, but money, that covers a multitude of sins. The rich profligate receives the hand of virtue and beauty. But there would not be so many serpents in the parterres of fashion if there were not Eves in the garden to listen. In rude society, woman was bought and sold as a slave, and some of our manners are not much better. Christianity teaches us that woman has a soul; but many men act as though they had not accepted, and many women as though they had none to give. Women have a right to a proper culture, not as woman's rights, but as human rights; as man's equal and companion, she requires a training which will develop every human faculty. The true way to find the sphere of anything is to educate it to its highest capacity. A genuine culture will produce nothing that will overrun its divinely appointed limits. Woman's work will follow spontaneously from woman's nature, and will accord with the qualities of her being. It will not therefore be strong physical work, but where clean, delicate work is needed, where emotion mingles with thought, it will be her work in the future, and still more as the future opens into civilisation. Woman's truest work is of home and its sanctities. Let us not fear these offices will be abandoned: there will be still the heart of the wife and mother. There are many women for whom this sphere of home is enough. But if woman is enslaved and degraded at home, where shall she have honor ? In this sphere I claim for her a large and liberal culture; Is it of no consequence who is to discharge these officesrr-rwho is to teach and train the life, the heart of the future man ? Among women there are two classes, whom the home duties do not absorb, and they claim something to do. They comprise those who are not forced to work for a living and those who are. In behalf of those, I say a large field is needed for woman's work. Consider what ought to be done for that class of women who must work or perish. What are they to do ? That is the question. I might specifiy many forms of labor, such as some parts of watchmaking, of telegraphing, of the, work of newspaper offices, and countless others, all of which are adapted to woman's nature and her capacity. They must have this work or perish—perish in one or two ways—physically, either from lack of work or scantiness of it. Think ofthe ! poor widow who makes shirts at five cents apiece—and I suppose the man who pays it covers the New Testament with that five cent piece. She can, perhaps, make one a day. Is not that reducing humanity nearly to starvation? Think of those noble women who virtually say, " Let Death have us, so he takes to God our womanly purity untainted." Tbank God for the women who die honourably and only perish physically I I think what

saints they make in Heaven, with, their sweet faces from which all the trouble is glorified away. What do those men, whom the world call heroes, more than these noble women,who, clinging to their conscience, died at their posts? (Applause.) This ought not to be so. Then should she work for all, and least of all should work be denied her because she is a woman ? And yet this is really the fact. ■ We reverse the divine law which tells us not to oppress the weaker, and turn and oppress them simply because they are weak. To some men, the shirts they have made, might be the shirt of Nessus. I wish these old scourgers who pay five cents for making shirts, might be haunted with women's ghosts, who should bear the inscription, " More work and" better pay." But there is another class who perish morally. We must not shrink from all the facts, and it is a fact that want of work has a great deal to do with driving to shame the 20,000 women in our city who walk our streets, whose smile is only seen by the gaslight. But the shame is not all with them. Shame upon him who offers the price of dishonour; shame upon those honourable women who smile upon the victorious debauchee; shame upon ourselves if we nourish any prejudice which depreciates the- value of woman. Let all these shames blend with the shame: ofthe poor lost girl, and lighten a little the curse that bears too exclusively upon her. Here are these two classes who must have work or else, honourably or dishonourably, perish. But there is another class of women, who are not compelled to work, concerning whom one of the noblest women of our day (Mrs. Jameson) ask if a more enlarged social sphere cannot be allowed woman? I can merely say that this field is indicated in the philanthropic institutions of our age. It is exemplified in women like Elizabeth Fry, and Florence Nightingale. (Applause.) One of those poor soldiers of the Crimea said, that her shadow seemed to do him good as it passed over his bed. What a compliment to her was that of another poor sick man, who said to her, "I believe you are not a woman, but an angel." How much better is that than the homage of the drawing-room, or triumph of a flirtation. (Applause.) How many a woman might be an angel to the poor hollow eyes that followed her from a sick bed. Let us remember that this is not an attempt to draw woman from her sphere. But let us consider how many claims there are out of this sphere. Let us not fear any ridicule which may be cast upon us. Ridicule is the feeblest weapon that can be used; it proves the lack of heavier artillery; it fires scattering shot, and does not hit the mark. (Applause.) It is rather a fearful picture to be sure, of a masculine woman, scheming in Wall-street, or shouting in Tammany Hall. But when called to step forward to the line, who shows more manliness, more courage, than woman ? Look at the maid of Saragossa—look at Grace Darling, and at that noble woman who but a year ago brought home the ship of her poor disabled husband; she may have been out of her sphere, but she circumnavigated the globe. (Applause.) I am inclined to believe that a woman starving in the streets is fully as incongruous as a woman in the Senate or the Forum. The true idea of civilization will never be unfolded till woman has been placed upon an equality with man. Iri the cabin of the Mayflower; in the war of the Revolution, when the wives loaded muskets, there were such men because there were such women. The grandest transactions of history are unfolded when she stands nearest to man as an equal; and when Christianity shall have reached its highest point, her heart will be near his hand. Let woman stand upon the ground of her human nature, then there will be mutual honor and mutual help; then there will be no discordant music in the march from the paradise which they left together—to that paradise which they hope to attain. (Great applause.)

Circumlocution Office.— Thefcolonial office has often been thus designated by outsiders, but it was scarcely expected that one who had stood chief in the department would have exhibited the propriety of the appellation by raising a corner of the curtain and allowing the public to peep behind. During the India debate in the House of Lords, on the 7th May, Earl Grey said:— "It more than once fell to my lot when holding the seals of the colonial office to have questions put to me as to my intentions respecting matters upon which I had been in correspondence with the governors of particular colonies. But I never then thought of reptying that I disapproved in every sense of what had been done. I was accustomed to say, 'the subject is a difficult one,' and * communications are still going on with regard to it—we have not yet been able to form a decision,' and 'it would not be expedient for the public service to say more at present.'" Referring to this a correspondent ot one of the London papers says—"ls not this an exquisitely dramatic bit of pure nature? May I venture to offer his lordship your readers' respectful gratitude for enlivening parliamentary debates with anything so perfectly refreshing; and may I couple with his, in our modest tribute of respect, the name ofthe writer to whose genius the world stands indebted for 'Early Impressions' of this charming speech—Mr. Charles Dickens.'' It is stated, that unanimity at length prevails amongst the Plenipotentiaries of the Paris Conference. They met on the 7th July, at Etolies, the country seat of the Count de Walewski, and dined there afterwards. This social manner of doing business is looked on as a sure proof that all causes of difference have been removed. It has been agreed, it seems, that, although the principalities shall be distinctly "separate, they shall have a senate, or upper committee, which shall be common to both. This committee, or senate, is to be elected by 1 the two Divans.