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With Scott the Romantic movement, the movement of an extended curiosity and an enfranchised imagination, has begun. This is a trite thing to say; but trite things are often very indefinitely comprehended: and this enfranchisement, in as far as it regards the technical change that came over modern prose romance, has never perhaps been explained with any clearness.
The Reformation opened the minds of men to that intellectual freedom without which political enfranchisement is a worthless privilege. The invention of printing opened a thousand channels to the flow of erudition and talent, and sent them out from the reservoirs of individual possession to fertilize the whole domain of human nature.
However, the political advantage is theirs for having promptly and ungrudgingly passed the amendment the moment they came into power. But it will not be surprising to any one who has read this book that I conclude by pointing out that the real triumph belongs to the women. Our objective was the national enfranchisement of women. A tiny step, you may say. True!
And then the country was suddenly hurried through two more social revolutions of the most extraordinary kind, signalized by the abolition of the daimiates, the suppression of the military class, the substitution of a plebeian for an aristocratic army, popular enfranchisement, the rapid formalism of a new commonalty. industrial expansion, the rise of a new aristocracy of wealth, and popular representation in government!
I venture to say that it was an experiment that would have failed in any community in the United States, whether it was presented as a piece of philanthropy or of punishment. A necessary sequence to the enfranchisement of the negro was his education.
Truly, no human being since the dawn of history has ever yet been favored with such a superb opportunity. Mr. Wilson might have made a gallant effort to lift society out of the deep grooves into which it had sunk, and dislodge the secular obstacles to the enfranchisement and transfiguration of the human race.
Whether all this would be worth sacrificing simply to acquire a woman who could sympathize with, and support, a man in the stress and battle of life, is a question we do not pretend to decide; but it is certain that the enfranchisement of woman would be the passing of a social Act of Uniformity, and the loss of half the grace and variety of life.
Miss Anthony never has abandoned this position and the leading advocates of woman suffrage stand with her squarely upon the ground that no party, whatever its principles, shall have their sanction and advocacy until it shall make an unequivocal declaration in favor of the enfranchisement of women and support this by means of the party press and platform.
It immediately follows that everything which is necessary for the full realization of a man's life, even though it seems to have the character of restraint for a moment, is really a part of the process of his enfranchisement, is the bringing forth of him to a fuller liberty. You see a man coming forward and offering himself as one of the defenders of his country in his country's need.
On February 7, 1866, Douglass acted as chief spokesman of a committee of leading colored men of the country, who called upon President Johnson to urge the importance of enfranchisement. Mr. Johnson, true to his Southern instincts, was coldly hostile to the proposition, recounted all the arguments against it, and refused the committee an opportunity to reply. The matter was not left with Mr.
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