The vote itself, too, would be improved in quality. The man would
often be obliged to find honest reasons for his vote, such as might
induce a more upright and impartial character to serve with him
under the same banner. The wife's influence would often keep him
true to his own sincere opinion. Often, indeed, it would be used,
not on the side of public principle, but of the personal interest or
worldly vanity of the family. But wherever this would be the
tendency of the wife's influence, it is exerted to the full already in
that bad direction; and with the more certainty, since under the
present law and custom she is generally too utter a stranger to
politics in any sense in which they involve principle to be able to
realise to herself that there is a point of honour in them, and most
people have as little sympathy in the point of honour of others,
when their own is not placed in the same thing, as they have in the
religious feelings of those whose religion differs from theirs. Give
the woman a vote, and she comes under the operation of the political
point of honour. She learns to look on politics as a thing on which
she is allowed to have an opinion, and in which if one has an
opinion it ought to be acted upon; she acquires a sense of personal
accountability in the matter, and will no longer feel, as she does
at present, that whatever amount of bad influence she may exercise, if
the man can but be persuaded, all is right, and his responsibility
covers all.
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