CHAPTER V.
Since the Irish people had been completely conquered, it behoved England to take such measures as would conduce to the future prosperity of the island, and at the same time guard against disaffection and rebellion. There was much consulting and advising. The Irish question was as prominent as ever. All manner of plans were proposed, but were all in turn rejected as unfeasible.
After several sessions had been wasted in fruitless debates and in noisy discussions, whereof the only result arrived at was a certain amount of forensic display on the part of ambitious members, a proposition was mooted which at first amazed all who heard it. Then it was ridiculed unmercifully. Next it was discussed seriously. Finally it was adopted, amid universal enthusiasm.
For centuries the combined effects of war, seafaring, and emigration had been to reduce the male population of England to such an extent as to cause the female portion of the population to preponderate enormously. So much so, in fact, that not a trade or profession which had hitherto been regarded by men as sacred to themselves was uninvaded by feminine competitors, who, considerably to the dismay of adult masculinity, were steadily provingthemselves capable of doing well all that they undertook to do.
For every man in the community to support three women was an impossibility, even if he had desired to do so, which he certainly did not. Women who did not marry were expected to keep themselves. But by way of showing how strictly and impartially just the male biped can be, there prevailed a peculiar system of payment, which bore its natural result of discontent and protest.
For instance, in Messrs. Workemphast’s establishment several women were engaged as assistants. They performed their work more neatly and deftly than their masculine rivals, but were paid only half as much for their services, simply because they were women. The result in all such cases was that other expensive men were ousted to make room for some more underpaid women, the consequence being that none but the employers were satisfied.
The men had an idea that although it was only right that woman should not be a burden on man, she had no business to invade his particular province of labour. The women, on the other hand, considered themselves entitled to equal pay with the men, provided their work was equal.
On other grounds, too, they had ample cause for complaint. Women householders were compelled to pay quite as heavy rates and taxes as men, but were debarred from every privilege to which equal payment of tribute morally entitled them. Although made to provide the necessary funds for governing the country, they were not merely debarred from holding office, but were even prohibited from having a voice in the election of such members of the favoured sex as aspired to be the rulers of the land.
A woman might pay a large share of her income towards the expenses of the Government. She might employ a dozen servants, such as gardeners, grooms, coachmen, gamekeepers,etc., but although each of the men dependent upon her for a livelihood, no matter how stupid, ignorant, or loutish they might be, was accorded the privilege of voting, their clever, accomplished mistress was considered to belong to an inferior order of beings, to whom it would be unwise to accord privileges, seeing that they were not supposed to have sufficient sense to use these privileges wisely.
Again. Adultery alone on the part of a wife was quite sufficient ground for a divorce in favour of the husband, but a wife must have a husband who, in addition to being persistently and openly unfaithful, cruelly ill-treated her, and took a cowardly advantage of the superiority of strength he had attained through having systematically deprived woman of every health-giving recreation, before the law, made by men for the benefit of men, would afford her relief from her daily tortures.
It is on record that a judge, when a woman was being tried for the presumed murder of her husband, dwelt with such horror upon the most dreadful fact that she had been unfaithful to her husband, and proved so conclusively that a woman who could be unfaithful was capable of every crime under the sun, that the jury, remembering that their interests as husbands must be protected, sentenced the woman to be hanged, although medical witnesses showed that she could not be a murderess, seeing that the cause of her husband’s death was a drug of which he was proved to have been a systematic partaker.
From this it will be argued that purity of living held high rank with the English. But this was by no means the case, for in the same decade the rebellion and protests of women were naturally aroused by the foulest and most disgusting legislation that ever disgraced the land. This was the State regulation of vice, whereby the most respectable women were liable to be subjected to brutalindignities, in order that no precaution might be neglected which would ensure for men complete immunity from the consequences of systematic libertinism and immorality.
This may sound paradoxical, but it is not the less sickening in its shameful reality, and serves to show the hollowness and insincerity of masculine legislators.
It is small wonder that these and other crying evils brought forth the fruits they did. Systematic injustice roused the antipathy of women who, besides having sense enough to argue their own case, had sufficient moral courage to brave the animadversion which was levelled at them by the arrogant idiots of the one sex, and the unreasoning imbeciles of the other.
Hence the expressions which we come across at times, which to modern New Amazonians unacquainted with history are unintelligible, but which had their own bitter meaning at the time they were in use. “Bluestocking” was a term of opprobrium levelled at women who strove to improve their moral and intellectual status by means of study. A “Woman’s Rights’ Advocate” was described as an individual who was the fit butt for the laughter and derision of the rest of the community.
To be strong-minded was a wonderful claim to respect in a man. Men were fond of speaking of women as the “weak-minded,” and, therefore, inferior sex, and yet the moment a woman proved herself to be notweak-minded butstrong-minded, she was regarded as an anomaly, and sneered at as a being who had unsexed herself. To be “only a woman” was equivalent in the minds of many male egotists to being only “something better than his dog, and something dearer than his horse,” and yet, no sooner did she prove herself gifted with abilities hitherto cherished as exclusively masculine, and, therefore, infinitely superior to womanly attributes, than she wassaid to have become “masculine,” and regarded as an object of horror. To be a woman was to be one unit of a despised race, and yet to “unsex” herself was one of the most opprobrious faults of which a woman could be guilty!
Could anything be more idiotic or paradoxical? And is it to be wondered at that it became necessary for men toprovetheir vaunted superiority? And that they were gradually impelled, from sheer fear of the future, to grant the demands of the sex which was rapidly learning to estimate itself at its true value?
No struggle recorded in history can compare with the fight against oppression which was now carried on by the brave and noble ancestresses of whom we have such good reason to be proud. Many and disheartening were the defeats they endured, but gloriously triumphant was their final victory, of which our existence as an independent nation was the outcome.
Universal Suffrage! Wonderful was the jubilation when it became an accomplished fact. And wonderful were its effects upon the nation. All the anomalies above described were wiped away, and women showed themselves so much more just, and so much more capable of governing than men, that they invariably enacted none but strictly fair and impartial regulations.
Thus Boards of Guardians consisted of an equal number of women and men. The latter superintended many details as formerly, but were relieved from the sole responsibility of seeing after the babies’ feeding bottles, and the mothers’ needs, and the old women’s baths, which they had until now considered their own especial province.
Formerly none but male inspectors were allowed to perambulate the schools, at the expense of the country, and adjudicate as to the quality of make, and perfection ofcut, of the underclothing for women which the girls were instructed to prepare for examination. Strange to say, it was not without considerable opposition that women were admitted to be fit to usurp this cherished masculine prerogative.
From time immemorial the fact that all doctors were men had proved a serious calamity, for thousands of women let their infirmities grow upon them until it was too late to save their lives, simply because they were reluctant to confide the details of their ailments to members of the other sex, who in most cases were complete strangers to them. And yet the universities were for ages shut in the face of women who were anxious to remedy these evils, and many and hard were the rebuffs and insults which were endured by the first women who succeeded in removing all barriers and in passing the examinations which qualified them as M.D.’s.
Houses were erected on principles which men regarded as perfect, but which women invariably found to be wofully deficient in matters appertaining to hygiene and comfort. Since women became architects these evils were also remedied, and as their augmented influence now penetrated everywhere, a great change of necessity came over the whole nation, and paved the way for one of the greatest political events the world has ever seen.
This was the resolve to colonise Ireland with the women who outnumbered the men so enormously in Teuto-Scotland.
It was duly remembered that the country had hitherto never managed to support itself, and that its periodical famines had been a source of enormous expense to Teuto-Scotland, which even now was voting large sums for the support of the widows and children of the men who had fallen in the late disastrous rebellion.
Many debates were, therefore, held respecting the annual amount which should henceforth be devoted to the maintenance of Teuto-Scottish authority in Ireland. But careful thought on the part of the greatest leaders of the colonisation movement resulted in the island being altogether given up to the sole rule and governance of the chief colonists. “Home Rule” was the watchword, and it was finally agreed that a treaty of alliance should be signed, whereby Ireland, or New Amazonia as it was henceforth called, should maintain friendly relations with the mother-country, but should be a perfectly self-governing and independent State, exempt from any allegiance but that of friendliness, and a mutual desire to prevent the encroachments of foreigners.
In return for so immense a concession, it was stipulated that New Amazonia should now be self-supporting, and very few but enthusiasts, remembering the past history of the island, believed in anything but a total collapse of the new government.
Fortunately for our land, there were vast numbers of enthusiastic believers in the available resources of New Amazonia, and in the capacity of its chosen leaders, so that the fifty millions of pounds, with which it was necessary to be equipped, in order to start the new enterprise on a sound basis, was raised in a remarkably short time.
Three and a half per cent. consols were issued, and were eagerly bought up by the enormous numbers of women who desired to become colonists in the new republic, and to partake of the advantages and opportunities, which would then be theirs. Great financiers were also found willing to become partners in this novel syndicate, and as the consols were bought up in every European country, every European country was directly interested in theprosperity of New Amazonia, and the spirit and courage of its leaders was the prominent topic of conversation in the whole of the civilised world.