Mrs. George Corbett

“ Our women have proved their capacity to govern wisely and well. Our Constitution has found imitators, proof positive that others regard our system with approval. Yet nowhere do we meet with such health and prosperity as in our country, for man’s political influence has in all ages proved corruptive and retrogressive. Our health is perfect, and we know that it is to the beneficent rule of our women that we owe our strength of mind and body. It would be suicidal on our part to wish to revert to a state of things which insured us nothing so much as sickly bodies. ”

“ Am I to believe that this thing is better able to judge of the merits of a candidate for electoral honours than I am simply because it is a MAN?
Am I to assume that this reptile is legally and morally better fitted to take a place among our legislators than I, solely because it is a MAN?
Perish the thought! Man’s arrogance and woman’s cowardice have reigned long enough, and it behoves my countrywomen to assert their rights and privileges without further delay.
Never mind what the men say. They cannot say more than they have said. Never mind what the weak-minded women say. ”

“ Sometimes we hear of some woman who, driven either by lack of education, or by circumstances, has committed some outrage upon society which calls for terrible punishment. Perhaps she has been unfaithful to a wicked incarnation of lust and cruelty, who has for years indulged in liaisons of which all the world has been cognisant. She has had to put up with incredible slights and indignities, but as her husband has been cunning enough to refrain from beating and starving her, the law, as made and administered by men, allows her no escape from her irksome marital bonds. ”

“ We should consider it a much greater crime to permit a grovelling, decaying body to chain the spirit to earth and nothingness, than to sever the life which prevents it from seeking perfection in more congenial regions.”
“I certainly do feel lamentably dense and ignorant while listening to you. I cannot, for instance, fathom your meaning when you say the spirit can seek perfection after death.”
“The spirit never dies. The body is but the casing in which the spirit is given its greatest opportunities of seeking final glorification. ”

“ This time I was about to attempt a reply, when I was struck dumb with awe and astonishment, and my companion, who had found his own eyes sufficiently powerful to take in my appearance, hastily fixed a single eyeglass into position, and gazed in open-mouthed wonder at an apparition which approached us.
And he might well gaze, for of a surety the creature which we saw was something worth looking at, and a specimen of a race the like of which we had never seen before. “It is a woman,” I thought. “A goddess!” the masher declared, and for a time I could not feel sure that he was mistaken. ”

“ As we acquire knowledge of every kind, and learn more and more to fathom the secrets which nature has so long guarded with such jealousy, so much nearer shall we be towards the ultimate perfection of the spirit which assimilates most nearly to Life-giver herself, and constitutes our ideal of final bliss. After the death of our material form, we still strive to reach our desired goal, but our progress, when disembodied, is not so rapid as while still inhabiting our earthly casing, and our ultimate arrival at the zenith of wisdom, purity, and bliss ”

“ 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. ”

“ I never saw anyone look around on a vast multitude of people with such a superlatively ridiculous affectation of arrogance and accentuated self-esteem, and a curious conviction suddenly assailed me. The Honourable Augustus was not of the sort of material that can ever be brought to eat humble pie, under any circumstances whatever. His experiences in this marvellous country only served to emphasize his national prejudices, and I could see that, so far from acknowledging native superiority, he was bent upon making the erstwhile proud boast that he was “a true born Englishman.” ”

“ It is always noticeable that the less brains and claim for distinction a lady possesses herself, and the less actual cause she has for self-glorification, the higher and the more arrogantly does she hold her head above her fellows, and the more prone is she to despise and depreciate every woman who recognises a nobler aim in life than that of populating the world with offspring as imbecile as herself. ”

“ When we reflect upon the enormous sums which are collected for poor rates in England, it is easy to conceive the vast social improvement the same amount of money and labour could produce, if spent in the education and fair start in life of our thousands of miserable and squalid gutter-birds, who, instead of being all their life-long a continual source of expense to the nation, would grow up respectable and respected units of society, abhorring the life of shame and degradation which they and only too many others look upon at present as their natural birthright. ”

“ The purity and wisdom of New Amazonian Government is proverbial, and we know better than to admit the possibility of retrogression by permitting male governance again. Nevertheless, we are not disposed to be narrow-minded ourselves, by way of avenging past oppression. Our Tribunes, Privy Councillors, Prime Advisers, and Leader are always women. But with respect to everything else, the sexes stand on an equal footing, both women and men who have attained the age of forty-five being privileged to vote at all elections. ”

“ Thus, one portion of the community had been taught that tiny babes, dying before they had been sprinkled with water by a priest, and had a certain formula of words uttered over them, would be consigned to everlasting perdition, and debarred from all the joys of a future life. Others would have been brought up to believe that all the untold millions of people who had, by force of circumstances, over which they had not the slightest control, never had Christianity preached to them, would also be delivered into the hands of Satan! ”

“ The more exercise of a reasonable nature we take, the stronger and the more capable of work and enjoyment are we. The more we give way to indolence, and yield to the temptation to stay indoors, the more demoralized and unfit for the daily duties of life do we become. To encourage anything that produces physical deterioration is to retard our chances of attaining spiritual perfection, and is too dear a price to pay for such unsatisfactory results. ”

“ The truly maternal instinct has no equivalent in the breast of man, and so long as none but men are the people’s representatives, even so long will that people be deprived of a thousand rights which a just, earnest, womanly co-government would give them. It is monstrous to speak of women as being even incapable of voting wisely, when they have already proved themselves capable of governing much more judiciously than men, many of whom seem to recognise no other legitimate result of taking office than squabbling and banqueting. ”

“ 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 not weak-minded but strong-minded, she was regarded as an anomaly, and sneered at as a being who had unsexed herself. ”

“ Never to speak in an assembly; to be compelled to carry a great weight of hair about with us; to be subservient to men in all things, and to foster woman’s disabilities and man’s arrogance, to the extent preached by some of the Apostles, is repugnant to the common sense of every woman who is able to think for herself. But when we come across anything that is offensive to our self-respect, we make due allowances for the egotism of man and the customs of the times. We also remember that Jesus always showed Himself to be woman’s true friend and associate ”

“ Could anything be more idiotic or paradoxical? And is it to be wondered at that it became necessary for men to prove their 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. ”

“ How can women be independent 113and free, if they have to rely upon others to keep them? Where is the woman in New Amazonia, do you think, who would care thus to sacrifice her position of self-reliant independence? Such a being does not exist, and I think that your women have themselves or their guardians to thank in great measure for all the disadvantages under which they labour. ”

“ No one will venture to suggest that these women are selfish egotists, for their aims and ambitions embrace the welfare of half the human race at least, and, whatever may be the ultimate results of their gallant fight on behalf of “Woman’s Rights,” they will be only too thankful to see them enjoyed by every other woman on the face of the earth. ”

“ But when even those whose office and mission it is to seek and succour their poor and needy neighbours, find their time and attention taken up with more distant and less pressing duties, how is it likely that our legislators, occupied so intensely as they are in trying to prove each other unfit for office, will ever find time to take the cause of the social improvement of the people into consideration? ”

“ 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. ”