WOMEN'S RIGHTS AND WRONGS.

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume II, Issue 170, 22 April 1874, Page 3

WOMEN'S RIGHTS AND WRONGS.

Thb following appears in the Loudon Hornet : -~ To tho Kditor : Sir,—Yours is ouo of the fW papers not afraid to diuouss great question* fearlvtMly. I liopo you aro not afraid of the Woaian Question —or of mo.

I am never backward in coming forward in the noble cause of Woman, and am over ready to discuss the subject argumentatively. I believe that the sexes were created perfectly equal, with the woman a little more equal than the man.

1 also believe that the world would be happier to-day if mau bad never existed.

Aa a creature, man is a failure, and I bices tuy stars that my mother was a woman. I not only maintain those principles, but I maintain a husband besides.

They say man was created first. First experiments are always failures. And then they throw it into our faces about Ere taking an apple. What did Adam do when he was found out ? 1 rue to his masculine instincts he sneaked behind Ere s greciaa bend, and said “ ’T wasn’t me, ’two* her ; and woman has had to father everything since, and mother it too.

What we want is the ballot, and the ballot wo’re bound to have, if we let down our back hair and swim in a sea of sanguinary gore. Bring up your little daughters to love and caress the ballot, and when they are old and scrawny they will not depart from it. Teach them that man occupies no position that woman cannot fill, even to a pair of trousers. Teach them that without the ballot woman is simply a cooking and washing machine; that with it she can just rule her little roast. Give them little ballots to play with. We have plenty of ballot girls, but what we want is ballot women.

The male creature whom the law compels me to call husband says I have got ballot on the btasn.

Ho says I sleep with a ballot under my pillow, and dream that I tun commander-in-ohiof of a largo army of ballots, and am cleaning out every* thing that looks like the male sex, while the baud plays '* See the Conquering Sbero cometh.” Such remarks show that the roan was created lower than the boosts of the sea, the carrion of the air, or the rhinoceros of Ashautee.

An dwhat can be expected of this man Skinner, whose intellect so lower than that of a common ostrich.

My soul is filled with poetry and sentiment, and hie vulgar remarks grate on my car; and when I hear persona use expressions that are not refined and genteel I want to go through them like brimstone.

I am not astonished that there isn’t more interest manifested in this absorbing topic, Exeter Hall ought to bo packed from floor to ceiling, and a couple of hundred climbing up the lightning rod outside. But we are bound to succeed.

No matter how rabid a woman is on this question, or how much she talks against the men on the platform, she’ll grab the first man that offers himself, and turn right round, and there is where we are weak. Most women eecm to think that we wore made but for one purpose, and that was to have ** dearly beloved wife " on our tomb* stone.

From the creation of the world we have had all the great men on our side. There’s Pharoab, What did Pharoah doP Recognising the fast that women must inevitably rule ho issued an order to strangle all the male children. If his plan hadn’t slipped up,’twould' be money in oar pockets. Mr Pharoah Is dead now, and hadn’t forethought enough to leave the business to some good man. Among those who escaped justice at this time was a youth called Moses, of bullrush fame, and since then every Moses has been a wart upon the face of nature, including the wretched object whose last name I am encumbered with. Coming down to the present day where do we find women P We don’t find her. In ten cases out of nine she finds herself. Come with mo to the worst portion of our great city. After ascending thirty-ono flights of n'cketv stairs what do wo find ? A miserable cellar. In one corner sits a wretched woman, once the belle of the city. Bhe makes trousers. Thirty-four pairs of trousers for a shilling. Not a morsel of food has passed her lips since lost Christmas, Around her are fourteen children crying for bread. But alas ! she has no bread } and, with tears in her eyes, she mournfully divides among them the last half of her wedding cake. Hive I overdrawn the picture? No, sir ; it is rather underdone than overdrawn. Think of the greatness of our cause, and its effect on thousands of ancestors still unborn. Think of your altered firesides, where widowed mothers with dissipated husbands press their orphan children to their bosoms. Think, O think, and give ns the ballot ?—Yours, logically, CI.EMENTINA ANN SKINffKS.