CHAPTER II.
I trembled at the suggestion of my own thoughts. Was this an enchantedcountry? Where the lovely blonde women fairies--or some weird beings ofdifferent specie, human only in form? Or was I dreaming?
"I do not believe I understand you," I said. "I never heard of a countrywhere there were no men. In my land they are so very, very important."
"Possibly," was the placid answer.
"And you are really a nation of women?"
"Yes," she said. "And have been for the last three thousand years."
"Will you tell me how this wonderful change came about?"
"Certainly. But in order to do it, I must go back to our very remoteancestry. The civilization that I shall begin with must have resembledthe present condition of your own country as you describe it. Prisonsand punishments were prevalent throughout the land."
I inquired how long prisons and places of punishment had been abolishedin Mizora.
"For more than two thousand years," she replied. "I have no personalknowledge of crime. When I speak of it, it is wholly from an historicalstandpoint. A theft has not been committed in this country for many manycenturies. And those minor crimes, such as envy, jealousy, malice andfalsehood, disappeared a long time ago. You will not find a citizen inMizora who possesses the slightest trace of any of them.
"Did they exist in earlier times?"
"Yes. Our oldest histories are but records of a succession of dramas inwhich the actors were continually striving for power and exercising allof those ancient qualities of mind to obtain it. Plots, intrigues,murders and wars, were the active employments of the very ancient rulersof our land. As soon as death laid its inactivity upon one actor,another took his place. It might have continued so; and we might stillbe repeating the old tragedy but for one singular event. In the historyof your own people you have no doubt observed that the very thingplotted, intrigued and labored for, has in accomplishment proved theruin of its projectors. You will remark this in the history I am aboutto relate.
"Main ages ago this country was peopled by two races--male and female.The male race were rulers in public and domestic life. Their supremacyhad come down from pre-historic time, when strength of muscle was theonly master. Woman was a beast of burden. She was regarded as inferiorto man, mentally as well as physically. This idea prevailed throughcenturies of the earlier civilization, even after enlightenment hadbrought to her a chivalrous regard from men. But this regard wasbestowed only upon the women of their own household, by the rich andpowerful. Those women who had not been fortunate enough to have beenborn in such a sphere of life toiled early and late, in sorrow andprivation, for a mere pittance that was barely sufficient to keep theflame of life from going out. Their labor was more arduous than men's,and their wages lighter.
"The government consisted of an aristocracy, a fortunate few, who werecontinually at strife with one another to gain supremacy of power, or anacquisition of territory. Wars, famine and pestilence were of frequentoccurrence. Of the subjects, male and female, some had everything torender life a pleasure, while others had nothing. Poverty, oppressionand wretchedness was the lot of the many. Power, wealth and luxury thedower of the few.
"Children came into the world undesired even by those who were able torear them, and often after an attempt had been made to prevent theircoming alive. Consequently numbers of them were deformed, not onlyphysically, but mentally. Under these conditions life was a misery tothe larger part of the human race, and to end it by self-destruction wastaught by their religion to be a crime punishable with eternal tormentby quenchless fire.
"But a revolution was at hand. Stinted toil rose up, armed and wrathful,against opulent oppression. The struggle was long and tragical, and waswaged with such rancor and desperate persistence by theinsurrectionists, that their women and children began to supply theplaces vacated by fallen fathers, husbands and brothers. It ended invictory for them. They demanded a form of government that should be theproperty of all. It was granted, limiting its privileges to adult malecitizens.
"The first representative government lasted a century. In that timecivilization had taken an advance far excelling the progress made inthree centuries previous. So surely does the mind crave freedom for itsperfect development. The consciousness of liberty is an ennoblingelement in human nature. No nation can become universally moral until itis absolutely FREE.
"But this first Republic had been diseased from its birth. Slavery hadexisted in certain districts of the nation. It was really the remains ofa former and more degraded state of society which the new government, inthe exultation of its own triumphant inauguration, neglected or lackedthe wisdom to remedy. A portion of the country refused to admit slaverywithin its territory, but pledged itself not to interfere with thatwhich had. Enmities, however, arose between the two sections, which,after years of repression and useless conciliation, culminated inanother civil war. Slavery had resolved to absorb more territory, andthe free territory had resolved that it should not. The war thatfollowed in consequence severed forever the fetters of the slave and wasthe primary cause of the extinction of the male race.
"The inevitable effect of slavery is enervating and demoralizing. It isa canker that eats into the vitals of any nation that harbors it, nomatter what form it assumes. The free territory had all the vigor,wealth and capacity for long endurance that self-dependence gives. Itwas in every respect prepared for a long and severe struggle. Its forceswere collected in the name of the united government.
"Considering the marked inequality of the combatants the war wouldnecessarily have been of short duration. But political corruption hadcrept into the trust places of the government, and unscrupulouspoliticians and office-seekers saw too many opportunities to harvestwealth from a continuation of the war. It was to their interest toprolong it, and they did. They placed in the most responsible positionsof the army, military men whose incapacity was well known to them, andsustained them there while the country wept its maimed and dying sons.
"The slave territory brought to the front its most capable talent. Itwould have conquered had not the resources against which it contendedbeen almost unlimited. Utterly worn out, every available means of supplybeing exhausted, it collapsed from internal weakness.
"The general government, in order to satisfy the clamors of thedistressed and impatient people whose sons were being sacrificed, andwhose taxes were increasing, to prolong the war had kept removing andreinstating military commanders, but always of reliable incapacity.
"A man of mediocre intellect and boundless self-conceit happened to bethe commander-in-chief of the government army when the insurrectioncollapsed. The politicians, whose nefarious scheming had prolonged thewar, saw their opportunity for furthering their own interests bysecuring his popularity. They assumed him to be the greatest militarygenius that the world had ever produced; as evidenced by his successwhere so many others had failed. It was known that he had never risked abattle until he was assured that his own soldiers were better equippedand outnumbered the enemy. But the politicians asserted that such aprecaution alone should mark him as an extraordinary military genius.The deluded people accepted him as a hero.
"The politicians exhausted their ingenuity in inventing honors for him.A new office of special military eminence, with a large salary attached,was created for him. He was burdened with distinctions and emoluments,always worked by the politicians, for their benefit. The nation,following the lead of the political leaders, joined in their adulation.It failed to perceive the dangerous path that leads to anarchy anddespotism--the worship of one man. It had unfortunately selected one whowas cautious and undemonstrative, and who had become convinced that hereally was the greatest prodigy that the world had ever produced.
"He was made President, and then the egotism and narrow selfishness ofthe man began to exhibit itself. He assumed all the prerogatives ofroyalty that his position would permit. He elevated his obscure andnumerous relatives to responsible offices. Large salaries were paid themand inte
lligent clerks hired by the Government to perform their officialduties.
"Corruption spread into every department, but the nation was blind toits danger. The few who did perceive the weakness and presumption of thehero were silenced by popular opinion.
"A second term of office was given him, and then the real character ofthe man began to display itself before the people. The whole nature ofthe man was selfish and stubborn. The strongest mental trait possessedby him was cunning.
"His long lease of power and the adulation of his politicalbeneficiaries, acting upon a superlative self-conceit, imbued him withthe belief that he had really rendered his country a service soinestimable that it would be impossible for it to entirely liquidate it.He exalted to unsuitable public offices his most intimate friends. Theygrew suddenly exclusive and aristocratic, forming marriages with eminentfamilies.
"He traveled about the country with his entire family, at the expense ofthe Government, to gradually prepare the people for the ostentation ofroyalty. The cities and towns that he visited furnished fetes,illuminations, parades and every variety of entertainment that could bethought of or invented for his amusement or glorification. Lest theparade might not be sufficiently gorgeous or demonstrative he secretlysent agents to prepare the programme and size of his reception, alwaysat the expense of the city he intended to honor with his presence.
"He manifested a strong desire to subvert the will of the people to hiswill. When informed that a measure he had proposed was unconstitutional,he requested that the constitution be changed. His intimate friends heplaced in the most important and trustworthy positions under theGovernment, and protected them with the power of his own office.
"Many things that were distasteful and unlawful in a free governmentwere flagrantly flaunted in the face of the people, and were followed byother slow, but sure, approaches to the usurpation of the liberties ofthe Nation. He urged the Government to double his salary as President,and it complied.
"There had long existed a class of politicians who secretly desired toconvert the Republic into an Empire, that they might secure greaterpower and opulence. They had seen in the deluded enthusiasm of thepeople for one man, the opportunity for which they had long waited andschemed. He was unscrupulous and ambitious, and power had become anecessity to feed the cravings of his vanity.
"The Constitution of the country forbade the office of President to beoccupied by one man for more than two terms. The Empire party proposedto amend it, permitting the people to elect a President for any numberof terms, or for life if they choose. They tried to persuade the peoplethat the country owed the greatest General of all time so distinctive anhonor. They even claimed that it was necessary to the preservation ofthe Government; that his popularity could command an army to sustain himif he called for it.
"But the people had begun to penetrate the designs of the hero, andbitterly denounced his resolution to seek a third term of power. Theterrible corruptions that had been openly protected by him, hadadvertised him as criminally unfit for so responsible an office. But,alas! the people had delayed too long. They had taken a young elephantinto the palace. They had petted and fed him and admired his bulkygrowth, and now they could not remove him without destroying thebuilding.
"The politicians who had managed the Government so long, proved thatthey had more power than the people They succeeded, by practices thatwere common with politicians in those days, in getting him nominated fora third term. The people, now thoroughly alarmed, began to see theirpast folly and delusion. They made energetic efforts to defeat hiselection. But they were unavailing. The politicians had arranged theballot, and when the counts were published, the hero was declaredPresident for life. When too late the deluded people discovered thatthey had helped dig the grave for the corpse of their civil liberty, andthose who were loyal and had been misled saw it buried with unavailingregret. The undeserved popularity bestowed upon a narrow and selfishnature had been its ruin. In his inaugural address he declared thatnothing but the will of the people governed him. He had not desired theoffice; public life was distasteful to him, yet he was willing tosacrifice himself for the good of his country.
"Had the people been less enlightened, they might have yielded without amurmur; but they had enjoyed too long the privileges of a freeGovernment to see it usurped without a struggle. Tumult and disorderprevailed over the country. Soldiers were called out to protect the newGovernment, but numbers of them refused to obey. The consequence wasthey fought among themselves. A dissolution of the Government was theresult. The General they had lauded so greatly failed to bring order outof chaos; and the schemers who had foisted him into power, now turnedupon him with the fury of treacherous natures when foiled of their prey.Innumerable factions sprung up all over the land, each with a leaderambitious and hopeful of subduing the whole to his rule. They foughtuntil the extermination of the race became imminent, when a new andunsuspected power arose and mastered.
"The female portion of the nation had never had a share in theGovernment. Their privileges were only what the chivalry or kindness ofthe men permitted. In law, their rights were greatly inferior. The evilsof anarchy fell with direct effect upon them. At first, they organizedfor mutual protection from the lawlessness that prevailed. Theorganizations grew, united and developed into military power. They usedtheir power wisely, discreetly, and effectively. With consummate skilland energy they gathered the reins of Government in their own hands.
"Their first aim had been only to force the country into peace. Theanarchy that reigned had demoralized society, and they had sufferedmost. They had long pleaded for an equality of citizenship with men, buthad pleaded in vain. They now remembered it, and resolved to keep theGovernment that their wisdom and power had restored. They had beenhampered in educational progress. Colleges and all avenues to higherintellectual development had been rigorously closed against them. Theprofessional pursuits of life were denied them. But a few, with sublimecourage and energy, had forced their way into them amid the revilings ofsome of their own sex and opposition of the men. It was these bravespirits who had earned their liberal cultivation with so muchdifficulty, that had organized and directed the new power. Theygenerously offered to form a Government that should be the property ofall intelligent adult citizens, not criminal.
"But these wise women were a small minority. The majority were ruled bythe remembrance of past injustice. _They_ were now the power, anddeclared their intention to hold the Government for a century.
"They formed a Republic, in which they remedied many of the defects thathad marred the Republic of men. They constituted the Nation an integerwhich could never be disintegrated by States' Rights ideas or theassumption of State sovereignty.
"They proposed a code of laws for the home government of the States,which every State in the Union ratified as their State Constitution,thus making a uniformity and strength that the Republic of men had neverknown or suspected attainable.
"They made it a law of every State that criminals could be arrested inany State they might flee to, without legal authority, other than thatobtained in the vicinity of the crime. They made a law that criminals,tried and convicted of crime, could not be pardoned without the sanctionof seventy-five out of one hundred educated and disinterested people,who should weigh the testimony and render their decision under oath. Itis scarcely necessary to add that few criminals ever were pardoned. Itremoved from the office of Governor the responsibility of pardoning, orrejecting pardons as a purely personal privilege. It abolished thepower of rich criminals to bribe their escape from justice; a practicethat had secretly existed in the former Republic.
"In forming their Government, the women, who were its founders, profitedlargely by the mistakes or wisdom displayed in the Government of men.Neither the General Government, nor the State Government, could beindependent of the other. A law of the Union could not become such untilratified by every State Legislature. A State law could not becomeconstitutional until ratified by Congress.
"In forming the St
ate Constitutions, laws were selected from thedifferent State Constitutions that had proven wise for State Governmentduring the former Republic. In the Republic of men, each State had madeand ratified its own laws, independent of the General Government. Theconsequence was, no two States possessed similar laws.
"To secure strength and avoid confusion was the aim of the founders ofthe new Government. The Constitution of the National Government providedfor the exclusion of the male sex from all affairs and privileges for aperiod of one hundred years.
"_At the end of that time not a representative of the sex was inexistence._"