Let us not here make any mistake. Nothing is law which has not authority behind it; and there is no real authority where there is not power to compel obedience. It is this power to compel which distinguishes law from advice. Behind every law stands the sheriff, and behind the sheriff the militia, and behind the militia the whole military power of the Federal government. No legislature ever ought to enact a statute unless it is ready to pledge all the power of government—local, state, and Federal—to its enforcement, if the statute is disregarded. A ballot is not a mere expression of opinion; it is an act of the will; and behind this act of the will must be power to compel obedience. Women do not wish authority to compel the obedience of their husbands, sons, and brothers to their will.

This fact that the ballot is explicitly an act of the will, and implicitly an expression of power or force, is indicated not only by the general function of government, but also by special illustrations. Politics is pacific war. A corrupt ring gets the control of New York city, or Minneapolis, or St. Louis, or Philadelphia, or perhaps of a state, as Delaware, Rhode Island, or Montana. The first duty of the citizens is to make war on this corrupt ring. The ballot is not merely an expression of opinion that this ring ought not to control; it is the resolve that it shall not control. A capitalistic trust gets, or tries to get, a monopoly which is perilous to commercial freedom; or a labor trust gets, or tries to get, a monopoly which is perilous to industrial freedom. A vote is not a protest against such control,—it is not a mere opinion that it ought not to be allowed. It is a decree. The voter says, "We will not suffer this monopoly to continue." His vote means, in the one case, If you do not dissolve this capitalistic combination, in the other case, If you do not cease this interference with the freedom of non-union labor, we will compel you to do so. If the vote does not mean this, it is nothing more than a resolution passed in a parlor meeting. The great elections are called, and not improperly called, campaigns. For they are more than a great debate. A debate is a clash of opinions. But an election is a clash of wills. One party says, " We will have Mr. Blaine President;" the other says, " We will have Mr. Cleveland President." Will sets itself against will in what is essentially a masculine encounter. And if the defeated will refuses to accept the decision, as it did when Mr. Lincoln was elected President, war is the necessary result.

From such an encounter of wills woman instinctively shrinks. She shrinks from it exactly as she shrinks from the encounter of opposing wills on a battlefield, and for the same reason. She is glad to counsel; she is loath to command. She does not wish to arm herself, and, as police or soldier, enforce her will on the community. Nor does she wish to register her will, and leave her son, her brother, or her husband to enforce it. If she can persuade them by womanly influence she will; but just in the measure in which she is womanly, she is unwilling to say to her son, to her brother, or to her husband, "I have decreed this; you must see that my decree is enforced on the reluctant or the resisting." She does not wish that he should act on her judgment against his own in obedience to her will; still less that he shall, in obedience to her will, compel others to act in violation both of their judgment and of his. And yet this is just what suffrage always may and sometimes must involve. The question, Shall woman vote, if translated into actual and practical form, reads thus: Shall woman decide what are the rights of the citizen to be protected and what are the duties of the citizen to be enforced, and then are her son and her brother and her husband to go forth, armed, if need be, to enforce her decision? Is this where the functional line between the sexes is to be drawn? Are women to make the laws and men to enforce them? Are women to decree, and men to execute? Is woman never to act as a private, but only as a commander-in-chief? Is this right? Is it right that one sex shall alone enforce authority, but the other sex determine when and how it shall be exercised? Is this expedient? Will it promote peace, order, prosperity? Is it practicable? Will it in fact be done? Suppose that in New York city the women should vote for prohibition and the men should vote against it; is it to be expected that the men would arm themselves to enforce against their fellow men a law which they themselves condemned as neither wise nor just? To ask these questions is to answer them. The functions of government cannot be thus divided. In a democratic community the duty of enforcing the law must devolve on those who determine what the law shall be that is to be enforced. It cannot be decreed by one class and enforced by another. It is inconceivable that it should be decreed by one sex and enforced by the other.