But the result has only been homelessness, degeneracy, and family and social decay.
Nor is there any reason to believe that the elevation and improvement of women are to be secured by investing them with political power.
There are, however, in these days, many believers in the potentiality of "votes," [1122] who anticipate some indefinite good from the "enfranchisement" of women.

It is not necessary here to enter upon the discussion of this question.

But it may be sufficient to state that the power which women do not possess politically is far more than compensated by that which they exercise in private life--by their training in the home those who, whether as men or as women, do all the manly as well as womanly work of the world.

The Radical Bentham has said that man, even if he would, cannot keep power from woman; for that she already governs the world "with the whole power of a despot," [1123] though the power that she mainly governs by is love.

And to form the character of the whole human race, is certainly a power far greater than that which women could ever hope to exercise as voters for members of Parliament, or even as lawmakers.
There is, however, one special department of woman's work demanding the earnest attention of all true female reformers, though it is one which has hitherto been unaccountably neglected.