Samantha Among the Brethren, Complete, Marietta Holley [learn to read books txt] 📗

There is another point I wish to notice. The General Conference of 1880 did not see the effect that legislation would have by admitting women to certain offices. Certain affirmative legislation is also negative legislation. When saloons are permitted to sell in quantities of one gallon, it forbids to sell in quantities of less than one gallon; when it says you can sell in quantities of one barrel, it forbids them to sell in quantities of two. When the General Conference of 1880 decided that women should be eligible in the Quarterly Conferences as superintendents of Sunday-schools, class-leaders, and as stewards, by that very affirmative conclusion, the subject was passed upon about their taking any other position. That, I think, must be regarded as sound, and a just interpretation of the law.

But suppose it is not; the General Conference of 1880 certainly did not understand the matter as the General Conference of 1872 did. For if it had, there would have been no necessity for legislation at all, there would have been no need for putting in the law as it now stands, that the pronoun “he,” wherever employed, shall not be considered as prohibiting women from holding the offices of Sunday-school Superintendent, Class Leader, and Steward.

Now, for this reason, and for the further reason that it is a matter of immense importance that we guard against despotism, I oppose changing the personnel of the General Conference without my Annual Conference has a right to vote upon it, and it is voted upon. Despotism is a suitable term. A General Conference may become a despot, and just as soon as it goes outside of its legitimate province, then it usurps, and so far as it usurps, it becomes despotic, and is a despot; and you and I, so far as our Annual Conferences are concerned, do well to regard with a deep jealousy an infringement upon our organic rights. The only safety of the Church is the equipoise that is constituted by the relation the Annual Conferences sustain to the General Conference, and far safer is it for us to bring these women of the Church, elect, honorable women, into the General Conference of the Church by the same way that their husbands and brothers are here.

There is another thought that I wish to suggest. What are the possibilities with regard to lay delegation, supposing the design of those who wish to bring women in without further action is successful? You make lay delegation a farce in this body. The presiding elders and pastors of the Church may act in co-operation, and they can elect their own wives as delegates to this General Conference, and thus lay delegation comes to be a farce. Some of you may laugh at this suggestion, but it is an in posse, and it may easily be made an in esse. It is important to us that the laity should hold the place they have by the regulations we have, and they should be changed only to make them more perfect.

No body is safe without adherence to law. We may set lightly by law; we may regard it as a thing to be laid aside at the command of excitement or passion, but the nation that does that is a doomed nation, and the Church that does that has its history already written. The only safe course for us to pursue is to pursue the wise, careful, judicious, and conservative—I mean every word—and conservative course we have heretofore pursued through all our history. When we boast of what Methodism has done, or what she is going to do, let us remember it is because of her firm adherence to law.

It is with her as it is with the German nation and the Anglo-Saxon race—everywhere our glory is in our adherence to wise laws, and if we pass unwise laws, in repealing them in the same wise.

ADDRESS OF GENERAL CLINTON B. FISK.

Mr. President and Brethren, to an onlooker of this remarkable scene, this great debate now in the third day of its progress must be suggestive of some of the marvellous plays, woven into song, which have made the hearts of the thronging multitudes who have crowded this place of meeting in the past throb alternately with emotions of hope and fear as to the outcome of the parties involved in plot and counterplot. The visitors to this General Conference, seated in their boxes and in the family circle, Will say surely these honored men of God who have been called as Superintendents of the affairs of our great conquering Church, these chosen ministers of reconciliation and peace, these male laymen called by their brethren to their high places in this General Conference, whose names at home are the synonym of chivalrous goodness—surely all these of rank and talent and authority, whose able and eloquent words have been ringing through the arches and dome of this temple of music on the wrong side of the question, are but simply acting the parts assigned them. In the final scene they will join hands around the eligible women elect, who, in obedience to the call of the laity in their several Conferences, are in their seats with us, and say, “Whom God hath joined, let not male put asunder.” My brothers, let us briefly restate the case. Five noble women of the laymen of the Methodist Episcopal Church have been chosen as delegates to this General Conference under the Constitution and by the forms prescribed by the laws of the Church. As they enter, or attempt to enter, the portals of this great assemblage they hear a voice from the platform, in words not to be misunderstood, “Thou shalt not,” and voices from all parts of the house take up the prohibitory words, and supplement the voices of the Bishops, “Thou shalt not.” And one would think, from the vehement oratory of the resisting delegates of this General Conference, that the foundations of the Church were in imminent peril by the presence of these “elect ladies” among us.

Let us turn back a moment, and review the history of the rise, progress, and triumph of the cause of lay representation. I claim to know a little something about it, as I was on the skirmish line in the conflict, and in all its battles fought until the day of victory.

In 1861, to the male members of the Church, was submitted the question of lay representation. It failed of securing a majority vote. Had it carried, there would have been plausibility in the argument this day made against the eligibility of women to seats in this General Conference. The evolution of the succeeding eight years lifted woman to a higher appreciation of her position in the Methodist Church, and her rights and privileges became the theme of discussion throughout the bounds of the Church. Among the champions for woman was that magnificent man, that grand old man, Dr. Daniel D. Whedon, who, in discussing this question, said:

“If it is rights they talk of, every competent member of the Church of Christ, of either sex and of every shade of complexion, has equal original rights. Those rights, they may be assured, when that question comes fairly up, will be firmly asserted and maintained.”

And in answer to the expected fling, “But you are a woman's rights man,” he replied:

“We are a human rights man. And our mother was a human being. And our wives, sisters, and daughters are all human beings. And that these human beings are liable as any other human beings to be oppressed by the stronger sex, and as truly need in self-defence a check upon oppression, the history of all past governments and legislation does most terribly demonstrate. What is best in the State is