The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage

by Almroth Wright

PART I

ARGUMENTS WHICH ARE ADDUCED
IN SUPPORT OF WOMAN'S
SUFFRAGE

I

ARGUMENTS FROM ELEMENTARY NATURAL
RIGHTS

Signification of the Term "Woman's Rights"--Argument
from "Justice"--Juridical Justice-"Egalitarian
Equity"--Argument from Justice Applied to Tax-
ation--Argument from Liberty--Summary of Argu-
ments from Elementary Natural Rights.

LET US note that the suffragist does not--
except, perhaps, when she is addressing her-
self to unfledged girls and to the sexually em-
bittered--really produce much effect by in-
veighing against the legal grievances of woman
under the bastardy laws, the divorce laws, and
the law which fixes the legal age of consent.
This kind of appeal does not go down with the
ordinary man and woman--first, because there
are many who think that in spite of occasional
hardships the public advantage is, on the whole,
very well served by the existing laws; secondly, 33
because any alterations which might be desir-
able could very easily be made without recourse
to woman's suffrage; and thirdly, because the
suffragist consistently acts on the principle of
bringing up against man everything that can
possibly be brought up against him, and of
never allowing anything to appear on the credit
side of the ledger.
The arguments which the woman suffragist
really places confidence in are those which are
provided by undefined general principles,
apothegms set out in the form of axioms, form-
ulæ which are vehicles for fallacies, ambigu-
ous abstract terms, and "question-begging"
epithets. Your ordinary unsophisticated man
and woman stand almost helpless against argu-
ments of this kind.
For these bring to bear moral pressure upon
human nature. And when the intellect is con-
fused by a word or formula which conveys an
ethical appeal, one may very easily find one-
self committed to action which one's unbiased
reason would never have approved. The very 34
first requirement in connexion with any word
or phrase which conveys a moral exhortation
is, therefore, to analyse it and find out its true
signification. For all such concepts as justice,
rights, freedom, chivalry--and it is with these
that we shall be specially concerned--are, when
properly defined and understood beacon-lights,
but when ill understood and undefined, stum-
bling-blocks in the path of humanity.
We may appropriately begin by analys-
ing the term "Woman's Rights" and the cor-
relative formula "Woman has a right to the
suffrage."
Our attention here immediately focuses upon
the term right. It is one of the most important
of the verbal agents by which the suffragist
hopes to bring moral pressure to bear upon
man.
Now, the term right denotes in its juridical
sense a debt which is owed to us by the State.
A right is created when the community binds
itself to us, its individual members, to intervene
by force to restrain any one from interfering 35
with us, and to protect us in the enjoyment of
our faculties, privileges, and property.
The term is capable of being given a wider
meaning. While no one could appropriately
speak of our having a right to health or any-
thing that man has not the power to bestow, it
is arguable that there are, independent of and
antecedent to law, elementary rights: a right
to freedom; a right to protection against per-
sonal violence; a right to the protection of our
property; and a right to the impartial admin-
istration of regulations which are binding
upon all. Such a use of the term right could
be justified on the ground that everybody
would be willing to make personal sacrifices,
and to combine with his fellows for the pur-
pose of securing these essentials--an under-
standing which would almost amount to legal
sanction.
The suffragist who employs the term
"Woman's Rights" does not employ the word
rights in either of these senses. Her case is 36
analogous to that of a man who should in a
republic argue about the divine right of kings;
or that of the Liberal who should argue that
it was his right to live permanently under a
Liberal government; or of any member of a
minority who should, with a view of getting
what he wants, argue that he was contending
only for his rights.
The woman suffragist is merely bluffing.
Her formula "Woman's Rights" means simply
"Woman's Claims."
For the moment--for we shall presently be
coming back to the question of the enforce-
ment of rights--our task is to examine the
arguments which the suffragist brings forward
in support of her claims.
First and chief among these is the argument
that the Principle of Justice prescribes that
women should be enfranchised.
When we inquire what the suffragist under-
stands under the Principle of Justice, one re-
ceives by way of answer only the petitio prin- 37
cipii [question begging] that Justice is a moral principle which
includes woman suffrage among its implica-
tions.
In reality it is only very few who clearly ap-
prehend the nature of Justice. For under
this appellation two quite different principles
are confounded.
The primary and correct signification of the
term Justice will perhaps be best arrived at by
pursuing the following train of considera-
tions:--
When man, long impatient at arbitrary and
quite incalculable autocratic judgments, pro-
ceeded to build up a legal system to take the
place of these, he built it upon the following
series of axioms:--(a) All actions of which
the courts are to take cognisance shall be classi-
fied. (b) The legal consequences of each
class of action shall be definitely fixed. ( c)
The courts shall adjudicate only on questions
of fact, and on the issue as to how the particu-
lar deed which is the cause of action should be
classified. And (d) such decisions shall carry 38
with them in an automatic manner the ap-
pointed legal consequences.
For example, if a man be arraigned for the
appropriation of another man's goods, it is an
axiom that the court (when once the questions
of fact have been disposed of) shall adjudicate
only on the issue as to whether the particular
appropriation of goods in dispute comes un-
der the denomination of larceny, burglary, or
other co-ordinate category; and that upon this
the sentence shall go forth: directing that the
legal consequences which are appointed to that
particular class of action be enforced.
This is the system every one can see ad-
ministered in every court of justice.
There is, however, over and above what has
just been set out another essential element in
Justice. It is an element which readily
escapes the eye.
I have in view the fact that the classifications
which are adopted and embodied in the law
must not be arbitrary classifications. They
must all be conformable to the principle of 39
utility, and be directed to the advantage of
society.
If, for instance, burglary is placed in a class
apart from larceny, it is discriminated from it
because this distinction is demanded by con-
siderations of public advantage. But consid-
erations of utility would not countenance, and
by consequence Justice would not accept, a
classification of theft into theft committed by
a poor man and theft committed by a rich man.
The conception of Justice is thus everywhere
interfused with considerations of utility and ex-
pediency.
It will have become plain that if we have in
view the justice which is administered in the
courts--we may here term it Juridical Justice
--then the question as to whether it is just
to refuse the suffrage to woman will be deter-
mined by considering whether the classification
of men as voters and of women as non-voters is
in the public interest. Put otherwise, the ques-
tion whether it would be just that woman
should have a vote would require the answer 40
"Yes" or "No," according as the question
whether it would be expedient or inexpedient
that woman should vote required the answer
"Yes" or "No." But it would be for the elect-
orate, not for the woman suffragist, to decide
that question.
There is, as already indicated, another prin-
ciple which passes under the name of Justice.
I have in view the principle that in the distri-
bution of wealth or political power, or any
other privileges which it is in the power of the
State to bestow, every man should share equally
with every other man, and every woman
equally with every man, and that in countries
where Europeans and natives live side by side,
these latter should share all privileges equally
with the white--the goal of endeavour being
that all distinctions depending upon natural
endowment, sex, and race should be effaced.
We may call this principle the Principle of
Egalitarian Equity--first, because it aims at
establishing a quite artificial equality; secondly,
because it makes appeal to our ethical in- 41
stincts, and claims on that ground to override
the distinctions of which formal law takes ac-
count.
But let us reflect that we have here a prin-
ciple which properly understood, embraces in
its purview all mankind, and not mankind only
but also the lower animals. That is to say, we
have here a principle, which consistently fol-
lowed out, would make of every man and
woman in primis [at first] a socialist; then a woman suf-
fragist; then a philo-native, negrophil, and an
advocate of the political rights of natives and
negroes; and then, by logical compulsion ant
anti-vivisectionist, who accounts it unjust to
experiment on an animal; a vegetarian, who
accounts it unjust to kill animals for food;
and findly one who, like the Jains, accounts
it unjust to take the life of even verminous in-
sects.
If we accept this principle of egalitarian
equity as of absolute obligation, we shall have
to accept along with woman's suffrage all the
other "isms" believed in, and agitated for, by 42
the cranks who are so numerously represented
in the ranks of woman suffragists.
If, on the other hand, we accept the doc-
trine of egalitarian equity with the qualifica-
tion that it shall apply only so far as what it
enjoins is conformable to public advantage,
we shall again make expediency the criterion of
the justice of woman's suffrage.
Before passing on it will be well to point
out that the argument from Justice meets us
not only in the form that Justice requires that
woman should have a vote, but also in all sorts
of other forms. We encounter it in the writ-
ings of publicists, in the formula Taxation
carries with it a Right to Representation; and
we encounter it in the streets, on the banners
of woman suffrage processions, in the form
Taxation without Representation is Tyranny.
This latter theorem of taxation which is dis-
played on the banners of woman suffrage is, I
suppose, deliberately and intentionally a sug-
gestio falsi. For only that taxation is tyran-
nous which is diverted to objects which are not 43
useful to the contributors. And even the suf-
fragist does not suggest that the taxes which
are levied on women are differentially applied
to the uses of men.
Putting, then, this form of argument out
of sight, let us come to close quarters with the
question whether the payment of taxes gives
a title to control the finances of the State.
Now, if it really did so without any regard
to the status of the claimant, not only women,
but also foreigners residing in, or holding
property in, England, and with these lunatics
and miners with property, and let me, for the
sake of a pleasanter collocation of ideas, has-
tily add peers of the realm, who have now no
control over public finance, ought to receive
the parliamentary franchise. And in like
manner if the payment of a tax, without con-
sideration of its amount, were to give a title
to a vote, every one who bought an article
which had paid a duty would be entitled to a
vote in his own, or in a foreign, country ac- 44
cording as that duty has been paid at home or
abroad.
In reality the moral and logical nexus be-
tween the payment of taxes and the control of
the public revenue is that the solvent and self-
supporting citizens, and only these, are en-
titled to direct its financial policy.
If I have not received, or if I have refunded,
any direct contributions I may have received
from the coffers of the State; if I have paid
my pro rata share of its establishment charges
--i.e. of the costs of both internal administra-
tion and external defence; and I have further
paid my proportional share of whatever may
be required to make up for the deficit incurred
on account of my fellow-men and women who
either require direct assistance from the State,
or cannot meet their share of the expenses of
the State, I am a solvent citizen; and if I fail
to meet these liabilities, I am an insolvent cit-
izen even though I pay such taxes as the State
insists upon my paying. 45
Now if a woman insists, in the face of warn-
ings that she had better not do so, on taxing
man with dishonesty for withholding from her
financial control over the revenues of the
State, she has only herself to blame if she is
told very bluntly that her claim to such control
is barred by the fact that she is, as a citizen
insolvent. The taxes paid by women would
cover only a very small proportion of the
establishment charges of the State which would
properly be assigned to them. It falls to man
to make up that deficit.
And it is to be noted with respect to those
women who pay their full pro rata contribu-
tion and who ask to be treated as a class apart
from, and superior to, other women, that only
a very small proportion of these have made
their position for themselves.
Immeasurably the larger number are in a
solvent position only because men have placed
them there. All large fortunes and practically
all the incomes which are furnished by invest-
ments are derived from man. 46
Nay; but the very revenues which the
Woman Suffrage Societies devote to man's
vilification are to a preponderating extent de-
rived from funds which he earned and gave
over to woman.
In connexion with the financial position of
woman as here stated, it will be well to consider
first the rich woman's claim to the vote.
We may seek light on the logical and moral
aspects of this claim by considering here two
parallel cases.
The position which is occupied by the peer
under the English Constitution furnishes a
very interesting parallel to the position of the
woman who is here in question.
Time out of mind the Commons have viewed
with the utmost jealousy any effort of the
House of Lords to obtain co-partnership with
them in the control of the finances of the State;
and, in pursuance of that traditional policy,
the peers have recently, after appeal to the
country, been shorn of the last vestige of
financial control. Now we may perhaps see, 47
in this jealousy of a House of Lords, which
represents inherited wealth, displayed by a
House of Commons representing voters elect-
ing on a financial qualification, an unconscious
groping after the moral principle that those
citizens who are solvent by their own efforts,
and only these, should control the finances of
the State.
And if this analogy finds acceptance, it
would not--even if there were nothing else
than this against such proposals--be logically
possible, after ousting the peers who are large
tax-payers from all control over the finances
of the State, to create a new class of voters out
of the female representatives of unearned
wealth.
The second parallel case which we have to
consider presents a much simpler analogy.
Consideration will show that the position oc-
cupied in the State by the woman who has
inherited money is analogous to that occupied
in a firm by a sleeping partner who stands in
the shoes of a deceased working partner, and 48
who has only a small amount of capital in the
business. Now, if such a partner were to
claim any financial control, and were to make
trouble about paying his pro rata establish-
ment charges, he would be very sharply called
to order. And he would never dream of ap-
pealing to Justice by breaking windows, go-
ing to gaol, and undertaking a hunger strike.
Coming back from the particular to the
general, and from the logical to the moral
aspect of woman's claim to control the finances
of the State on the ground that she is a tax-
payer, it will suffice to point out that this claim
is on a par with the claim to increased political
power and completer control over the finances
of the State which is put forward by a class of
male voters who are already paying much less
than their pro rata share of the upkeep of the
State.
In each case it is a question of trying to get
control of other people's money. And in the
case of woman it is of "trying on" in connexion
with her public partnership with man that prin- 49
ciple of domestic partnership, "All yours is
mine, and all mine's my own."
Next to the plea of justice, the plea which is
advanced most insistently by the woman who
is contending for a vote is the plea of liberty.
We have here, again, a word which is a val-
uable asset to woman suffrage both in the re-
spect that it brings moral pressure to bear, and
in the respect that it is a word of ambiguous
meaning.
In accordance with this we have John Stuart
Mill making propaganda for woman suffrage
in a tractate entitled the Subjection of
Women; we have a Woman's Freedom League
--"freedom" being a question-begging syn-
onym for "parliamentary franchise"--and
everywhere in the literature of woman's suf-
frage we have talk of woman's "emancipa-
tion"; and we have women characterised as
serfs, or slaves--the terms serfs and slaves
supplying, of course, effective rhetorical syn-
onyms for non-voters.
When we have succeeded in getting through 50
these thick husks of untruth we find that the
idea of liberty which floats before the eyes of
woman is, not at all a question of freedom from
unequitable legal restraints, but essentially a
question of getting more of the personal lib-
erty (or command of other people's services),
which the possession of money confers and
more freedom from sexual restraints.
The suffragist agitator makes profit out
of this ambiguity. In addressing the woman
worker who does not, at the rate which her
labour commands on the market, earn enough
to give her any reasonable measure of financial
freedom, the agitator will assure her that the
suffrage would bring her more money, describ-
ing the woman suffrage cause to her as the
cause of liberty. By juggling in this way with
the two meanings of "liberty" she will draw
her into her toils.
The vote, however, would not raise wages
of the woman worker and bring to her the
financial, nor yet the physiological freedom
she is seeking. 51
The tactics of the suffragist agitator are the
same when she is dealing with a woman who is
living at the charges of a husband or relative,
and who recoils against the idea that she lies
under a moral obligation to make to the man
who works for her support some return of
gratitude. The suffragist agitator will point
out to her that such an obligation is slavery,
and that the woman's suffrage cause is the
cause of freedom.
And so we find the women who want to have
everything for nothing, and the wives who do
not see that they are beholden to man for any-
thing, and those who consider that they have
not made a sufficiently good bargain for them-
selves--in short, all the ungrateful women--
flock to the banner of Women's Freedom--
the banner of financial freedom for woman at
the expense of financial servitude for man.
The grateful woman will practically always
be an anti-suffragist.
It will be well, before passing on to another 52
class of arguments, to summarise what has
been said in the three foregoing sections.
We have recognised that woman has not
been defrauded of elementary natural rights;
that Justice, as distinguished from egalitarian
equity, does not prescribe that she should be
admitted to the suffrage; and that her status
is not, as is dishonestly alleged, a status of
serfdom or slavery.
With this the whole case for recrimina-
tion against man, and a fortiori [for greater reason] the case for
[a] resort to violence, collapses.
And if it does collapse, this is one of those
things that carries consequences. It would
beseem man to bethink himself that to give in
to an unjustified and doubtfully honest claim
is to minister to the demoralisation of the
claimant. 53

II

ARGUMENTS FROM INTELLECTUAL GRIEV-
ANCES OF WOMAN

Complaint of Want of Chivalry--Complaint of "Insults"
--Complaint of "Illogicalities"--Complaint of
"Prejudices"--The Familiar Suffragist Grievance
of the Drunkard Voter and the Woman of Property
Who is a Non-Voter--The Grievance of Woman be-
ing Required to Obey Man-Made Laws.

WE pass from the argument from elemen-
tary natural rights to a different class of argu-
ments--intellectual grievances. The suffra-
gist tells us that it is unchivalrous to oppose
woman's suffrage; that it is insulting to tell
woman that she is unfit to exercise the franchise; s
that it is "illogical" to make in her case
an exception to a general rule; that it is mere
"prejudice" to withhold the vote from her;
that it is indignity that the virtuous and highly
intelligent woman has no vote, while the 54
drunkard has; and that the woman of property
has no vote, while her male underlings have;
and, lastly, that it is an affront that a woman
should be required to obey "man-made"
laws.
We may take these in their order.
Let us consider chivalry, first, from the
standpoint of the woman suffragist. Her no-
tion of chivalry is that man should accept
every disadvantageous offer which may be
made to him by woman.
That, of course, is to make chivalry the prin-
ciple of egalitarian equity limited in its appli-
cation to the case between man and woman.
It follows that she who holds that the suf-
frage ought, in obedience to that principle of
justice, to be granted to her by man, might
quite logically hold that everything else in
man's gift ought also to be conceded.
But to do the woman suffragist justice, she
does not press the argument from chivalry.
Inasmuch as life has brought home to her that
the ordinary man has quite other conceptions 55
of that virtue, she declares that "she has no
use for it."
Let us now turn to the anti-suffragist view.
The anti-suffragist (man or woman) holds that
chivalry is a principle which enters into every
reputable relation between the sexes, and that
of all the civilising agencies at work in the
world it is the most important.
But I think I hear the reader interpose,
"What, then, is chivalry if it is not a question
of serving woman without reward?"
A moment's thought will make the matter
clear.
When a man makes this compact with a
woman, "I will do you reverence, and protect
you, and yield you service; and you, for your
part, will hold fast to an ideal of gentleness, of
personal refinement, of modesty, of joyous
maternity, and to who shall say what other
graces and virtues that endear woman to
man," that is chivalry.
It is not a question of a purely one-sided 56
bargain, as in the suffragist conception. Nor
yet is it a bargain about purely material things.
It is a bargain in which man gives both
material things, and also things which pertain
perhaps somewhat to the spirit; and in which
woman gives back of these last.
But none the less it is of the nature of a con-
tract. There is in it the inexorable do ut des;
facio ut facias [give me this, and I will give you that; do this for me, and I will do that for you].
And the contract is infringed when woman
breaks out into violence, when she jettisons
her personal refinement, when she is ungrate-
ful, and, possibly, when she places a quite ex-
travagantly high estimate upon her intellectual
powers.
We now turn from these almost too intimate
questions of personal morality to discuss the
other grievances which were enumerated above.
With regard to the suffragist's complaint
that it is "insulting" for woman to be told that
she is as a class unfit to exercise the suffrage,
it is relevant to point out that one is not in- 57
sulted by being told about oneself, or one's
class, untruths, but only at being told about
oneself, or one's class, truths which one dis-
likes. And it is, of course, an offence against
ethics to try to dispose of an unpalatable gen-
eralisation by characterising it as "insulting."
But nothing that man could do would be
likely to prevent the suffragist resorting to
this aggravated form of intellectual immor-
ality.
We may now turn to the complaint that it
is "illogical" to withhold the vote from women.
This is the kind of complaint which brings
out in relief the logical endowment and legis-
lative sagacity of the suffragist.
With regard to her logical endowment it
will suffice to indicate that the suffragist
would appear to regard the promulgation of a
rule which is to hold without exception as an
essentially logical act; and the admission of
any class exception to a rule of general ap-
plication as an illogicality. It would on this
principle be "illogical" to except, under con- 58
scription, the female population from military
service.
With regard to the suffragist's legislative
sagacity we may note that she asks that we
should put back the clock, and return to the
days when any arbitrary principle might be
adduced as a ground for legislation. It is as
if Bentham had never taught:--
"What is it to offer a good reason with re-
spect to a law? It is to allege the good or
evil which the law tends to produce; so much
good, so many arguments in its favour; so
much evil, so many arguments against it.
"What is it to offer a false reason? It is
the alleging for, or against a law, something
else than its good or evil effects."
Next, we may take up the question as to
whether an unwelcome generalisation may
legitimately be got out of the way by char-
acterising it as a prejudice. This is a funda-
mentally important question not only in con-
nexion with such an issue as woman suffrage,
but in connexion with all search for truth in 59
those regions where crucial scientific experi-
ments cannot be instituted.
In the whole of this region of thought we
have to guide ourselves by generalisations.
Now every generalisation is in a sense a pre-
judgment. We make inferences from cases
or individuals that have already presented
themselves to such cases or individuals of the
same class as may afterwards present them-
selves. And if our generalisation happens to
be an unfavourable one, we shall of necessity
have prejudged the case against those who are
exceptions to their class.
Thus, for example, the proposition that
woman is incapable of usefully exercising the
parliamentary franchise prejudges the case
against a certain number of capable women.
It would none the less be absolutely anarch-
ical to propose to abandon the system of
guiding ourselves by prejudgments; and un-
favourable prejudgments or prejudices are
logically as well justified, and are obviously 60
as indispensable to us as favourable prejudg-
ments.
The suffragist who proposes to dispose of
generalisations which are unfavourable to
woman as prejudices ought therefore to be told
to stand down.
It has probably never suggested itself
to her that, if there were a mind which was not
stored with both favourable prejudgments
and prejudices, it would be a mind which
had learned absolutely nothing from experi-
ence.
But I hear the reader interpose, "Is there
not a grave danger that generalisations may
be erroneous?"
And I can hear the woman suffragist inter-
ject, "Is there not a grave danger that unflat-
tering generalisations about woman may be
erroneous?"
The answer to the general question is that
there is of course always the risk that our gen-
eralisations may be erroneous. But when a 61
generalisation finds wide acceptance among
the thoughtful, we have come as close to truth
as it is possible for humanity to come.
To the question put by the suffragist the
reply is that experience with regard to the
capacity of woman has been accumulating in
all climes, and through all times; and that the
belief of men in the inherent inferiority of
women in the matter of intellectual morality,
and in the power of adjudication, has never
varied.
I pass now to the two most familiar griev-
ances of the suffragist; the grievance that the
virtuous and intelligent woman has no vote,
while the male drunkard has; and the griev-
ance that the woman of property has no vote,
while her male underlings have.
All that is worth while saying on these points
is that the suffragist is here manufacturing
grievances for herself, first, by reasoning from
the false premiss that every legal distinction
which happens to press hardly upon a few in-
dividuals ought for that to be abrogated; and, 62
secondly, by steady leaving out of sight that
logical inconsistencies can, for the more part,
be got rid of only at the price of bringing others
into being.
The man who looks forward to the intel-
lectual development of woman must be
brought near to despair when he perceives that
practically every woman suffragist sees in
every hard case arising in connexion with a
legal distinction affecting woman, an insult
and example of the iniquity of man-made
laws, or a logical inconsistency which could
with a very little good-will be removed.
We have come now to the last item on our
list, to the grievance that woman has to submit
herself to "man-made laws."
This is a grievance which well rewards study.
It is worth study from the suffragist point of
view, because it is the one great injury under
which all others are subsumed. And it is
worth studying from the anti-suffragist point
of view, because it shows how little the suf-
fragist understands of the terms she employs; 63
and how unreal are the wrongs which she re-
sents.
Quite marvelously has the woman suffra-
gist in this connexion misapprehended; or
would she have us say misrepresented?
The woman suffragist misapprehends--it
will be better to assume that she "misappre-
hends"--when she suggests that we, the male
electors, have framed the laws.
In reality the law which we live under--and
the law in those States which have adopted
either the English, or the Roman law--
descends from the past. It has been evolved
precedent, by precedent, by the decisions of
generation upon generation of judges, and it
has for centuries been purged by amending
statutes. Moreover we, the present male elec-
tors--the electors who are savagely attacked
by the suffragist for our asserted iniquities in
connexion with the laws which regulate sexual
relations--have never in our capacity as elec-
tors had any power to alter an old, or to sug-
gest a new law; except only in so far as by 64
voting Conservative or Liberal we may indi-
rectly have remotely influenced the general
trend of legislation.
"Well but"--the suffragist will here rejoin
--"is it not at any rate true that in the draft-
ing of statutes and the framing of judicial
decisions man has always nefariously discrim-
inated against woman?"
The question really supplies its own answer.
It will be obvious to every one who considers
that the drafting of statutes and the formula-
ting of legal decisions is almost as impersonal a
procedure as that of drawing up the rules to
govern a game; and it offers hardly more op-
portunity for discriminating between man and
woman.
There are, however, three questions in con-
nexion with which the law can and does make
a distinction between man and woman.
The first is that of sexual relations: rape,
divorce, bastardy, and the age of consent. In
connexion with rape, it has never been alleged
that the law is not sufficiently severe. It is, or 65
has been, under colonial conditions, severe up
to the point of ferocity. In the matter of
divorce the law of a minority of man-governed
States differentiates in favour of man. It
does so influenced by tradition, by what are
held to be the natural equities, and by the fact
that a man is required to support his wife's
progeny. The law of bastardy [illegitimate childbirth] is what it is
because of the dangers of blackmail. The law
which fixes the age of consent discriminates
against man, laying him open to a criminal
charge in situations where woman--and it is
not certain that she is not a more frequent of-
fender--escapes scot-free.
The second point in which the law differ-
entiates is in the matter of exacting personal
service for the State. If it had not been that
man is more prone to discriminate in favour of
woman than against her, every military State,
when exacting personal military service from
men, would have demanded from women some
such equivalent personal service as would be
represented by a similar period of work in an 66
army clothing establishment, or ordnance fac-
tory, or army laundry; or would at any rate
have levied upon woman a ransom in lieu of
such service.
The third point in which the law dis-
tinguishes between man and woman is with ref-
erence to the suffrage. The object of this
book is to show that this is equitable and in the
interests of both.
The suffragist further misapprehends when
she regards it as an indignity to obey laws
which she has not herself framed, or specifically
sanctioned. (The whole male electorate, be
it remarked, would here lie under the same
dignity as woman.)
But in reality, whether it is a question of the
rules of a game, or of the reciprocal rights and
duties of members of a community, it is, and
ought to be, to every reasonable human being
not a grievance, but a matter of felicitation,
that an expert or a body of experts should have
evolved a set of rules under which order and
harmony are achieved. Only vanity and folly 67
would counsel amateurs to try to draw up rules
or laws for themselves.
Again, the woman suffragist takes it as a
matter of course that she would herself be
able to construct a system of workable laws.
In point of fact, the framing of a really useful
law is a question of divining something which
will apply to an infinite number of different
cases and individuals. It is an intellectual
feat on a par with the framing of a great
generalisation. And would woman--that be-
ing of such short sight, whose mind is always
so taken up with whatever instances lie near-
est to her--be capable of framing anything
that could pass muster as a great generalisa-
ition?
Lastly, the suffragist fails to see that the
function of framing the laws is not an essential
function of citizenship.
The essential functions of citizenship are the
shaping of public policy, and the control of
the administrative Acts of Government.
Such directive control is in a state of political 68
freedom exercised through two quite different
agencies.
It is exercised--and it is of the very essence
of political freedom that this should be the
normal method of control--in the first place,
through expressed public opinion. By this
are continuously regulated not only momen-
tous matters of State, such as declarations of
war and the introduction of constitutional
changes, but also smaller and more individual
matters, such as the commutation of a capital
sentence, or the forcible feeding of militant suf-
fragists.
In the background, behind the moral com-
pulsion of expressed public opinion, there is,
in the case of a Parliamentary State, also an-
other instrument of control. I have in view
that periodical settlement of the contested
rulership of the State by the force of a majority
of electors which is denoted a general elec-
tion.
The control exercised by the suffrages of
the electors in a general election is in certain 69
important respects less effective than that ex-
ercised by the everyday public expression of
opinion. It falls short in the respect that its
verdicts are, except only in connexion with the
issue as to whether the Government is to be
retained in office or dismissed, ambiguous ver-
dicts; further, in the respect that it comes into
application either before governmental pro-
posals have taken definite shape, or only after
the expiration of a term of years, when the
events are already passing out of memory.
If we now consider the question of woman's
franchise from the wider point of view here
opened up, it will be clear that, so far as con-
cerns the control which is exercised through
public opinion on the Government, the intelli-
gent woman, and especially the intelligent
woman who has made herself an expert on any
matter, is already in possession of that which is
a greater power than the franchise. She has
the power which attaches to all intelligent opin-
ion promulgated in a free State. Moreover,
wherever the special interest of women are in- 70
volved, any woman may count on being lis-
tened to if she is voicing the opinions of any
considerable section of her sex.
In reality, therefore, woman is disfran-
chised only so far as relates to the confirmation
of a Government in office, or its dismissal by
the ultima ratio [ultimate reason] of an electoral contest. And
when we reflect that woman does not come into
consideration as a compelling force, and that
an electoral contest partakes of the nature of
a civil war, it becomes clear that to give her the
parliamentary vote would be to reduce all those
trials of strength which take the form of elec-
toral contests to the level of a farce.
With this I have, I will not say completed
the tale of the suffragist's grievances--that
would be impossible--but I have at any rate
dealt with those which she has most acrimoni-
ously insisted upon. 71