III
ARGUMENTS WHICH TAKE THE FORM OF
"COUNSELS OF PERFECTION" AD-
DRESSED TO MAN
Argument that Woman Requires a Vote for her Protec-
tion--Argument that Woman ought to be Invested
with the Responsibilities of Voting in Order that
She May Attain Her Full Intellectual Stature.
THERE, however, remains still a further class
of arguments. I have in view here arguments
which have nothing to do with elementary
natural rights, nor yet with wounded amour
propre. They concern ethics, and sympathy,
and charitable feelings.
The suffragist here gives to man "counsels
of perfection."
It will be enough to consider here two of
these:--the first, the argument that woman,
being the weaker vessel, needs, more than man,
the suffrage for her protection; the second, 72
that woman, being less than man in relation
to public life, ought to be given the vote for
instructional purposes.
The first of these appeals will, for instance,
take the following form:--"Consider the poor
sweated East End woman worker. She
knows best where the shoe pinches. You men
can't know. Give her a vote; and you shall see
that she will very soon better her condition."
When I hear that argument I consider:--
We will suppose that woman was ill. Should
we go to her and say: "You know best, know
better than any man, what is wrong with you.
Here are all the medicines and remedies.
Make your own selection, for that will assur-
edly provide what will be the most likely to
help."
If this would be both futile and inhuman,
much more would it be so to seek out this
woman who is sick in fortune and say to her,
"Go and vote for the parliamentary candidate
who will be likely to influence the trend of
legislation in a direction which will help." 73
What would really help the sweated woman
labourer would, of course, be to have the best
intellect brought to bear, not specially upon
the problem of indigent woman, but upon the
whole social problem.
But the aspect of the question which is, from
our present point of view, the fundamentally
important one is the following: Granting that
the extension of the suffrage to woman would
enable her, as the suffragist contends, to bring
pressure upon her parliamentary representa-
tive, man, while anxious to do his very best
for woman, might very reasonably refuse to
go about it in this particular way.
If a man has a wife whom he desires to treat
indulgently, he does not necessarily open a
joint account with her at his bankers.
If he wants to contribute to a charity he
does not give to the managers of that charity
a power of attorney over his property.
And if he is a philanthropical director of a
great business he does not, when a pathetic
case of poverty among his staff is brought 74
to his notice, imperil the fortunes of his under-
taking by giving to his workmen shares and a
vote in the management.
Moreover, he would perhaps regard it as a
little suspect if a group of those who were
claiming this as a right came and told him that
"it was very selfish of him" not to grant their
request.
Precious above rubies to the suffragist and
every other woman who wants to apply the
screw to man is that word selfish. It furnishes
her with the petitio principii that man is under
an ethical obligation to give anything she
chooses to ask.
We come next--and this is the last of all
the arguments we have to consider--to the
argument that the suffrage ought to be given
to woman for instructional purposes.
Now it would be futile to attempt to deny
that we have ready to hand in the politics of the
British Empire--that Empire which is swept
along in "the too vast orb of her fate"--an ideal
political training-ground in which we might 75
put woman to school. The woman voter would
there be able to make any experiment she
liked.
But one wonders why it has not been pro-
posed to carry woman's instruction further,
and for instructional purposes to make of a
woman let us say a judge, or an ambassador,
or a Prime Minister.
There would--if only it were legitimate to
sacrifice vital national interests--be not a
little to say in favour of such a course. One
might at any rate hope by these means once
for all to bring home to man the limitations
of woman. 76
PART II
ARGUMENTS AGAINST THE CONCESSION OF THE
PARLIAMENTARY SUFFRAGE TO WOMAN
I
WOMAN'S DISABILITY IN THE MATTER OF
PHYSICAL FORCE
International Position of State would be Imperilled by
Woman's Suffrage--Internal Equilibrium of State
would be Imperilled.
THE woman suffrage movement has now
gone too far to be disposed of by the over-
throw of its arguments, and by a mere indica-
tion of those which could be advanced on the
other side. The situation demands the bring-
ing forward of the case against woman's suf-
frage; and it must be the full and quite unex-
purgated case.
I shall endeavour to do this in the fewest pos-
sible words, and to be more especially brief
where I have to pass again over ground which
I have previously traversed in dealing with the
arguments of the suffragists.
I may begin with what is fundamental. 79
It is an axiom that we should in legislating
guide ourselves directly by considerations of
utility and expediency. For abstract princi-
ples--I have in view here rights, justice, egali-
tarian equity, equality, liberty, chivalry, logi-
cality, and such like--are not all of them
guides to utility; and each of these is, as we
have seen, open to all manner of private mis-
interpretation.
Applying the above axiom to the issue be-
fore us, it is clear that we ought to confine
ourselves here to the discussion of the ques-
tion as to whether the State would, or would
not, suffer from the admission of women to
the electorate.
We can arrive at a judgment upon this by
considering, on the one hand, the class-char-
acters of women so far as these may be rele-
vant to the question of the suffrage; and, on
the other hand, the legislative programmes
put forward by the female legislative re-
former and the feminist.
In connexion with the class-characters of 80
woman, it will be well, before attempting to
indicate them, to interpolate here the general
consideration that the practical statesman,
who has to deal with things as they are, is not
required to decide whether the characters of
women which will here be considered are, as
the physiologist (who knows that the sexual
products influence every tissue of the body)
cannot doubt, "secondary sexual characters";
or, as the suffragist contends, "acquired char-
acters." It will be plain that whether defects
are "secondary sexual characters" (and there-
fore as irremediable as "racial characters"); or
whether they are "acquired characters" (and
as such theoretically remediable) they are
relevant to the question of the concession of
the suffrage just so long as they continue to
be exhibited.1