The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage

by Almroth Wright

WOMAN'S DISABILITY IN THE MATTER OF
PUBLIC MORALITY

Standards by which Morality can be Appraised--Con-
flict between Different Moralities--The Correct
Standard of Morality--Moral Psychology of Men
and Woman--Difference between Man and Woman
in Matters of Public Morality.

YET a third point has to come into considera-
tion in connexion with the woman voter. This
is, that she would be pernicious to the State
also by virtue of her defective moral equip-
ment.
Let me make clear what is the nature of the
defect of morality which is here imputed to
woman.
Conduct may be appraised by very differ-
ent standards.
We may appraise it by reference to a trans-
cendental religious ideal which demands that 98
the physical shall be subordinated to the spirit-
ual, and that the fetters of self should be flung
aside.
Or again, we may bring into application
purely mundane utilitarian standards, and
may account conduct as immoral or moral ac-
cording as it seeks only the happiness of the
agent, or the happiness of the narrow circle
of humanity which includes along with him
also his relatives and intimate friends, or again,
the welfare of the wider circle which includes
all those with whom he may have come into con-
tact, or whom he may affect through his work;
or again, the welfare of the whole body-politic
of which we are members; or lastly, that of the
general body of mankind.
Now it might be contended that all these dif-
ferent moralities are in their essence one and
the same; and that one cannot comply with the
requirements of any one of these systems of
morality without fulfilling in a measure the re-
quirements of all the other moralities.
It might, for example, be urged that if a 99
man strive after the achievement of a trans-
cendental ideal in which self shall be annulled,
he will pro tanto [to such extent] be bringing welfare to his do-
mestic circle; or again, that it would be im-
possible to promote domestic welfare without,
through this, promoting the welfare of the
nation, and through that the general welfare
of the world.
In like manner it might be argued that all
work done for abstract principles of morality
like liberty and justice, for the advancement
of knowledge, and for whatever else goes to
the building up of a higher civilisation, will,
by promoting the welfare of the general body
of mankind, redound to the advantage of each
several nation, and ultimately to the advantage
of each domestic circle.
But all this would be true only in a very
superficial and strictly qualified sense. In re-
ality, just as there is eternal conflict between
egoism and altruism, so there is conflict be-
tween the different moralities.
To take examples, the attempt to actualise 100
the transcendental religious ideal may, when
pursued with ardour, very easily conflict with
the morality which makes domestic felicity its
end. And again--as we see in the anti-mili-
tarist movement in France, in the history of
the early Christian Church, in the case of the
Quakers and in the teachings of Tolstoy--it
may quite well set itself in conflict with na-
tional ideals, and dictate a line of conduct
which is, from the point of view of the State,
immoral.
We need no further witness of the divorce
between idealistic and national morality than
that which is supplied in the memorable utter-
ance of Bishop Magee, "No state which was
conducted on truly Christian principles could
hold together for a week."
And domestic morality will constantly come
into conflict with public morality.
To do everything in one's power to advance
one's relatives and friends irrespectively of all
considerations of merit would, no doubt, be
quite sound domestic morality; it could, how- 101
ever, not always be reconciled with public
morality. In the same way, to take one's
country's part in all eventualities would be
patriotic, but it might quite well conflict with
the higher interests of humanity.
Now, the point towards which we have been
winning our way is that each man's moral sta-
tion and degree will be determined by the elec-
tion which he makes where egoism and altru-
ism, and where a narrower and a wider code
of morality, conflict.
That the moral law forbids yielding to the
promptings of egoism or to those of the nar-
rower moralities when this involves a violation
of the precepts of the wider morality is axio-
matic. Criminal and anti-social actions are
not excused by the fact that motives which im-
pelled their commission were not purely ego-
istic.
But the ethical law demands more than ab-
stention from definitely anti-social actions.
It demands from every individual that he
shall recognise the precepts of public mor- 102
ality as of superior obligation to those of ego-
ism and domestic morality.
By the fact that her public men recognised
this ethical law Rome won for herself in the
ancient world spectacular grandeur. By an
unexampled national obedience to it glory has
in our time accrued to Japan. And, in truth,
there is not anywhere any honour or renown
but such as comes from casting away the bonds
of self and of the narrower moralities to
carry out the behests of the wider morality.
Even in the strongholds of transcendental
religion where it was axiomatic that mor-
ality began and was summed up in personal
morality, it is gradually coming to be rec-
ognised that, where we have two competing
moralities, it is always the wider morality
which has the prior claim upon our allegiance.
Kingsley's protest against the morality of
"saving one's dirty soul" marked a step in ad-
vance. And we find full recognition of the
superior claim of the larger morality in that
other virile dictum of Bishop Magee, "I would 103
rather have England free, than England
sober." That is, "I would maintain the con-
ditions which make for the highest civilisation
even at the price of a certain number of lapses
in personal and domestic morality."
What is here new, let it be noted, is only
the acknowledgment by those whose official
allegiance is to a transcendental ideal of per-
sonal morality that they are called upon to
obey a higher allegiance. For there has al-
ways existed, in the doctrine that guilty man
could not be pardoned and taken back into
favour until the claims of eternal justice had
been satisfied, theoretical recognition of the
principle that one must conform to the pre-
cepts of abstract morality before one may
ethically indulge oneself in the lower moral-
ities of philanthropy and personal benevo-
lence.
The view point from which I would pro-
pose to survey the morality of woman has now
been reached. It has, however, still to be
pointed out that we may appropriately, in com- 104
paring the morals of man and woman, confine
our survey to a comparatively narrow field.
That is to say, we may here rule out all that
relates to purely personal and domestic mor-
ality--for this is not relevant to the suffrage.
And we may also rule out all that relates to
offences against the police laws--such as public
drunkenness and offences against the criminal
law--for these would come into consideration
only in connexion with an absolutely inappre-
ciable fraction of voters.
It will be well to begin by signalising certain
points in the moral psychology of man.
When morality takes up its abode in a
man who belongs to the intellectual caste it
will show itself in his becoming mindful of his
public obligations. He will consider the qual-
ity of his work as affecting the interest of those
who have to place dependence upon it; be-
haviour to those who are casually brought into
relations with him; the discharge of his in-
debtedness to the community; and the proper
conduct of public affairs. 105
In particular, it will be to him a matter of
concern that the law shall be established upon
classifications which are just (in the sense of
being conformable to public advantage); and
that the laws shall everywhere be justly, that
is to say rigorously and impartially, adminis-
tered.
If we now turn to the man in the street we
shall not find him especially sensible to the
appeals of morality. But when the special
call comes it will generally be possible to trust
him: as an elector, to vote uninfluenced by con-
siderations of private advantage; and, when
called to serve on a jury, to apply legal class-
ifications without distinction of person.
Furthermore, in all times of crisis he may be
counted upon to apply the principles of com-
munal morality which have been handed down
in the race.
The Titanic disaster, for example, showed
in a conspicuous manner that the ordinary man
will, "letting his own life go," obey the com-
munal law which lays it upon him, when in- 106
volved in a catastrophe, to save first the wo-
men and children.
Lastly, we come to the man who is intoler-
ant of all the ordinary restraints of personal
and domestic morality. Even in him the seeds
of communal morality will often be found
deeply implanted.
Time and again a regiment of scallawags,
who have let all other morality go hang, have,
when the proper chord has been made to vi-
brate in them, heard the call of communal
morality, and done deeds which make the ears
of whosoever heareth of them to tingle.
We come into an entirely different land
when we come to the morality of woman. It
is personal and domestic, not public, morality
which is instinctive in her.
In other words, when egoism gives
ground to altruism, that altruism is exercised
towards those who are linked up to her by a
bond of sexual affection, or a community in
blood, or failing this, by a relation of personal
friendship, or by some other personal relation. 107
And even when altruism has had her perfect
work, woman feels no interest in, and no re-
sponsibility towards, any abstract moral ideal.
And though the suffragist may protest, in-
stancing in disproof of this her own burning
enthusiasm for justice, we, for our part, may
legitimately ask whether evidence of a moral
enthusiasm for justice would be furnished by
a desire to render to others their due, or by
vehement insistence upon one's own rights,
and systematic attempts to extort, under the
cover of the word "justice," advantages for
oneself.
But it will be well to dwell a little longer
on, and to bring out more clearly, the point
that woman's moral ideals are personal and
domestic, as distinguished from impersonal
and public.
Let us note in this connexion that it would
be difficult to conceive of a woman who had
become deaf to the appeal of personal and do-
mestic morality making it a matter of amour
propre to respond to a call of public morality; 108
and difficult to conceive of a woman recover-
ing lost self-respect by fulfilling such an obli-
gation.
But one knows that woman will rise and re-
spond to the call of any strong human or trans-
cendental personal affection.
Again, it is only a very exceptional woman
who would, when put to her election between
the claims of a narrow and domestic and a
wider or public morality, subordinate the
former to the latter.
In ordinary life, at any rate, one finds her
following in such a case the suggestions of
domestic--I had almost called it animal--mor-
ality.
It would be difficult to find any one who
would trust a woman to be just to the rights
of others in the case where the material in-
terests of her children, or of a devoted hus-
band, were involved. And even to consider
the question of being in such a case intellec-
tually just to any one who came into competi-
tion with personal belongings like husband and 109
child would, of course, lie quite beyond the
moral horizon of ordinary woman.
It is not only the fact that the ideals of
abstract justice and truth would inevitably
be brushed aside by woman in the interests of
those she loves which comes into consideration
here; it is also the fact that woman is almost
without a moral sense in the matter of execut-
ing a public trust such as voting or attaching
herself to a political association with a view
to influencing votes.
There is between man and woman here a
characteristic difference.
While it is, of course, not a secret to any-
body that the baser sort of man can at any
time be diverted from the path of public mor-
ality by a monetary bribe or other personal
advantage, he will not, at any rate, set at
naught all public morality by doing so for a
peppercorn. He will, for instance, not join,
for the sake of a daughter, a political move-
ment in which he has no belief; nor vote for this
or that candidate just to please a son; or cen- 110
sure a member of Parliament who has in vot-
ing on female suffrage failed to consider the
predilections of his wife.
But woman, whether she be politically en-
franchised as in Australasia, or unenfran-
chised as at home; whether she be immoral in
the sense of being purely egoistic, or moral in
the sense of being altruistic, very rarely makes
any secret or any shame of doing these things.
In this matter one would not be very far
from the truth if one alleged that there are no
good women, but only women who have lived
under the influence of good men.
Even more serious than this postponement
of public to private morality is the fact that
even reputedly ethical women will, in the in-
terests of what they take to be idealistic causes,
violate laws which are universally accepted as
being of moral obligation.
I here pass over the recent epidemic of polit-
ical crime among women to advert to the want
of conscience which permits, in connexion with
professedly idealistic causes, not only misrepre- 111
sentations, but the making of deliberately false
statements on matters of public concern.
It is, for example, an illustration of the pro-
foundly different moral atmospheres in which
men and women live that when a public woman
recently made, for what was to her an idealistic
purpose, a deliberately false statement of fact
in The Times, she quite naïvely confessed to
it, seeing nothing whatever amiss in her ac-
tion.
And it did not appear that any other woman
suffragist could discern any kind of immoral-
ity in it. The worst thing they could find to
say was that it perhaps was a little gauche
to confess to making a deliberately false state-
ment on a public question when it was for the
moment particularly desirable that woman
should show up to best advantage before the
eyes of man.
We may now for a moment put aside the
question of woman's public morality and con-
sider a question which is inextricably mixed up 112
with the question of the admission of woman
to the suffrage. This is the mental attitude
and the programme of the female legislative
reformer. 113

IV

MENTAL OUTLOOK AND PROGRAMME OF
THE FEMALE LEGISLATIVE REFORMER

THE suffragist woman, when she is the kind
of woman who piques herself upon her ethical
impulses, will, even when she is intellectually
very poorly equipped, and there is no imprint
of altruism upon her life, assure you that noth-
ing except the moral influence of woman, ex-
erted through the legislation, which her prac-
tical mind would be capable of initiating, will
ever avail to abate existing social evils, and to
effect the moral redemption of the world.
It will not be amiss first to try to introduce
a little clearness and order into our ideas upon
those formidably difficult problems which the
female legislative reformer desires to attack,
and then to consider how a rational reforming
mind would go to work in the matter of pro-
posing legislation for these. 114
First would come those evils which result
from individuals seeking advantage to them-
selves by the direct infliction of injury upon
others. Violations of the criminal law and the
various forms of sweating and fleecing one's
fellow-men come under this category.
Then would come the evils which arise out of
purveying physiological and psychological re-
freshments and excitements, which are, ac-
cording as they are indulged in temperately or
intemperately, grateful and innocuous, or
sources of disaster and ruin. The evils which
are associated with the drink traffic and the
betting industry are typical examples.
Finally, there would come into consideration
the evils of death or physical suffering deliber-
ately inflicted by man upon man with a view to
preventing worse evils. The evil of war would
come under this category. In this same cate-
gory might also come the much lesser evil of
punitive measures inflicted upon criminals.
And with this might be coupled the evil of 115
killing and inflicting physical suffering upon
animals for the advantage of man.
We may now consider how the rational legis-
lative reformer would in each case go to
work.
He would not start with the assumption that
it must be possible by some alteration of the
law to abolish or conspicuously reduce any of
the afore-mentioned evils; nor yet with the as-
sumption that, if a particular alteration of the
law would avail to bring about this result, that
alteration ought necessarily to be made. He
would recognise that many things which are
theoretically desirable are unattainable; and
that many legislative measures which could
perfectly well be enforced would be barred by
the fact that they would entail deplorable un-
intended consequences.
The rational legislator whom we have here
in view would accordingly always take expert
advice as to whether the desired object could
be achieved by legal compulsion; and as to 116
whether a projected law which satisfied the
condition of being workable would give a bal-
ance of advantages over disadvantages.
In connexion with a proposal for the pre-
vention of sweating he would, for instance,
take expert advice as to whether its provisions
could be enforced; and whether, if enforce-
able, they would impose added hardships on
any class of employees or penalties on any in-
nocent class of employers.
In like manner in connexion with a pro-
posed modification in criminal procedure, the
rational reformer would defer to the expert
on the question as to whether such modification
would secure greater certainty of punishment
for the guilty without increasing the risk of
convicting the innocent.
In connexion with the second category of
evils--the category under which would come
those of drinking and betting--the rational
legislative reformer would recognise the com-
plete impracticability of abolishing by legis- 117
lative prohibition physiological indulgences
and the evils which sometimes attend upon
them.
He would consider instead whether these at-
tendant evils could be reduced by making the
regulating laws more stringent; and whether
more stringent restrictions--in addition to
the fact that they would filch from the all too
small stock of human happiness--would not,
by paving the way for further invasions of per-
sonal liberty, cripple the free development of
the community.
On the former question, which only experts
could properly answer, the reasonable reformer
would defer to their advice. The answer to
the last question he would think out for him-
self.
In connexion with the evils which are de-
liberately inflicted by man with a view to reap-
ing either personal profit, or profit for the na-
tion, or profit for humanity, the reasonable
reformer would begin by making clear to
himself that the world we live in is not such 118
a world as idealism might conjure up, but a
world of violence, in which life must be taken
and physical suffering be inflicted.
And he would recognise that the vital
material interests of the nation can be pro-
tected only by armed force; that civilisation
can be safeguarded only by punishing viola-
tions of the criminal law; and that the taking
of animal life and the infliction of a certain
amount of physical suffering upon animals is
essential to human well-being, comfort, and
recreation; and essential also to the achieve-
ment of the knowledge which is required to
combat disease.
And the reasonable reformer will, in con-
formity with this, direct his efforts, not to the
total abolition of war, but to the prevention of
such wars as are not waged for really vital
material interests, and to the abatement of the
ferocities of warfare.
In the case of punishment for criminals he
would similarly devote his efforts not to the
abrogation of punishments, but to the relin- 119
quishment of any that are not reformatory, or
really deterrent.
In like manner the reasonable reformer
would not seek to prohibit the slaughtering of
animals for food, or the killing off of animal
pests, or the trapping, shooting, or hunting of
animals for sport or profit, nor yet would he
seek to prevent their utilisation of animals for
the acquirement of knowledge.
He would direct his efforts to reducing the
pain which is inflicted, and to preserving every-
where measure and scale--not sentimentally
forbidding in connexion with one form of
utilisation of animals what is freely allowed
in connexion with another--but differentia-
ting, if differentiating at all in favour of per-
mitting the infliction of proportionately greater
suffering in the case where national and hu-
manitarian interests, than in the case where
mere recreation and luxury and personal
profit, are at stake.
Having recognised what reason would pre-
scribe to the legislative reformer, we have next 120
to inquire how far the man voter conforms to
these prescriptions of reason, and how far the
woman reformer would do so if she became
a voter.
Let it be noted that the man in the street
makes no question about falling in with the
fact that he is born into a world of violence,
and he acquiesces in the principle that the
State, and, failing the State, the individual,
may employ force and take life in defence
of vital material interests. And he frankly
falls in with it being a matter of daily
routine to kill and inflict suffering upon ani-
mals for human profit or advantage.
Even if these principles are not formulated
by the man in the street in quite such plain
terms, he not only carries them out in practice,
but he conducts all his thinking upon these pre-
suppositions.
He, for instance, would fall in with the prop-
osition that morality does not require from
man that he should give up taking life
or inflicting physical suffering. And he would 121
not cavil with the statement that man should
put reasonable limits to the amount of suffer-
ing he inflicts, and confine this within as nar-
row a range as possible--always requiring for
the death or suffering inflicted some tangible
advantage.
Moreover, if the question should be raised
as to whether such advantage will result, the
ordinary man will as a rule, where the matter
lies beyond his personal ken, take expert opin-
ion before intervening.
He will, for instance, be prepared to be so
guided in connexion with such questions as
whether disease could, if more knowledge were
available, be to a large extent prevented and
cured; as to how far animal experiments would
contribute to the acquirement of that knowl-
edge; and as to how far the physical suffer-
ing which might be involved in these experi-
ments can be minimised or abolished.
But not every man is prepared to fall in
with this programme of inflicting physical suf-
fering for the relief of physical suffering. 122
There is also a type of spiritually-minded man
who in this world of violence sets his face un-
compromisingly against the taking of any
life and the infliction of any physical suffer-
ing--refusing to make himself a partaker of
evil.
An idealist of this type will, like Tolstoy,
be an anti-militarist. He will advocate a gen-
eral gaol delivery for criminals. He will be a
vegetarian. He will not allow an animal's
life to be taken in his house, though the mice
scamper over his floors. And he will, consist-
ently with his conviction that it is immoral to
resort to force, refuse to take any part in legis-
lation or government.
This attitude, which is that commended by
the Hindoo and the Buddhist religions, is, of
course, a quite unpractical attitude towards
life. It is, in fact, a self-destructive attitude,
unless a man's fellow-citizens are prepared by
forcible means to secure to him the enjoyment
of the work of his hands or of his inherited
property, or unless those who refuse to desist 123
from the exercise of force are prepared to un-
take the support of idealists.
We have not only these two classes of men--
the ordinary man who has no compunction in
resorting to force when the requirements of life
demand it, and the idealist who refuses to have
any lot or part in violence; there is also a hy-
brid. This male hybrid will descant on the
general iniquity of violence, and then not only
connive at those forms of violence which min-
ister to his personal comforts, but also make
a virtue of trying to abate by legal violence
some particular form of physical suffering
which happens to offend in a quite special man-
ner his individual sensibility.
There is absolutely nothing to be said about
this kind of reforming crank, except only that
anything which may be said in relation to the
female legislative reformer may be appositely
said of him; and perhaps also this, that the
ordinary man holds him both in intellectual
and in moral contempt, and is resolved not to 124
allow him to do any really serious injury to
the community.
To become formidable this quasi-male per-
son must, as he recognises, ally himself with
the female legislative reformer.
Passing on to deal with her, it imports us first
to realise that while the male voter has--ex-
cept where important constitutional issues
were in question--been accustomed to leave
actual legislation to the expert, the female re-
former gives notice beforehand that she will,
as soon as ever she gets the suffrage, insist
on pressing forward by her vote her reform-
ing schemes.
What would result from the ordinary voter
legislating on matters which require expert
knowledge will be plain to every one who will
consider the evolution of law.
There stand over against each other here, as
an example and a warning, the Roman Law,
which was the creation of legal experts: the
prætor and the jurisconsult; and the legal 125
system of the Greeks, which was the creation
of a popular assembly--and it was a popu-
lar assembly which was quite ideally intelli-
gent.
Upon the Roman Law has been built the law
of the greater part of the civilised world. The
Greek is a by-word for inconsequence.
How can one, then, without cold shudders
think of that legal system which the female
amateur legal reformer would bring to the
birth?
Let us consider her qualifications. Let us
first take cognisance of the fact that the re-
forming woman will neither stand to the prin-
ciple that man may, where this gives a balance
of advantage, inflict on his fellow-man, and a
fortiori upon animals, death and physical suf-
fering; nor yet will she stand to the principle
that it is ethically unlawful to do deeds of vio-
lence.
She spends her life halting between these
two opinions, eternally shilly-shallying.
She will, for instance, begin by announcing 126
that it can never be lawful to do evil that good
may come; and that killing and inflicting suf-
fering is an evil. (In reality the precept of
not doing evil that good may come has rela-
tion only to breaking for idealistic purposes
moral laws of higher obligation.) She will
then go back upon that and concede that war
may sometimes be lawful, and that the punish-
ment of criminals is not an evil. But if her
emotions are touched by the forcible feeding
of a criminal militant suffragist, she will again
go back upon that and declare that the appli-
cation of force is an intolerable evil.
Or, again, she will concede that the slaugh-
tering of animals for food is not an evil, but
that what is really unforgivable is the infliction
of physical suffering on animals. And all the
time for her, as well as for man, calves and
lambs are being emasculated to make her meat
succulent; wild animals are painfully done to
death to provide her table with delicacies;
birds with young in the nest are shot so that
she may parade in their plumage; or fur-bear- 127
ing animals are for her comfort and adorn-
ment massacred and tortured in traps.
When a man crank who is co-responsible
for these things begins to talk idealistic re-
forms, the ordinary decent man refuses to
have anything more to say to him.
But when a woman crank holds this lan-
guage, the man merely shrugs his shoulders.
"It is," he tells himself, "after all, the woman
whom God gave him."
It must be confessed that the problem as to
how man with a dual nature may best accom-
modate himself to a world of violence pre-
sents a very difficult problem.
It would obviously be no solution to follow
out everywhere a programme of violence.
Not even the predatory animals do that.
Tigers do not savage their cubs; hawks do not
pluck hawks' eyes; and dogs do not fight
bitches.
Nor would, as has been shown, the solution
of the problem be arrived at by everywhere
surrendering--if we had been given the grace 128
to do this--to the compunctious visitings of
nature.
What is required is to find the proper com-
promise. As to what that would be there is,
as between the ordinary man and woman on
the one side, and the male crank and the
battalions of sentimental women on the other,
a conflict which is, to all intents and purposes,
a sex war.
The compromise which ordinary human na-
ture had fixed upon--and it is one which, min-
istering as it does to the survival of the race,
has been adopted through the whole range of
nature--is that of making within the world in
which violence rules a series of enclaves in
which the application of violence is progres-
sively restricted and limited.
Outside the outermost of the series of ring
fences thus constituted would be the realm of
uncompromising violence such as exists when
human life is endangered by wild animals, or
murderous criminals, or savages. Just within
this outermost fence would be civilised war-- 129
for in civilised war non-combatants and prison-
ers and wounded are excluded from the appli-
cation of violence. In like manner we bring
humanity in general within a more sheltered
enclosure than animals--pet animals within a
more sheltered enclosure than other animals.
Again, we bring those who belong to the white
race within a narrower protecting circle than
mankind in general, and those of our own na-
tion within a still narrower one.
Following out the same principle, we in-
clude women and children within a narrower
shelter fence than our adult fellow-male; and
we use the weapon of force more reluctantly
when we are dealing with our relatives and
friends than when we are dealing with those
who are not personally known to us; and
finally, we lay it aside more completely when
we are dealing with the women of our house-
holds than when we are dealing with the
males.
The cause of civilisation and of the amenities,
and the welfare of the nation, of the family, 130
and of woman, are all intimately bound up with
a faithful adherence to this compromise.
But this policy imposes upon those whom
it shelters from violence corresponding obliga-
tions.
In war non-combatants--not to speak of the
wounded on the battlefield--must desist from
hostile action on the pain of being shot down
like wild beasts. And though an individual
non-combatant might think it a patriotic action
for him to take part in war, the thoughtful
man would recognise that such action was a
violation of a well-understood covenant made
in the interest of civilisation, and that to break
through this covenant was to abrogate a hu-
manitarian arrangement by which the general
body of non-combatants immensely benefits.
Exactly the same principle finds, as already
pointed out, application when a woman em-
ploys direct violence, or aspires to exercise by
voting indirect violence.
One always wonders if the suffragist appre-
ciates all that woman stands to lose and all 131
that she imperils by resort to physical force.
One ought not to have to tell her that, if she
had to fight for her position, her status would
be that which is assigned to her among the
Kaffirs--not that which civilised man concedes
to her.
From considering the compromise by which
man adapts his dual nature to violence in the
world, we turn to that which the female legis-
lative reformer would seek to impose by the
aid of her vote.
Her proposal, as the reader will have dis-
cerned, would be that all those evils which make
appeal to the feminine emotions should be
legally prohibited, and that all those which fail
to make this appeal shall be tolerated.
In the former class would be included those
which come directly under woman's ken, or
have been brought vividly before the eyes of
her imagination by emotional description.
And the specially intolerable evils will be those
which, owing to the fact that they fall upon
woman or her immediate belongings, induce 132
in the female legislative reformer pangs of
sympathetic discomfort.
In the class of evils which the suffragist is
content to tolerate, or say nothing about, would
be those which are incapable of evoking in her
such sympathetic pangs, and she concerns her-
self very little with those evils which do not
furnish her with a text for recriminations
against man.
Conspicuous in this programme is the ab-
sence of any sense of proportion. One would
have imagined that it would have been plain
to everybody that the evils which individual
women suffer at the hands of man are very far
from being the most serious ills of humanity.
One would have imagined that the suffering
inflicted by disease and by bad social condi-
tions--suffering which falls upon man and
woman alike--deserved a first place in the
thoughts of every reformer. And one might
have expected it to be common knowledge that
the wrongs individual men inflict upon women
have a full counterpart in the wrongs which 133
individual women inflict upon men. It may
quite well be that there are mists which here
"blot and fill the perspective" of the female
legislative reformer. But to look only upon
one's own things, and not also upon the things
of others, is not for that morally innocent.
There is further to be noted in connexion
with the female legislative reformer that she
has never been able to see why she should be
required to put her aspirations into practical
shape, or to consider ways and means, or to
submit the practicability of her schemes to ex-
pert opinion. One also recognises that from
a purely human point of view such tactics are
judicious. For if the schemes of the fe-
male legislative reformer were once to be re-
viewed from the point of view of their prac-
ticability, her utility as a legislator would come
into question, and the suffragist could no
longer give out that there has been committed
to her from on High a mission to draw water
for man-kind out of the wells of salvation.
Lastly, we have to reflect in connection with 134
the female legislative reformer that to go about
proposing to reform the laws means to aban-
don that special field of usefulness which lies
open to woman in alleviating misery and re-
dressing those hard cases which will, under all
laws and regulations of human manufacture
and under all social dispositions, inevitably
occur. Now when a woman leaves a social
task which is commensurate with her abilities,
and which asks from her personal effort and
self-sacrifice, for a task which is quite beyond
her abilities, but which, she thinks, will bring
her personal kudos, shall we impute it to her
for righteousness? 135

V

ULTERIOR ENDS WHICH THE WOMAN'S SUF-
FRAGE MOVEMENT HAS IN VIEW

WE have now sufficiently considered the
suffragist's humanitarian schemes, and we
may lead up to the consideration of her further
projects by contrasting woman's suffrage as it
presents itself under colonial conditions--i.e.
woman's suffrage without the female legisla-
tive reformer and the feminist--with the
woman suffrage which is being agitated for in
England--i.e. woman suffrage with the fe-
male legislative reformer and the feminist.
In the colonies and undeveloped countries
generally where women are in a minority, and
where owing to the fact that practically all
have an opportunity of marrying, there are not
for woman any difficult economic and physio-
logical conditions, there is no woman's ques- 136
tion; and by consequence no female legislative
reformer or feminist. The woman voter fol-
lows, as the opportunist politicians who en-
franchised her intended, the lead of her men-
folk--serving only a pawn in the game of pol-
itics. Under such conditions woman's suf-
frage leaves things as they are, except only
that it undermines the logical foundations of
the law, and still further debases the standard
of public efficiency and public morality.
In countries, such as England, where an ex-
cess female population ¹ has made economic
difficulties for woman, and where the severe
sexual restrictions, which here obtains, have
bred in her sex-hostility, the suffrage move-
ment has as its avowed ulterior object the abro-
gation of all distinctions which depend upon
sex; and the achievement of the economic inde-
pendence of woman.
To secure this economic independence every
post, occupation, and Government service is to

¹ In England and Wales there are, in a population of 8,000,-
000 women between the ages of twenty and fifty, 3,000,000 un-
married women. 137