John Stuart Mill, in his “Subjection of Women,” p. 99, says: “If anything conclusive can be inferred from experience, without psychological analysis, it would be that the things women have not been allowed to do are just those that they succeed best in doing.” Association of ideas is doing its work in forming customs and in moulding habits of thought. No longer is a woman an incongruous sight in Halls of Learning or of Research, in Scientific Societies or on Boards of Guardians. Those who exclude women are learning that they themselves suffer by the exclusion.
They welcome them eagerly as Canvassers at elections. Ere long they will find it both natural and desirable to invite them to co-operate with them through the Ballot-box, “to choose a Knight of the Shire or a Burgess from a Borough, in the stead of all and of each of them, to go to the Parliament House, and there consulting with the Knights of other Shires,” to defend the interests of those who sent them.
CHAPTER IX.
OTHER WOMEN.
“All sisters are co-parceners one with another. The elder-born has no privilege over the younger.”
If in these pages I have not noted the great majority of women who never have had, under any condition, any privilege of any kind, it is not because I have forgotten them. The needle-workers, whose toil is doubled and whose pay is halved by self-enriching sweaters; the labouring women, toiling in unfavourable conditions alongside of men now privileged with voices powerful enough to control their earnings; the tempted women, whose temptations are made strong and dangerous for them through false social and economic views; the poor married women, who may be happy only according to the degree that their husbands are better than the Law allows them to be; the poor mother to whom Slave Law is still applied in regard to their children. But the principles of Method lead us to take one step at a time; the doctrines of Logic prevent us confusing two ideas; and the Precedents of the Law Courts teach us that “where claims are improperly consolidated they cannot be heard” (see Bennet v. Bromfit, Queen’s Bench, 1868).
To lose the possible reward of any effort by misplacing it, is, to say the least of it, unwise.
Men have placed all women in one class now. We are all sisters, and “co-parceners” one with another. They have extended political privileges to all, under conditions very easy to fulfil, except to Aliens, Minors, Lunatics, Criminals, and Women. The Aliens may become naturalised, the Minors may attain majority, Lunatics may regain their reason, and when a Criminal has served his time he may become once more a free British Elector. The noblest and the best, the most learned and philanthropic of women, classed with the worst, are reckoned as something lower than the lowest Criminal. He may, combining with others of his class, urge on his narrow, selfish views; they may not enrich the world by advancing the high, generous ideals that lie nearest their hearts. If any women, on any qualification, become enfranchised, the disability of sex-in-itself will be removed, and to all others thereby will be given a ray of hope. It has seemed to me, through following a Psychological study of the springs of human action, that the class most likely to receive Enfranchisement first, is that which formerly had it. Therefore I, with others who would not be immediately concerned in the success of our efforts, join hands in toil to help forward the claims of those who have been British Freewomen, as that section of the community which can claim most on Historical grounds and by Legal Precedents. We hope that they, being given the chance, will help their less fortunate sisters.
We must not forget, that the very Charters, that have so mightily multiplied the legions of Freemen in Esse, have likewise increased the number of Freewomen in Posse.
When the light increases, so that men can see to read aright, then women may be able “to take up their Freedom too.”