Why must strong men inherit their father’s unwilled property before weak women?
Why must a bad workman be paid higher wages than a good workwoman?
Why are all laws in regard to vice notoriously unequal?
Why have labouring men the right injuriously to determine the conditions and opportunities of the labour of women working by their side?
It is because men are represented in Parliament and women are not.
“The House of Commons is as sensitive to the claims of the Represented as the mercury is to the weather.” If women, oppressed by various burdens, wish their will should reach the House, they must be given a voice. The only method by which the needs and wishes of women can be considered duly is by classing them once more among the “represented.” In vain otherwise will they look to their friends in the House to help various Bills they desire to pass, or to restrain other Bills they desire not to pass. It is not their friends they require to affect, it is their opponents. And their opponents can only be converted to the woman’s cause when women become Electors. That Bills affecting the liberties of more than half of the whole population should be left in the hands of “private members,” that they should be left to the chance of a private members’ ballot, that a Machinery Bill, or any other Bill affecting the interests of the smallest class of Electors, should be allowed to “talk out” the limited time allowed for the discussion of a question of such magnitude, shows the peculiar and sinister aspect in which Bills affecting the “unrepresented” can be viewed.
Archimedes of old said that he could move the world if he had but a “place where to stand.” If women want to move their world, to affect its destinies and their own, they too must have a place where to stand, and the place where to stand is the Suffrage.
“I trust the suffrage will be extended on good old English principles, and in conformity with good old English notions of representation” (“Essay on the Constitution,” by Lord Russell).
What these were I have attempted to show.
Apart from the special measures urgently needed on behalf of women, most public measures affect them equally with men.