MILL'S LOGIC, OR FRANCHISE FOR FEMALES
"Pray clear the way, there, for these—ah—persons."
By way of an offset to the admissions made in his Parliamentary report, Punch published a long, open letter to Mr. Mill. The argument founded on the derogatory word "person" need not detain us. The letter is signed "Judy," but the voice is the voice of Punch, who would not give women the vote because he believed they could exercise their political rights of sovereignty more effectually by proxy. Why should they wish to exercise power through the franchise when they were already omnipotent over those who had the franchise? Men were not much the happier or the better or the wiser for their politics. Mill's proposal to exclude married women from the franchise is dexterously turned to account as an admission that female influence was paramount as it was; that it was unnecessary to give women what they already exercised through their husbands. In fine, till women were married, they were learning to rule their husbands. After they were married they had their husbands to rule. Politics were the natural occupation of the inferior or slavish sex. When would Mill's logic open his eyes to the fact that, like the Constitutional Sovereign, la femme règne et ne gouverne pas?
Such a letter brought but cold comfort to the Suffragists. It was like feeding them with the East Wind. But at its worst it was an immense improvement on the heavy facetiousness of Punch's earlier manner.
In May, 1868, Punch virtually sided with his "dear enemy":—
Mr. Mill presented to the Commons a petition signed by 21,757 women, who asked for the Franchise. The first signature was that of Mrs. Somerville, Mechanist of the Heavens; the second that of Miss Florence Nightingale, Healer on Earth. Right or wrong, the request ought to have been granted to such petitioners.
Open Letter to Mrs. Fawcett
So when at a meeting in Manchester in December, 1869, it was resolved to form a guarantee fund of £5,000, Punch declared that if the Suffrage was to be had for love or money, women would shortly have it, and went on with characteristic effrontery to claim the credit of being "the Liberator of the Ladies":—