Women's Suffrage: A Short History of a Great Movement

by Dame Millicent Garrett Fawcett

"All who live in a country should take an interest in that country, love that country, and the vote gives that sense of interest, fosters that love."—Rt. Hon. W. E. Gladstone.

The women's suffrage question in 1860 was on the point of entering a new phase—the phase of practical politics. Parliamentary Reform was again before the country; the principles of representation were constantly discussed in newspapers, and in every social circle where intelligent men and women met.

James Mill's article on "Government," referred to in Chapter I., has been described as being "out of sight the most important in the series of events which culminated in the passing of the Reform Act of 1832."[11] The works of his son, John Stuart Mill, had a similar influence on the series of events which led up to the passing of the Reform Act of 1867. But whereas James Mill had specifically excluded women from his argument, John Mill as specifically and with great force and vigour included them.

In his Political Economy, and in his collected essays, and, of course, in his Liberty, it was easy to perceive that he strongly condemned the condition of subordination to which the mass of women had been from time immemorial condemned. But in his Representative Government, published in 1861, he put forward in a few eloquent pages of powerful argument the case for the extension of the suffrage to women, showing that all the arguments by which the principles of representative government were supported were equally applicable to woman.[12]

The volumes of his correspondence, published in 1908, show how constantly his mind dwelt on the grave injustice to women involved by their exclusion from political rights, and also how deeply he was convinced that the whole of society loses by treating them as if they had no responsibility for the right conduct of national affairs. It was an enormous advantage to the whole women's movement, not only in England, but all over the world, that it had for its leader and champion a man in the front rank of political philosophers and thinkers. He formed a school at the universities, and in all centres of intellectual activity, and from that school a large number of the chief leaders and supporters of the women's movement have been derived.

As early as 1851 an essay on the "Enfranchisement of Women" had appeared in the Westminster Review. It had been written by Mrs. J. S. Mill, and took the form of a review of the proceedings of a Convention of Women held in Worcester, Massachusetts, in the previous year to promote the cause of the political enfranchisement of women.

The essay is a complete and masterly statement of the case for the emancipation of women. The terminology is a little out of date, but the state of mind which she exposes is perennial. We can all, for instance, recognise the applicability of the following sentences to the present time:—

"For with what truth or rationality could the suffrage be termed universal while half the human species remain excluded from it? To declare that a voice in the government is the right of all, and demand it only for a part—the part, namely, to which the claimant belongs—is to renounce even the appearance of principle. The Chartist, who denies the suffrage to women, is a Chartist only because he is not a lord; he is one of those levellers who would level only down to themselves."[13]

This essay, with its clear, pointed, and epigrammatic style, produced a great effect on the more cultivated section of public opinion. If Mrs. Mill had lived longer she would probably have inaugurated the practical organisation of a women's enfranchisement movement, but she died in the autumn of 1858. What her death meant to her husband he has left on record in glowing and touching words, and in his loneliness he endeavoured "because she would have wished it," to make the best of what life was left to him, "to work on for her purposes with such diminished strength as could be derived from thoughts of her and communion with her memory."[14]

Shortly before the general election of 1865 Mr. Mill was invited by a considerable body of electors of the Borough of Westminster to offer himself as a candidate. In reply he made the plainest possible statement of his political views, including his conviction that women were entitled to representation in Parliament. It was the first time that women's suffrage had ever been brought before English electors, and the fact that after having announced himself as strongly in favour of it Mr. Mill was elected, gave a place to women's suffrage in practical politics.