Woman in Political Evolution

by Joseph McCabe

To these victories won by the principle in the English-speaking world must be added the granting of the municipal franchise in Denmark, the enfranchisement of tax-paying women in Norway, and the concession of the right, not only to vote, but to sit in the Diet, in Finland. At the first election under the new Finnish constitution nineteen women were returned to the Diet, and the number increased to twenty-five in the following year (1908). Their colleagues willingly testify to the advantage of their presence in passing the beneficent series of Bills that the Tsar prevents them from carrying into law.

These are the triumphs of a single generation against one of the deepest-rooted prejudices of social life. One thinks instinctively of some iron-bound coast, where the wavelets ripple feebly to the foot of the beetling cliffs, and where even the fiercest storms fling their waters impotently on the adamantine front. And one day there occurs a convulsion of the crust, the culmination of a slow alteration of level, and the storms begin to tear wide breaches in the enfeebled barrier. From that day the confining rock is doomed. There has been an alteration of level in the social, industrial, and political life of the world. Large breaches have been torn in the ring of prejudice that confined the life of women. Here it has been the granting of municipal franchise or the power to serve as Poor Law Guardians; there it has been the right to vote for the national Parliament; at one place the right to sit in Parliament. The confining bonds are doomed. The political evolution of woman is running in a channel that it had never reached before in the history of the world, and all the abortive rushes of earlier ages have no moral for the present time. The only question now is, how long can the reef of prejudice survive? Nay, we are not talking of unconscious stone, but human hearts and minds, and the real question is: Which great nation will win the honour of recognising first that the age of despotism is over and the position of woman in the commonwealth radically changed?

CHAPTER IX.
THE MORAL BASE OF ENFRANCHISEMENT

The general sketch I have just completed, of the evolution of woman’s political position from the earliest and dimmest human communities to the twentieth century, has vindicated the law which I set out to prove. This essay is in no sense a chronicle of women’s agitations, women’s disabilities, and women’s victories. It is a simple effort to discover a principle, and only sufficient details have been included for its purpose. They have made it clear that, in the first place, the subordination of woman springs from a barbaric institution, is always challenged (both by men and women) when a nation reaches a high stage of culture, and is continuously modified as the mental and moral cultivation of the community grows. Since it is inconceivable that civilisation should perish or retrograde again, in the new world of our time, it follows that the present feminist movement cannot sink back into submission, but will continue with the spread of culture, until woman’s position is adjusted on principles of general equity and reason.

This position is further strengthened by the reflection, which I have vindicated, that changes have taken place in the structure of modern life which have of themselves destroyed the old partition between man’s sphere and woman’s sphere. Parliaments, in their embryonic form, grow out of the informal discussions among the men of a tribe about matters that they alone were competent and naturally designed to carry out. The broad scope of a modern Parliament is so remote from this narrow institution that the old reason for excluding women has utterly disappeared. But I have said enough of the four social revolutions of the nineteenth century that make up this change. In principle they are fully recognised, and the reader must therefore not be surprised at the relative scantiness and incompleteness of the details given in the last chapter. They suffice to show that it is now an unthinking repetition of an outworn phrase to say that woman’s place is the home only.

In concluding, I would glance for a moment at a few subsidiary aspects of the question, which may throw further light on the general position of this essay. The first point is an examination of the just and rational basis of enfranchisement, as political moralists have determined it. The various extensions of the franchise during the nineteenth century have been wrung from the reluctant holders of power by force, or the threat of force. We flatter ourselves, not quite unreasonably, that the age of violence has given place to an age of justice, and it is therefore extremely advisable to determine precisely why anybody has a vote—in other words, what is the moral basis of enfranchisement—and then test the claim of women on the principle we may detect.

For this purpose I briefly examine the conclusions of a few of the most distinguished political moralists. We must, naturally, confine ourselves to a democratic age, so that in effect we can only consult writers of ancient Athens or modern England. From these, however, I do not make a purposive selection, but will consider those whose authority is most regarded.

Plato and Aristotle are the two political writers, as they are the two outstanding philosophers, of ancient Greece. We have already seen something of the political ideas of Plato, and know how thoroughly he resisted the theory of woman’s inferiority. Beyond this sturdy defence of woman’s capacity, however, Plato helps us little in the search for the moral base of political power. In his Gorgias he expresses great disdain of the actual Athenian democracy, and insists on the superiority of the aristocratic ideal. The wiser are to rule the community, and such rulers were by no means always chosen by the democracy of Athens. In the Republic, from which I have previously quoted, Plato goes on to sketch his ideal political system. The rulers and administrators are to be a special and hereditary caste, with distinct education, beside the classes of workers and of soldiers. Within their limits there will be election for the higher offices, and women are to be put on a level of absolute equality with men in the political body. Thus Plato is emphatic in his protest against any sex limitation of political power, but it must be admitted that he misses or ignores the most difficult point in the problem—how the workers are to be reconciled to a permanent exclusion from politics—and his Utopian commonwealth has never been taken seriously.

Aristotle, a realist and a critic of Plato, brings us at once to the practical problem. He, too, disdains the boisterous democracy of Athens, with its shallow mob and their frothy orators, and believes democracy would always have the same weaknesses. Oligarchy and despotism are equally unsound. Kingship is an admirable political form, but the uncertainties of kings make it impracticable. Aristocracy is the ideal constitution. A few leisured and cultivated landowners, supported by the work of slaves, would be the best body to entrust with the choice of rulers. But Aristotle sees that democratic Greece will never admit that system, and he proposes a compromise. Excluding the poorest, on the ground of incompetency, he would have the magistrates elected by the vote of the majority of the men in the free cities; and he would grant an increased power to property-holders, for the defence of their possessions. We have seen that Aristotle would exclude women from political life, apparently on the ground of incompetency. In this the contrast to Plato is merely superficial. Plato did not proclaim the actual competency of women for public life, but shrewdly attributed their present weakness to the complete lack of education and experience—a point that Aristotle quite fails to meet. However, it is enough that he definitively assigns competency as the moral basis of enfranchisement.

I might close the inquiry at once by saying that no subsequent political moralist has brought us much further than Aristotle, but will glance at one or two interesting variations of the thesis in modern writers. In the time of Aristotle the shadow of Macedonia lay full on Athens, and, indeed, the whole of Greece was degenerating. Nor is it needful to glance at the literature of Rome, which produced no great thinker. The same problem of democracy and enfranchisement arose in Rome, but it was pushed aside by the founding of the Empire, and there is no serious discussion left for us to consider. In the Italian republics of the thirteenth century it arose again; but the republics were blotted out by empires or converted into principalities, and all political theorising was silenced by the general acceptance in Europe of the “divine right of kings.” The successive Revolutions in France, and that gradual rise of class after class to claim a share in the political life, which I described in the last chapter, reopened the whole question. In the chaos of constitutions that were formed in different parts of Europe we see only grudging concessions to demands that had a show of force behind them. It was again incumbent on political moralists to seek a rational and just principle on which to determine the limits of enfranchisement, and I will briefly notice the chief efforts that have been made in this country to discover such a principle.