Woman in Political Evolution

by Joseph McCabe

Mr. Walter Bagehot made the most ingenious attempt to formulate a principle that should at once limit the franchise, yet retain the sacred characters of logic and justice. Nearly all English writers start from the supposed natural “rights of man”—the principle of Rousseau and the Revolutionists, which was still urged by advanced politicians. To this Bagehot replies that, if there is any such thing as an inherent right of man, it is at least limited by the fact that he has no right to injure his fellow-men. The limitation, in theory, is perfectly just. On that principle even the most advanced Radical disfranchises criminals and lunatics and illiterates, and requires a certain age in voters. It at once forces Mr. Bagehot to fall back on competency alone as the moral basis of enfranchisement. All shall vote who can do so competently: the incompetent shall not vote, as it would mean injustice to their fellows. Mr. Bagehot draws up the principle: “A man has a right to so much political power as he can exercise without impeding any other who would more fitly exercise political power.” The curious wording of the principle is, of course, due to a desire to prevent the mass of the workers or middle class from swamping the vote of the wealthy. But as it is only on the ground of their presumed greater culture and competence that Mr. Bagehot tampers with his franchise to favour the wealthy, and as the general growth of education has materially altered the situation, I need not go into the details of his electoral scheme. His principle of enfranchisement is competency alone.

When we turn to another political moralist of a very different school, Professor Sidgwick, we have, at first sight, an entirely novel attempt to reach a principle. Professor Sidgwick, as a sound utilitarian, rejects the transcendental idea of the inherent rights of man, and puts the utility of social life as the first principle. He then urges that the laws will have a better chance of being observed if they have the active consent of all who are subject to them—in other words, if the citizens have elected the law-makers. Thus he gets a general franchise, which he proceeds to limit. He at once admits that only mental or moral inferiority is a ground of exclusion from the franchise, and so neither sex nor poverty can be a legitimate bar. But when he comes to formulate his principle we get the astonishing declaration that “every sane, self-supporting adult” should have a vote. The words I have italicised are put in, quite wantonly, to exclude married women from the franchise. But I need not discuss here the somewhat frivolous grounds on which Sidgwick would exclude wives, nor stay to point out how many highly cultivated males would be deprived of the vote by his arbitrary phrase. It suffices for my purpose that he takes competency alone as the just basis of enfranchisement.

Sidgwick somewhere suggests that the poorer citizens should be allowed to prove their competency by a public examination. This idea was elaborated by Mr. Holyoake, who advocated biennial examinations in economics and constitutional history, at which candidates for the vote, of either sex, should prove their capacity. The idea was seriously expounded in the House of Lords, and much discussed at one time. Apart from the question of practicability, however, it would have the peculiar disadvantage of annihilating the electorate. Its principle of competency was generally accepted.

Lastly, I may notice the political theorising of Professor Ritchie. In this there is no fantastic casuistry, but a plain restatement of the principle laid down by Aristotle and accepted, as a rule, without the aid of philosophy. The difficulty is practical, not theoretical. The work of government is to be discharged by experts, and the experts are to be elected, on a broad franchise, by an educated democracy. The principle is again competency, and we need not stay to criticise the vagueness of the “broad franchise.”

There is thus a very positive agreement among political theorists on the principle by which we should determine which members of the State should have the vote. However they approach the problem, and whatever be their general theory, they agree that, when the political power is electoral, incompetence alone should exclude from a share in the election. There is no question in any of them of taxation as a basis of representation, no question of property as such forming a qualification. Until recent times the possession of property gave some presumption of education. In the days when the workers were almost all densely illiterate, when education was almost confined to the leisured and professional classes, it was quite natural to assume that the paying of taxes gave a general presumption of leisure, culture, or capacity. It, therefore, became the “basis of representation,” but only in the sense that it was a rough test of competency or education. In the course of time unthinking people came to imagine that taxation carries with it a moral right to the franchise, and thought they could settle in that simple way who should or should not have a vote. I have shown that no political moralist will sanction the idea for a moment, and in point of fact English electoral law has departed from it in two ways: by excluding tax-paying women on the one hand, and by setting up a lodger vote on the other. The general spread of education has wholly altered the situation by giving competence and training to the non-propertied class.

The political thinkers we consulted were really more concerned with the limitation of the franchise than with its extension. This serves my purpose well enough, but I should like to draw up a positive principle of enfranchisement in harmony with their conclusions. I venture to formulate it thus: All those who share in the life of the State, are subject to its laws, and gain or suffer by its prosperity or adversity, are entitled to a share in the control of its policy, unless they are disabled by a moral or intellectual inferiority that would make their power a standing prejudice to the community’s welfare. This is a positive statement of the basis of enfranchisement that accords entirely with all that has been written about it from Aristotle to Ritchie. On that principle we have to determine, with equity and reason, whether or no there is injustice in the political subordination of one sex to the other.

It is a remarkable thing that the only writer in our literature who has scientifically studied the psychological differences between man and woman concluded that woman’s gifts were as high as, if not higher than, man’s in relation to political work. Mr. Havelock Ellis (Man and Woman) quotes an older writer who had studied the matter from the historical and empirical point of view, and had concluded that “women are probably more fitted for politics than men.” He then adds, on the ground of his own reading of history and his study of sex characters:—

Among all races and in all parts of the world women have ruled brilliantly and with perfect control over even the most fierce and turbulent hordes. Among many primitive races also all the diplomatic relations with foreign tribes are in the hands of women, and they have sometimes decided on peace or war. The game of politics seems to develop very feminine qualities in those who play it, and it may be paying no excessive compliment to women to admit the justice of old Burdach’s remarks. Whenever their education has been sufficiently sound and broad to enable them to free themselves from fads and sentimentalities, women probably possess in at least as high a degree as men the power of dealing with the practical questions of politics.

Nor is the opinion so uncommon as one would imagine. I was myself astonished, on pleading with an experienced political worker for leniency in judging women’s present political competence (on account of their lack of experience), to receive the reply: “But women are better to deal with than men, and grasp the issues more quickly”! This was said by a Conservative magistrate after twenty years’ close experience of political work in a large town.

However that may be, I have merely to meet the objection that women are so incompetent that their participation in politics would endanger the welfare of the State. To meet the point I do not need to range the records of history, nor to dwell on the significant contrast of England under her three Queens and her dozens of Kings. The reply is simple. Precisely the same objection was raised to the extension of the franchise in 1832 and in 1868, and it was just as plausible. Men who had been excluded from the slightest influence on political affairs from all time had no incentive whatever to study them. No sooner were their minds quickened by a suffrage agitation, and their responsibility aroused by the concession of the vote, than they entered keenly upon political themes and developed a normal political judgment. There is not the slightest ground to assume that the present political apathy of the mass of women has any other cause, and will not disappear when they are invited or permitted to exercise their dormant powers. It is not judgment, but the material of judgment—knowledge—that women lack. This knowledge of political issues they not only had no incentive or motive to acquire, but public opinion positively discouraged them from acquiring. Wherever the vote has been given the competence has been proved at once. A century ago men were just as convinced that woman was incompetent to work in the score of industries and professions in which she works with success to-day.