Views and Opinions

by Ouida

As modern socialism aspires to make the world into one vast allotment-ground, with every man’s half-acre meted out to him on which to build his hut and hive his store, so science would change the world into one vast class-room and laboratory, wherein all humanity (paying very large fees) should sit at the feet of its professors, whom it would clothe with purple and fine linen, and whom it would never presume to oppose or to contradict.

The world will gain nothing by delivering itself, as it is gradually doing, from the bondage of the various churches and their priesthoods, if in their stead it puts its neck under the yoke of a despotism, more intellectual perhaps, but as bigoted, as arrogant, and as cruel. That this danger lies before it from its submission to the demands of science, no dispassionate student of humanity can doubt.

FEMALE SUFFRAGE

It is a singular fact that England, which has been always esteemed the safest and slowest of all factors in European politics, should be now seriously meditating on such a revolutionary course of action as the political emancipation of women. It is a sign, and a very ominous sign, of the restlessness and feverishness which have come upon this century in its last twenty years of life, and from which England is suffering no less than other nations, is perhaps even suffering more than they, since when aged people take the diseases natural to youth it fares ill with them, more ill than with the young. There are many evidences that before very long, whichever political party may be in office, female suffrage will be awarded at Westminster[Westminster], and if it be so, it is scarcely to be doubted that the French Chambers and the Representative Houses at Washington will be loth to lag behind and resist such a precedent. The influence on the world will scarcely be other than most injurious to its prosperity and most degrading to its wisdom.

It is true that the wholesale exercise of electoral rights by millions of uneducated and unwashed men is a spectacle so absurd that a little more or a little less absurdity may be held not to matter very greatly. The intellectual world in political matters has voluntarily abdicated already and given its sceptre to the mob. ‘Think you,’ said Publius Scipio to the raging populace, ‘then, I shall fear those free whom I sent in chains to the slave market?’ But the modern politician, of whatever nation he be (with the solitary exception of Bismarck), does fear the slaves whose chains he has struck off before they know how to use their liberty, and has in him neither the candour nor the courage of Scipio.

Rationally, logically, political power ought to be alloted in proportion to the stake which each voter possesses in the country. But this sound principle has been totally disregarded in the present political systems of both Europe and America. Vapourings anent the inherent ‘rights of man’ have been allowed to oust out common-sense and logical action, and he whose contributions to the financial and intellectual power of his nation are of the largest and noblest order has no more electoral voice in the direction of the nation than the drunken navvy or the howling unit of the street-mob. This is esteemed liberty, and commends itself to the populace, because it levels, or seems to level, intellect and wealth with poverty and ignorance. It is probable that America will, in years to come, be the first to change this, the doctrine of democracy, as there are signs that the United States will probably grow less and less democratic with every century, and its large land-owners will create an aristocracy which will not be tolerant of the dominion of the mob. But meantime Europe is swaying between absolutism and anarchy, with that tendency of the pendulum to swing wildly from one extreme to the other which has been always seen in the whole history of the world; and one of the most curious facts of the epoch is that both democracy and conservatism are inclined to support and promote female suffrage, alleging each of them totally different motives for their conduct, and totally different reasons for the opinions which they advance in its favour.

The motives of the Tory leaders are as unlike those of Mrs Fawcett, Mrs Garratt, and the rest of the female agitators as stone is unlike water, as water is unlike fire. The conservative gentlemen wish to admit women into political life because they consider that women are always religious, stationary, and wedded to ancient and stable ways; the female agitators, on the contrary, clamour to have themselves and their sex admitted within the political arena because they believe that women will be foremost in all emancipation, innovation, and social democratic works. It is an odd contradiction, and displays perhaps more than anything else the utter confusion and the entire recklessness and abandonment of principle characteristic of all political parties in the latter half of the nineteenth century. It is very possible that as the English labourer obtained his vote through the confusion and jealousies of party against the sane, the serene, and the unbiased judgment of patriots, so woman in England, and if in England, ultimately in America, will obtain hers. Opportunist policies have always their sure issue in sensational and hurried legislation; and in Europe at the present hour, in England and France most especially, an opportunist policy is the only policy pursued.

What is there to be said in favour of female suffrage? It may be treated as an open subject, since both Reactionists and Socialists can advance for it claims and arguments of the most totally opposite nature. Perhaps it may be said that there is some truth in both sides of these arguments and entire truth in neither. It is probable that female politicians would be many of them more reactionary than the Reactionists, and many of them would be more socialistic than the Socialists. The golden mean is not in favour with women or with mobs.

In England, both the Conservative and Radical intentions are at present limited to giving the suffrage to such women alone as are possessed of real property. But it is certain that this limitation could not be preserved; for the women without property would clamour to be admitted, and would succeed by their clamour as the men without property have done. No doubt, to see a woman of superior mind and character, capable of possessing and administering a great estate, left without electoral voice, whilst her carter, her porter, or the most illiterate labourer on her estate possesses and can exercise it, is on the face of it absurd. But it is not more absurd than that her brother should have his single vote outnumbered and neutralised by the votes of the men-servants, scullions and serving-boys who take his wage and fill his servants’ hall and kitchen. It would be more honest to say that the whole existing system of electoral power all over the world is absurd; and will remain so, because in no nation is there the courage, perhaps in no nation is there the intellectual power, capable of putting forward and sustaining the logical doctrine of the just supremacy of the fittest: a doctrine which it is surely more vitally necessary to insist on in a republic than in a monarchy. It is because the fittest have not had the courage to resist the pressure of those who are intellectually their inferiors, and whose only strength lies in numbers, that democracy has been enabled to become the power that it has. Theoretically, a republic is founded on the doctrine of the supremacy of the fittest; but who can say that since the days of Perikles any republic has carried out this doctrine practically? The lawyer or the chemist who neglects his business to push himself to the front in political life in France is certainly not the most admirable product of the French intellect; nor can it be said by any impartial student that every President of the United States has been the highest type of humanity that the United States can produce.

Alexander Dumas fils, the most accomplished, but the most rabid of the advocates of female suffrage, resumes what seems to him the absurdity of the whole system in a sentence. ‘Mme. de Sévigné ne peut pas voter; M. Paul son jardinier peut voter.’ He does not seem to see that there is as great an absurdity in the fact that were Mme. de Sévigné, Monsieur de Sévigné, and were she living now, all her wit and wisdom would fail to confer on her more voting power than would be possessed by ‘Paul son jardinier.’