A Short History of English Liberalism

by W. Lyon Blease

In two matters of vital importance the Liberal Governments have conspicuously failed to express Liberal principles. The right of the individual to control his own government was recognized, with equal courage and wisdom, when the conquered Dutch Republics, in the face of Tory opposition, received the grant of responsible government under the Crown. The contest with the House of Lords in 1910 re-established the control of government elected by representatives, and the subordination of the hereditary and irresponsible House to that which the people could choose for themselves. The payment of Members has somewhat enlarged the field of choice, though the expense of an election is still an almost impassable obstacle to a

poor man. The Plural Voting Bill, passed through the Commons and rejected by the Lords, was an attempt of the same sort to give equal political rights to individuals, irrespective of the amount of their property, and the Franchise Bill of 1912 proposed to abolish the property qualification, or limitation, altogether. The extension of political freedom in South Africa and the defeat of the House of Lords in its attempt to prevent the application of the new economic principles of Liberalism represented real conflicts in matters of vital importance. The other measures were comparatively trifling, and the proposal to enfranchise all adult men has less popular enthusiasm behind it than any previous Reform Bill which was introduced by a Government. The only existing problem which involves the struggle between essential Liberalism and essential Toryism is that of Woman Suffrage. It is here, more than in any other field of domestic policy, that the Government have failed to discover and to pursue the Liberal course.

It is not the purpose of the writer to describe in detail a course of events which has been so interesting to the student of reforming fanaticism, unimaginative administration, and political chicanery. The levity with which Members of Parliament have given pledges which they never meant to perform, and have prepared to break pledges given openly, in the face of all circumstances, existing, probable, and possible, may seem ludicrous or contemptible according to the disposition of those who watch the working of the political machine.[^[360]] The writer has little to say about this subject in this place. He is now only concerned to place the demand for the enfranchisement of women in relation

with other expressions of the Liberal habit of mind. The arguments which support Woman Suffrage are those which have supported every proposal for the enfranchisement of men. Women claim now to be treated in political society as Dissenters claimed to be treated in 1828, and Catholics in 1829, and the middle class in 1832. They decline to remain any longer at the disposition of governors over whom they have no control. They desire to enforce their opinions, not merely as a sex, for the removal of such political disabilities as are imposed upon them on account of their sex, but as separate and distinct individuals, each of whom has the same interest in questions of general politics as a man. Women have peculiar grievances in marriage laws, in the law dealing with sexual vice and crime, in the payment of women in the Civil Service, and in threatened legislation for excluding married women from work in factories. But their peculiar grievances are no more to them than those which they share with men. They pay taxes, their conditions of labour are regulated by the State, their wages may be affected, favourably or adversely, by legislation, questions of peace and war are decided to their benefit or detriment, in almost every action of Government the individual woman is involved to precisely the same extent as the individual man. It is not to them a question of men imposing oppressive taxes upon women, it is a question of a legislature imposing taxes upon individuals. The human being who controls his own fortunes and takes all the chance of life in society is to them no different from any other human being in the same situation. To confer political control upon one class of such human beings and to deny it to the other is to establish one of those artificial distinctions in social value which are of the essence of Toryism, and produce the private egoism in the superior and the incomplete development of the inferior which have been already described.

The arguments against Woman Suffrage are the usual arguments of Toryism. The franchise is not a right, but a privilege, to be conferred by a disposing class upon such persons as it selects. Women are, from physical causes, periodically incapable of taking a rational interest in public affairs. To enfranchise women will

distract them from their proper duties of maternity and the management of the home. It will produce dissension between husband and wife. It will lead to the admission of women to the professions, to Parliament, and to public offices. To those who have followed the course of Liberalism, as described in these pages, the arguments will appear familiar. The first is the general Tory assumption, inconsistent with every Liberal proposal of every kind, that the individual has no rights, except such as the State, or rather the governing class, chooses to bestow upon him. The second, third, and fourth are the egoistic arguments, which express the mind of a person who sees another always in relation with himself. They assume that the other is completely defined in terms of that relationship, and has outside its limits no character. All the actions of the other are explained by abstract reasoning from that assumption. Women are thus supposed to be involved entirely in their sex, and while no man suggests that the demand of transport workers for higher wages or the violence incident to a transport strike is an expression of maleness, the demand of women for the franchise and the violence of militant Suffragists are assumed to be the actions of spinsters disappointed of maternity and of females impelled by perverted sexual instincts.[^[361]] The argument from maternity is one of those which imply that the governed class must be confined, so far as artificial methods permit, to those occupations which it can only perform in association with the governors. Women's political fortunes must be regulated upon the assumption that they ought to become mothers. Women are not to be free to choose maternity out of all possible occupations, they must be driven to it by the want of opportunity to do anything else. It is not a question of what women think that they ought to do, but of what men think that they ought to do. The individual is not to have the right to plan out her life as she pleases. Maternity is her business, and men will so contrive the State as to

discourage her from engaging in any other. In the same way eighteenth-century fathers warned their daughters not to develop their minds, lest the revelation of intellectual power should discourage suitors. Literary education was withheld in the reign of George III for the same reason that political education is withheld to-day, because it involves the independent activity of the individual. The fourth argument is even more crudely selfish than the third. Stated in plain terms, it means that if women have votes they will tend to form political opinions of their own, that these may differ from those of their husbands, and that as such a discordance could not be tolerated, the home will be broken up. The husband might be wrong. But the argument has nothing to do with the soundness of his opinions. He is entitled to think for himself, and in order to maintain his unquestioned despotism of political judgment the wife is to be deprived of the encouragement to thinking for herself. Another argument, that the natives of India will refuse to submit to government by a race which has enfranchised its women, is a characteristic example of the reaction of Imperialism upon domestic liberty. The constitution of the United Kingdom is to be determined, not by the needs of its inhabitants, but by the wishes of a race whom they have conquered. The development of the individual is subordinated to the use which the disposing class wishes to make of her. Even if it were true that the Indian peoples would object to the enfranchisement of English women, an assertion which has never been supported by any evidence, the success of the argument would be the most astonishing example of Toryism in English history. No Englishman would suggest, after the loss of the American Colonies, that one self-governing community of white men within the Empire should dictate to another how its government should be constituted. But it carries the opposite doctrine of interference in local affairs to a frantic extremity, to say that a conquered race shall be allowed to dictate the constitution of the government of the conquerors. If this argument prevails, and the ill temper of the Indian peoples is allowed to decide the form of our political

system, our eighteenth-century exploitation of them will be amply avenged. The last argument, that enfranchisement will only be a step towards other measures of emancipation, is another characteristic expression of Toryism. Private depreciation will cease, as soon as political depreciation is abolished. How can a Liberal man dictate to a woman how she shall exert herself in society? There is no motive, other than that of selfish interest, the desire to retain the most honourable and profitable occupations for the dominant sex, which can impel a man to the use of this argument. It is precisely that which most roused Burke to the support of the Catholics. It was used forty years ago against the women who wished to practise medicine, and Sophia Jex-Blake was covered with insult, and even pelted with mud, for no other reason than that she tried to obtain admission to the medical schools of Edinburgh. It is now admitted that if a woman has the natural capacities which enable her to practise medicine mere artificial restrictions shall not stand in her way. When the medical profession is opened, how can any other logically be kept closed? When the individual can satisfy the tests which are imposed at the entrance, whether they are tests by examination or tests by election, why should she be excluded because she possesses the quality of sex, which has nothing to do with those tests? This is simply to brand women, who vary infinitely among themselves, with a class mark, and to decide the fortunes of each individual by some general assumption which may be true in other cases and false in hers. No one can use this argument, who is not steeped in those ideas of domination and disposition, which once operated in the same way to prevent the free development of Catholics and Dissenters. The case against Woman Suffrage varies little from the case against every other Liberal movement, and some of the arguments are literally the same as the arguments against the Reform Bills of 1832, 1867, and 1884. Fundamentally the case is pure Toryism.[^[362]]

In 1906 the movement in favour of Woman Suffrage, neglected during the Imperialist reaction, became once more prominent. Various causes contributed to produce this revival. Like all the other movements for enlarging the opportunities of women, it partook of the fortunes of the general movement of Liberalism. In the history of English women the periods of emancipation have always been those of Liberal ascendancy, and the geographical and social divisions between Liberalism and Toryism have always been substantially the same as those between Feminism and Anti-Feminism.[^[363]] The manufacturing districts of the North are Liberal and Feminist. The agricultural districts of the South are Tory and Anti-Feminist. The Feminist movement is strong among the better sort of artisans and those of the middle class who depend upon their own exertions. It is weak among the country gentry and those whom accumulated wealth enables to live a parasitic or partly parasitic existence. The so-called Liberal who opposes the emancipation of women finds himself allied with his hereditary political enemies. Liberalism must be universal. The immediate causes of the new agitation for Woman Suffrage were three. The first was the