In asking, in sober form and phrase, for the enfranchisement of women, the late member for Westminster, is quite aware of the difficulties of his position. In every respect the burden is hard on those who attack an old and deeply rooted opinion. The common rules of evidence will not benefit them. In his recent work on the “Subjection of Women,” Mr. Mill says:—“It is useless for me to say that those who maintain the doctrine that men have a right to command, and women are under an obligation to obey; or that men are fit for government and women unfit; are on the affirmative side of the question, and that they are bound to show positive evidence for the assertions, or submit to their rejection. It is equally unavailing for me to say that those who deny to women any freedom or privilege rightly allowed to men, having the double presumption against them that they are opposing freedom and recommending partiality, must be held to the strictest proof of their case; and unless their success be such as to exclude all doubt, the judgment ought to be against them. These would be thought good pleas in any common case, but they will not be thought so in this instance. Before I could hope to make any impression, I should be expected not only to answer all that has ever been said by those who take the other side of the question, but to imagine all that could be said by them—to find them in reasons, as well as answer all I find; and besides refuting all arguments for the affirmative, I shall be called upon for invincible positive arguments to prove a negative.” Many views expressed in this volume lie far apart from the thinking of ordinary intellects, but they must become familiar before life can be purified at its fountain. Is it creditable to English justice that women should be classed for electoral purposes with idiots, lunatics, and criminals? Nay, women are placed lower than the latter; for the House of Commons has deliberately resolved not to disfranchise felons permanently, on the ground that a citizen ought not to bear for life the brand of political disqualification. The principle which we so often hear enunciated in the epigrammatic form “that taxation and representation should be co-extensive,” logically covers the claim of women to be represented. All history teaches that women must have votes, in order to protect their own interests. In the words of Lord Macaulay: “Even in those countries where they are best treated, the laws are generally unfavourable to them, with respect to almost all the points in which they are the most deeply interested.” Lord Brougham said: “There must be a total reconstruction of the law, before women can have justice.” But we are told that the worst evils from which women suffer cannot be cured by legislation. Government can certainly give them the equal heritage, protection, and bequest of property; it can give them a Christian marriage law, instead of visiting matrimony with the same punishment as high treason—namely, confiscation; it can throw open to them the existing universities, or endow others to give them the high education that men value; it can restore to them the schools and institutions destined by their founders for girls as well as boys, but which are now used for boys only; it can distribute the public funds equally for the good of both sexes; it can make restrictions on the productiveness of female labour illegal. Concerning the evils which legislation cannot cure, women are making no public complaint.
The objections to female suffrage are various. In an article in the Times, it is said: “There exists, as it were, a tacit concordat guaranteeing to the weaker sex the protection and deference of the stronger, upon one condition only: that condition is the political dependence of women.” Now, we admit that women have no physical power to enforce the suffrage; and if the state is to be measured by might, they will occupy the bottom of the scale. But the rights of women do not depend upon their physical strength, but flow from the prevailing sense of justice; and justice means that the interests of women be consulted with as much impartiality as the interests of men. Another objection to the enfranchisement of women is, that politics would withdraw them from their proper duties. This apprehension is not well founded. It is quite possible to unite an interest in politics with attention to a family. In our free churches women vote equally with men, and this privilege has largely contributed to the success of the voluntary system. Moreover, women, if they have the same qualifications as men, have votes at municipal elections. We are almost ashamed to refer to the stock arguments upon this subject. They are about as weighty as those recently employed against the enfranchisement of the working classes. Women, in general, may know less of politics than men; but educated women are surely not far behind many of the new voters in political knowledge. We all know hundreds of women who are far more competent to exercise the franchise than thousands already on the register. Those who oppose the concession of the suffrage to women, are astonishingly inconsistent. In one sentence they speak of the difference of sex as something which ought to exclude them from any share in the political workings of the world—something affecting all their thoughts and impulses and actions, and making it right to keep votes from them simply on the ground that they are women. In another sentence we are told that this accident of sex affects the female nature and career so lightly, that if they were permitted to go to the polling booth they would become unsexed. Now, whether either or neither of these positions be tenable, we submit that it is impossible to sustain them both, and we believe that neither is true. It is said that the claim of political action argues capacity for civil duty, ability to serve the state in the jury-box, in the police, in the camp, in the battle-fields, in port-surveys and defences, and in a routine of official duties that suffer no intermission. But the state does not compel men to fulfil personally its demands on civil organization; it hires men for these purposes, and women contribute as well as men to the exchequer for their payment.
It is said, however, that women have not cared in the past, and do not now care for political equality. Have they ever been consulted? A large number believe that there is historical evidence that women have voted at parliamentary elections, both in counties and boroughs, and are striving to return to the ancient constitutional practice of Great Britain. They have been too wise to keep perpetually dwelling on an inquiry which, until lately, seemed utterly hopeless of redress; and too proud and sensitive to betray the existence of a feeling which only exposed them to the sneers and ridicule of the unthinking. But as soon as the House of Commons showed signs of admitting them within the pale of the constitution, the women of Great Britain began to prove that they did care for their political rights. Recently, a petition from Edinburgh in favour of women’s suffrage was presented by Mr. McLaren, signed by upwards of 800 female householders. A supplementary petition, followed soon after to the same effect, signed by eight university professors, six doctors of law, eighteen clergymen, eight barristers, ten physicians, ten officers in the army and navy, and upwards of 2000 other inhabitants. Colonel Sykes also presented 185 petitions from independent women in Aberdeen. A petition adopted by a public meeting held in Aberdeen, and signed by Professor Bain as chairman, was also transmitted to the Prime Minister, the Lord Advocate, and the members for the city and county of Aberdeen; praying the Honourable the Commons of the United Kingdom, to pass the bill entitled, “A Bill to Remove the Electoral Disabilities of Women.” In 1867, 3000 women of Manchester and the surrounding districts signed a petition asking for the franchise. On the evening of the 14th of April, 1868, a meeting in connection with the National Society for Women’s Suffrage, was held in the same city, in the assembly room of the Free-trade Hall, the Mayor of Salford presiding. On the platform were a number of ladies, whose appearance was the signal for loud and repeated applause. Several of the most prominent leaders of the Reform party were similarly welcomed. Letters containing expressions of regret at the inability of the writers to attend the meeting, and of sympathy with its objects, were received from many eminent men and women. A number of women possessing the requisite qualifications have claimed their place on the register; and the question was tried in November, 1868, in banquo, at Westminster, by the Court of Common Pleas. The judges decided against them; but they resolved that in 1869, a petition should be presented from every important town in England and Wales, praying for an alteration of the present law; and Lady Amberley, Mrs. Fawcett, Miss Becker, Miss Faithful, and Miss Taylour, intend to continue their lectures on the electoral disabilities of their sex, till the British people be a nation of free women as well as of free men.
Mr. Mill’s motion for the bestowal of the franchise upon women occasioned a good deal of silly giggling:—
“Fools have still an itching to deride,
And fain would be upon the laughing side.”
But it seldom happens that a really able man makes a proposal that is entirely devoid of sense and reason; and we are glad that a minority of seventy-three were found in the House gallant enough to vote for the motion. The member for Westminster did not ask a vote for any woman whose legal personality was even partially merged in that of another. Neither married women, whose husbands are in life, nor domestic servants, would be admitted by him to the franchise. But if a woman is a householder, managing her own affairs, paying her way, liable to every tax, and faultless in every civil capacity; where is the person of intelligence who will dare to pronounce Mr. Mill’s proposal absurd? On the 4th of May, 1870, Mr. Jacob Bright moved the second reading of the bill for the enfranchisement of women, and adduced his best arguments to prove that widows and spinsters should have votes. By a majority of thirty-three votes, in a house of 215 members, the women carried the day; and the bill was read a second time amid loud cheers. This in future will be an important subject between constituencies and candidates; and we have little doubt that in the course of a few years the British parliament will know nothing of the distinctions of strong and weak, male and female, rich and poor. Why should women be excluded by law from doing the very things for which they are peculiarly qualified? Had Queen Elizabeth and Queen Victoria not inherited the throne, they could not have been entrusted with the smallest political duties! The former was one of the most eminent rulers of mankind; and the vocation of the latter for government has made its way, and become conspicuous. Happy will be the day in our country—happy will be the day throughout the world—when woman stands in this respect, as well as in others, a help meet for man!
SOCIAL EQUALITY.
God has planted in every breast a passion for congenial society, and made its wholesome play essential for the fulness of happiness; but depraved passions have rendered the claims and duties of both sexes ambiguous, and disarranged the harmonies of the first creation. As society becomes corrupt, power assumes authority over weakness; and they who ought to help, begin to hinder. Upon this principle women have been held in a state of social degradation in all countries in which Christianity has been wholly unknown. The Egyptians decreed it to be indecent in women to go abroad without shoes, and threatened with death any one who should make shoes for them. Among Celtic nations, the labours of the field, as well as domestic toil, devolved on the women; which evidently originated in the general impression of their inferiority in the scale of existence. The domestic life of the Greeks exhibit unquestionable evidences of barbarity in the treatment of women. At no time were they entrusted with any knowledge of their husbands’ affairs, and they were totally excluded from mixed society. According to the laws of the Romans, the wife was in servitude; though she had in name the rights of a citizen. In savage, superstitious, and Mahometan countries, the condition of females justifies the exclamation of an ancient philosopher, who thanked God that he was born a man and not a woman.
It is evident that the social condition of women, destitute of the light of revelation, is inferior to that of men. But under the influence of even a precursory and imperfect system of the true religion, their glory emerges partially to view. Still under the Jewish theocracy, the Levitical law appointed a variety of regulations which evinced their imperfect emancipation from social inferiority. Polygamy and concubinage prevailed even in pious families in these olden times. The doctrine of vows, also, in the case of daughters, wives, and widows, proves the subordination of the female sex. It is Christianity that has raised women above the state of barbaric degradation, Mahometan slavery, and Jewish subjection, and assigned to them their proper place in society.