The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage
by Almroth E. Wright

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Title: The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage

Author: Almroth E. Wright

Release Date: February, 2004  [EBook #5183]
[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on May 31, 2002]

Edition: 10

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE UNEXPURGATED CASE AGAINST WOMAN SUFFRAGE ***

    IT has come to be believed that everything
that has a bearing upon the concession of the
suffrage to woman has already been brought
forward.
    In reality, however, the influence of women
has caused man to leave unsaid many things
which he ought to have said.
    Especially in two respects has woman re-
stricted the discussion.
    She has placed her taboo upon all general-
isations about women, taking exception to
these on the threefold ground that there would
be no generalisations which would hold true of
all women; that generalisations when reached
possess no practical utility; and that the ele-
ment of sex does not leave upon women any
general imprint such as could properly be
brought up in connexion with the question of
admitting them to the electorate.                                               11
    Woman has further stifled discussion by
placing her taboo upon anything seriously un-
flattering being said about her in public.
    I would suggest, and would propose here
myself to act upon the suggestion, that, in con-
nexion with the discussion of woman's suf-
frage, these restrictions should be laid
aside.
    In connexion with the setting aside of the
restriction upon generalising, I may perhaps
profitably point out that all generalisations,
and not only generalisations which relate to
women, are ex hypothesi [by hypothesis] subject to individual
exceptions. (It is to generalisations that the
proverb that "the exception proves the rule"
really applies.)  I may further point out that
practically every decision which we take in or-
dinary life, and all legislative action without
exception, is based upon generalisations; and
again, that the question of the suffrage, and
with it the larger question as to the proper
sphere of woman, finally turns upon the ques-
tion as to what imprint woman's sexual sys-                              12
tem leaves upon her physical frame, character,
and intellect: in more technical terms, it turns
upon the question as to what are the secondary
sexual character[istic]s of woman.
    Now only by a felicitous exercise of the fac-
ulty of successful generalisation can we arrive
at a knowledge of these.
    With respect to the restriction that nothing
which might offend woman's amour propre [self love]
shall be said in public, it may be pointed out
that, while it was perfectly proper and equit-
able that no evil (and, as Pericles proposed,
also no good) should be said of woman in pub-
lic so long as she confined herself to the do-
mestic sphere, the action of that section of
women who have sought to effect an entrance
into public life, has now brought down upon
woman, as one of the penalties, the abrogation
of that convention.
    A consideration which perhaps ranks only
next in importance to that with which we have
been dealing, is that of the logical sanction of
the propositions which are enunciated in the                              13
course of such controversial discussions as that
in which we are here involved.
    It is clearly a precondition of all useful dis-
cussion that the author and reader should be in
accord with respect to the authority of the gen-
eralisations and definitions which supply the
premisses for his reasonings.
    Though this might perhaps to the reader
appear an impractical ideal, I would propose
here to attempt to reach it by explaining the
logical method which I have set myself to fol-
low.
    Although I have from literary necessity em-
ployed in my text some of the verbal forms of
dogmatism, I am very far from laying claim
to any dogmatic authority.  More than that, I
would desire categorically to repudiate such a
claim.
    For I do not conceal from myself that, if I
took up such a position, I should wantonly be
placing myself at the mercy of my reader.
For he could then, by merely refusing to see                             14
in me an authority, bring down the whole edi-
fice of my argument like a house of cards.
    Moreover I am not blind to what would hap-
pen if, after I claimed to be taken as an author-
ity, the reader was indulgent enough still to go
on to read what I have written.
    He would in such a case, the moment he en-
countered a statement with which he disagreed,
simply waive me on one side with the words,
"So you say."
    And if he should encounter a statement with
which he agreed, he would in his wisdom, cen-
sure me for neglecting to provide for that
proposition a satisfactory logical founda-
tion.
    If it is far from my thoughts to claim a right
of dictation, it is equally remote from them to
take up the position that I have in my argu-
ments furnished proof of the thesis which
I set out to establish.
    It would be culpable misuse of language to
speak in such connexion of proof or disproof .                        15
    Proof by testimony, which is available in con-
nexion with questions of fact, is unavailable in
connexion with general truths; and logical
proof is obtainable only in that comparatively
narrow sphere where reasoning is based--as in
mathematics--upon axioms, or--as in certain
really crucial experiments in the mathematic
sciences--upon quasi-axiomatic premisses.
    Everywhere else we base our reasonings on
premisses which are simply more or less prob-
able; and accordingly the conclusions which
we arrive at have in them always an element
of insecurity.
    It will be clear that in philosophy, in juris-
prudence, in political economy and sociology,
and in literary criticism and such like, we are
dealing not with certainties but with proposi-
tions which are, for literary convenience, in-
vested with the garb of certainties.
    What kind of logical sanction is it, then,
which can attach to reasonings such as are to
be set out here?
    They have in point of fact the sanction which                        16
attaches to reasonings based upon premisses
arrived at by the method of diacritical judg-
ment.
    It is, I hasten to notify the reader, not the
method, but only the name here assigned to it,
which is unfamiliar.  As soon as I exhibit it
in the working, the reader will identify it as
that by which every generalisation and defini-
tion ought to be put to the proof.
    I may for this purpose take the general
statements or definitions which serve as prem-
isses for my reasonings in the text.
    I bring forward those generalisations and
definitions because they commend themselves
to my diacritical judgment.  In other words, I
set them forth as results which have been
reached after reiterated efforts to call up to
mind the totality of my experience, and to de-
tect the factor which is common to all the in-
dividual experiences.
    When for instance I propose a definition, I
have endeavoured to call to mind all the dif-
ferent uses of the word with which I am fa-                               17
miliar--eliminating, of course, all the obviously
incorrect uses.
    And when I venture to attempt a generalisa-
tion about woman, I endeavour to recall to
mind without distinction all the different
women I have encountered, and to extricate
from my impressions what was common to all,
--omitting from consideration (except only
when I am dealing specifically with these) all
plainly abnormal women.
    Having by this procedure arrived at a gen-
eralisation--which may of course be correct
or incorrect--I submit it to my reader, and
ask from him that he should, after going
through the same mental operations as myself,
review my judgment, and pronounce his ver-
dict.
    If it should then so happen that the reader
comes, in the case of any generalisation, to the
same verdict as that which I have reached, that
particular generalisation will, I submit, now
go forward not as a datum of my individual
experience, but as the intellectual resultant of                            18
two separate and distinct experiences.  It will
thereby be immensely fortified.
    If, on the other hand, the reader comes to
the conclusion that a particular generalisation
is out of conformity with his experience, that
generalisation will go forward shorn of some,
or perchance all, its authority.
    But in any case each individual generalisa-
tion must be referred further.
    And at the end it will, according as it finds,
or fails to find, acceptance among the thought-
ful, be endorsed as a truth, and be gathered
into the garner of human knowledge; or be
recognised as an error, and find its place with
the tares, which the householder, in time of the
harvest, will tell the reapers to bind in bundles
to burn them.
                                   A. E. W.                               19
   1913.
 
 
 

               INTRODUCTION

Programme of this Treatise--Motives  from which
       Women Claim the Suffrage--Types of Men who
        Support the Suffrage--John Stuart Mill.

    THE task which I undertake here is to show
that the Woman's Suffrage Movement has no
real intellectual or moral sanction, and that
there are very weighty reasons why the suf-
frage should not be conceded to woman.
    I would propose to begin by analysing the
mental attitude of those who range themselves
on the side of woman suffrage, and then to pass
on to deal with the principal arguments upon
which the woman suffragist relies.
    The preponderating majority of the women
who claim the suffrage do not do so from mo-
tives of public interest or philanthropy.
    They are influenced almost exclusively by
two motives: resentment at the suggestion that                          21
woman should be accounted by man as inher-
ently his inferior in certain important re-
spects; and reprehension of a state of society
in which more money, more personal liberty
(In reality only more of the personal liberty
which the possession of money confers), more
power, more public recognition and happier
physiological conditions fall to the share of
man.
    A cause which derives its driving force so
little from philanthropy and public interest
and so much from offended amour propre and
pretensions which are, as we shall see, unjusti-
fied, has in reality no moral prestige.
    For its intellectual prestige the movement
depends entirely on the fact that it has the
advocacy of a certain number of distinguished
men.
    It will not be amiss to examine that ad-
vocacy.
    The "intellectual" whose name appears at
the foot of woman's suffrage petitions will,
when you have him by himself, very often                                 22
Make confession:--"Woman suffrage," he
will tell you, "is not the grave and important
cause which the ardent female suffragist
deems it to be.  Not only will it not do any
of the things which she imagines it is going to
do, but it will leave the world exactly where
it is.  Still--the concession of votes to women
is desirable  from the  point of view of sym-
metry of classification; and it will soothe the
ruffled feelings of quite a number of  very
worthy women."
    It may be laid down as a broad general rule
that only two classes of men have the cause of
woman's suffrage really at heart.
    The first is the crank who, as soon as he
thinks he has discerned a moral principle, im-
mediately gets into the saddle, and then rides
hell-for-leather, reckless of all considerations
of public expediency.
    The second is that very curious type of man,
who when it is suggested in his hearing that the
species woman is, measured by certain intel-
lectual and moral standards, the inferior of the                          23
species man, solemnly draws himself up and
asks, "Are you, sir, aware that you are insult-
ing my wife?"
    To this, the type of man who feels every un-
favourable criticism of woman as a personal
affront to himself, John Stuart Mill, had
affinities.
    We find him writing a letter to the Home
Secretary, informing him, in relation to a Par-
liamentary Bill restricting the sale of arsenic
to male persons over twenty-one years, that it
was a "gross insult to every woman, all women
from highest to lowest being deemed unfit to
have poison in their possession, lest they shall
commit murder."
    We find him again, in a state of indignation
with the English marriage laws, preluding his
nuptials with Mrs. Taylor by presenting that
lady with a formal charter; renouncing all au-
thority over her, and promising her security
against all infringements of her liberty which
might proceed from himself.                                                    24
    To this lady he is always ascribing credit for
his eminent intellectual achievements.  And
lest his reader should opine that woman stands
somewhat in the shade with respect to her own
intellectual  triumphs, Mill undertakes the
explanation.  "Felicitous thoughts," he tells
us, "occur by hundreds to every woman of in-
tellect.  But they are mostly lost for want of a
husband or friend  .  .  .  to estimate them
properly, and to bring them before the world;
and even when they are brought before it they
generally appear as his ideas."
    Not only did Mill see woman and all her
works through an optical medium which gave
images like this; but there was upon his ret-
ina a large blind area.  By reason of this
last it was inapprehensible to him that there
could be an objection to the sexes co-operating
indiscriminately in work.  It was beyond his
ken that the sex element would under these
conditions invade whole departments of life
which are now free from it.  As he saw things,                          25
there was in point of fact a risk of the human
race dying out by reason of the inadequate im-
perativeness of its sexual instincts.
    Mill's unfaithfulness to the facts cannot,
however, all be put down to constitutional de-
fects of vision.  When he deals with woman
he is no longer scrupulously conscientious.
We begin to have our suspicions of his up-
rightness when we find him in his Subjection
of Women laying it down as a fundamental
postulate that the subjection of woman to man
is always morally indefensible.  For no up-
right mind can fail to see that the woman who
lives in a condition of financial dependence
upon man has no moral claim to unrestricted
liberty.  The suspicion of Mill's honesty
which is thus awakened is confirmed by
further critical reading of his treatise.  In
that skilful tractate one comes across, every
here and there, a suggestio falsi [suggestion of a falsehood], or a sup-
pressio veri [suppression of the truth], or a fallacious analogy nebulously
expressed, or a mendacious metaphor, or a
passage which is contrived to lead off attention                        26
from some weak point in the feminist case.¹
Moreover, Mill was unmindful of the obliga-
tions of intellectual morality when he allowed
his stepdaughter, in connexion with feminist
questions, to draft letters ² which went forward
as his own.
    There is yet another factor which must be
kept in mind in connexion with the writings
of Mill.  It was the special characteristic of
the man to set out to tackle concrete problems
and then to spend his strength upon abstrac-
tions.
    In his Political Economy, where his proper
subject matter was man with his full equip-
ment of impulses, Mill took as his theme an
abstraction: an economic man who is actuated
solely by the desire of gain.  He then worked
out in great elaboration the course of conduct
which an aggregate of these puppets of his
imagination would pursue.  Having  per-                                   27

   ¹ Vide [See] in this connexion the incidental references to Mill
on pp. 50, 81 footnote, and 139.
   ² Vide Letters of John Stuart Mill , vol. ii, pp. 51, 79, 80,
100, 141, 157, 238, 239, 247, 288, and 349.
 

suaded himself, after this, that he had in his
possession a vade mecum [handbook] to the comprehension
of human societies, he now took it upon him-
self  to expound the principles which govern
and direct these.  Until such time as this pro-
cedure was unmasked, Mill's political econ-
omy enjoyed an unquestioned authority.
    Exactly the same plan was followed by Mill
in handling the question of woman's suffrage.
Instead of dealing with woman as she is, and
with woman placed in a setting of actually sub-
sisting conditions, Mill takes as his theme a
woman who is a creature of his imagination.
This woman is, by assumption, in mental en-
dowments a replica of man.  She lives in a
world which is, by tacit assumption, free from
complications of sex.  And, if practical con-
siderations had ever come into the purview of
Mill's mind, she would, by tacit assumption, be
paying her own way, and be making full per-
sonal and financial contributions to the State.
It is in connexion with this fictitious woman
that Mill sets himself to work out the benefits                            28
which women would derive from co-partner-
ship with men in the government of the State,
and those which such co-partnership would
confer on the community.  Finally, practis-
ing again upon himself the same imposition as
in his Political Economy, this unpractical
trafficker in abstractions sets out to persuade
his reader that he has, by dealing with fictions
of the mind, effectively grappled with the
concrete problem of woman's suffrage.
    This, then, is the philosopher who gives in-
tellectual prestige to the Woman's Suffrage
cause.
    But is there not, let us in the end ask our-
selves, here and there at least, a man who is of
real account in the world of affairs, and who
is--not simply a luke-warm Platonic friend or
an opportunist advocate--but an impassioned
promoter of the woman's suffrage movement?
One knows quite well that there is.  But
then one suspects--one perhaps discerns by
"the spirit sense"--that this impassioned pro-
moter of woman's suffrage is, on the sequest-                           29
ered side of his life, an idealistic dreamer: one
for whom some woman's memory has become,
like Beatrice for Dante, a mystic religion.
    We may now pass on to deal with the argu-
ments by which the woman suffragist has
sought to establish her case.                                                     30
 
 

                        PART I

ARGUMENTS WHICH ARE ADDUCED
        IN SUPPORT OF WOMAN'S
                      SUFFRAGE
 

                                      I

ARGUMENTS FROM ELEMENTARY NATURAL
                              RIGHTS

Signification of the Term "Woman's Rights"--Argument
       from "Justice"--Juridical Justice-"Egalitarian
       Equity"--Argument from Justice Applied to Tax-
       ation--Argument from Liberty--Summary of Argu-
       ments from Elementary Natural Rights.

    LET US note that the suffragist does not--
except, perhaps, when she is addressing her-
self to unfledged girls and to the sexually em-
bittered--really produce much effect by in-
veighing against the legal grievances of woman
under the bastardy laws, the divorce laws, and
the law which fixes the legal age of consent.
This kind of appeal does not go down with the
ordinary man and woman--first, because there
are many who think that in spite of occasional
hardships the public advantage is, on the whole,
very well served by the existing laws; secondly,                        33
because any alterations which might be desir-
able could very easily be made without recourse
to woman's suffrage; and thirdly, because the
suffragist consistently acts on the principle of
bringing up against man everything that can
possibly be brought up against him, and of
never allowing anything to appear on the credit
side of the ledger.
    The arguments which the woman suffragist
really places confidence in are those which are
provided by undefined general principles,
apothegms set out in the form of axioms, form-
ulæ which are vehicles for fallacies, ambigu-
ous abstract terms, and "question-begging"
epithets.  Your ordinary unsophisticated man
and woman stand almost helpless against argu-
ments of this kind.
    For these bring to bear moral pressure upon
human nature.  And when the intellect is con-
fused by a word or formula which conveys an
ethical appeal, one may very easily find one-
self committed to action which one's unbiased
reason would never have approved.  The very                         34
first requirement in connexion with any word
or phrase which conveys a moral exhortation
is, therefore, to analyse it and find out its true
signification.  For all such concepts as justice,
rights, freedom, chivalry--and it is with these
that we shall be specially concerned--are, when
properly defined and understood beacon-lights,
but when ill understood and undefined, stum-
bling-blocks in the path of humanity.
    We may appropriately begin by analys-
ing the term "Woman's Rights" and the cor-
relative formula "Woman has a right to the
suffrage."
    Our attention here immediately focuses upon
the term right.  It is one of the most important
of the verbal agents by which the suffragist
hopes to bring moral pressure to bear upon
man.
    Now, the term right denotes in its juridical
sense a debt which is owed to us by the State.
A right is created when the community binds
itself to us, its individual members, to intervene
by force to restrain any one from interfering                              35
with us, and to protect us in the enjoyment of
our faculties, privileges, and property.
    The term is capable of being given a wider
meaning.  While no one could appropriately
speak of our having a right to health or any-
thing that man has not the power to bestow, it
is arguable that there are, independent of and
antecedent to law, elementary rights: a right
to freedom; a right to protection against per-
sonal violence; a right to the protection of our
property; and a right to the impartial admin-
istration of regulations which are binding
upon all.  Such a use of the term right could
be justified on the ground that everybody
would be willing to make personal sacrifices,
and to combine with his fellows for the pur-
pose of securing these essentials--an under-
standing which would almost amount to legal
sanction.
    The suffragist who employs the term
"Woman's Rights" does not employ the word
rights in either of these senses.  Her case is                              36
analogous to that of a man who should in a
republic argue about the divine right of kings;
or that of the Liberal who should argue that
it was his right to live permanently under a
Liberal government; or of any member of a
minority who should, with a view of getting
what he wants, argue that he was contending
only for his rights.
    The woman suffragist is merely bluffing.
Her formula "Woman's Rights" means simply
"Woman's Claims."
    For the moment--for we shall presently be
coming back to the question of the enforce-
ment of rights--our task is to examine the
arguments which the suffragist brings forward
in support of her claims.
    First and chief among these is the argument
that the Principle of Justice prescribes that
women should be enfranchised.
    When we inquire what the suffragist under-
stands under the Principle of Justice, one re-
ceives by way of answer only the petitio prin-                         37
cipii [question begging] that Justice is a moral principle which
includes woman suffrage among its implica-
tions.
    In reality it is only very few who clearly ap-
prehend the nature of Justice.  For under
this appellation two quite different principles
are confounded.
    The primary and correct signification of the
term Justice will perhaps be best arrived at by
pursuing the following train of considera-
tions:--
    When man, long impatient at arbitrary and
quite incalculable autocratic judgments, pro-
ceeded to build up a legal system to take the
place of these, he built it upon the following
series of axioms:--(a)   All actions of which
the courts are to take cognisance shall be classi-
fied.   (b)   The legal consequences of each
class of action shall be definitely fixed.   ( c)
The courts shall adjudicate only on questions
of fact, and on the issue as to how the particu-
lar deed which is the cause of action should be
classified.  And (d) such decisions shall carry                           38
with them in an automatic manner the ap-
pointed legal consequences.
    For example, if a man be arraigned for the
appropriation of another man's goods, it is an
axiom that the court (when once the questions
of fact have been disposed of) shall adjudicate
only on the issue as to whether the particular
appropriation of goods in dispute comes un-
der the denomination of larceny, burglary, or
other co-ordinate category; and that upon this
the sentence shall go forth: directing that the
legal consequences which are appointed to that
particular class of action be enforced.
    This is the system every one can see ad-
ministered in every court of justice.
    There is, however, over and above what has
just been set out another essential element in
Justice.  It is an element which readily
escapes the eye.
    I have in view the fact that the classifications
which are adopted and embodied in the law
must not be arbitrary classifications.  They
must all be conformable to the principle of                                39
utility, and be directed to the advantage of
society.
    If, for instance, burglary is placed in a class
apart from larceny, it is discriminated from it
because this distinction is demanded by con-
siderations of public advantage.  But consid-
erations of utility would not countenance, and
by consequence Justice would not accept, a
classification of theft into theft committed by
a poor man and theft committed by a rich man.
    The conception of Justice is thus everywhere
interfused with considerations of utility and ex-
pediency.
    It will have become plain that if we have in
view the justice which is administered in the
courts--we may here term it Juridical Justice
--then the question as to whether it is just
to refuse the suffrage to woman will be deter-
mined by considering whether the classification
of men as voters and of women as non-voters is
in the public interest.  Put otherwise, the ques-
tion whether it would be just that woman
should have a vote would require the answer                            40
"Yes" or "No," according as the question
whether it would be expedient or inexpedient
that woman should vote required the answer
"Yes" or "No."  But it would be for the elect-
orate, not for the woman suffragist, to decide
that question.
    There is, as already indicated, another prin-
ciple which passes under the name of Justice.
I have in view the principle that in the distri-
bution of wealth or political power, or any
other privileges which it is in the power of the
State to bestow, every man should share equally
with every other man, and every woman
equally with every man, and that in countries
where Europeans and natives live side by side,
these latter should share all privileges equally
with the white--the goal of endeavour being
that all distinctions depending upon natural
endowment, sex, and race should be effaced.
    We may call this principle the Principle of
Egalitarian Equity--first, because it aims at
establishing a quite artificial equality; secondly,
because it makes appeal to our ethical in-                                41
stincts, and claims on that ground to override
the distinctions of which formal law takes ac-
count.
    But let us reflect that we have here a prin-
ciple which properly understood, embraces in
its purview all mankind, and not mankind only
but also the lower animals.  That is to say, we
have here a principle, which consistently fol-
lowed out, would make of every man and
woman in primis [at first] a socialist; then a woman suf-
fragist; then a philo-native, negrophil, and an
advocate of the political rights of natives and
negroes; and then, by logical compulsion ant
anti-vivisectionist, who accounts it unjust to
experiment on an animal; a vegetarian, who
accounts it unjust to kill animals for food;
and findly one who, like the Jains, accounts
it unjust to take the life of even verminous in-
sects.
    If we accept this principle of egalitarian
equity as of absolute obligation, we shall have
to accept along with woman's suffrage all the
other "isms" believed in, and agitated for, by                             42
the cranks who are so numerously represented
in the ranks of woman suffragists.
    If, on the other hand, we accept the doc-
trine of egalitarian equity with the qualifica-
tion that it shall apply only so far as what it
enjoins is conformable to public advantage,
we shall again make expediency the criterion of
the justice of woman's suffrage.
    Before passing on it will be well to point
out that the argument from Justice meets us
not only in the form that Justice requires that
woman should have a vote, but also in all sorts
of other forms.  We encounter it in the writ-
ings of publicists, in the formula Taxation
carries with it a Right to Representation; and
we encounter it in the streets, on the banners
of woman suffrage processions, in the form
Taxation without Representation is Tyranny.
    This latter theorem of taxation which is dis-
played on the banners of woman suffrage is, I
suppose, deliberately and intentionally a sug-
gestio falsi.  For only that taxation is tyran-
nous which is diverted to objects which are not                        43
useful to the contributors.  And even the suf-
fragist does not suggest that the taxes which
are levied on women are differentially applied
to the uses of men.
    Putting, then, this form of argument out
of sight, let us come to close quarters with the
question whether the payment of taxes gives
a title to control the finances of the State.
    Now, if it really did so without any regard
to the status of the claimant, not only women,
but also foreigners residing in, or holding
property in, England, and with these lunatics
and miners with property, and let me, for the
sake of a pleasanter collocation of ideas, has-
tily add peers of the realm, who have now no
control over public finance, ought to receive
the parliamentary franchise.  And in like
manner if the payment of a tax, without con-
sideration of its amount, were to give a title
to a vote, every one who bought an article
which had paid a duty would be entitled to a
vote in his own, or in a foreign, country ac-                              44
cording as that duty has been paid at home or
abroad.
    In reality the moral and logical nexus be-
tween the payment of taxes and the control of
the public revenue is that the solvent and self-
supporting citizens, and only these, are en-
titled to direct its financial policy.
    If I have not received, or if I have refunded,
any direct contributions I may have received
from the coffers of the State; if I have paid
my pro rata share of its establishment charges
--i.e. of the costs of both internal administra-
tion and external defence; and I have further
paid my proportional share of whatever may
be required to make up for the deficit incurred
on account of my fellow-men and women who
either require direct assistance from the State,
or cannot meet their share of the expenses of
the State, I am a solvent citizen; and if I fail
to meet these liabilities, I am an insolvent cit-
izen even though I pay such taxes as the State
insists upon my paying.                                                            45
    Now if a woman insists, in the face of warn-
ings that she had better not do so, on taxing
man with dishonesty for withholding from her
financial control over the revenues of the
State, she has only herself to blame if she is
told very bluntly that her claim to such control
is barred by the fact that she is, as a citizen
insolvent.  The taxes paid by women would
cover only a, very small proportion of the
establishment charges of the State which would
properly be assigned to them.  It falls to man
to make up that deficit.
    And it is to be noted with respect to those
women who pay their full pro rata contribu-
tion and who ask to be treated as a class apart
from, and superior to, other women, that only
a very small proportion of these have made
their position for themselves.
    Immeasurably the larger number are in a
solvent position only because men have placed
them there.  All large fortunes and practically
all the incomes which are furnished by invest-
ments are derived from man.                                                   46
    Nay; but the very revenues which the
Woman Suffrage Societies devote to man's
vilification are to a preponderating extent de-
rived from funds which he earned and gave
over to woman.
    In connexion with the financial position of
woman as here stated, it will be well to consider
first the rich woman's claim to the vote.
    We may seek light on the logical and moral
aspects of this claim by considering here two
parallel cases.
    The position which is occupied by the peer
under the English Constitution furnishes a
very interesting parallel to the position of the
woman who is here in question.
    Time out of mind the Commons have viewed
with the utmost jealousy any effort of the
House of Lords to obtain co-partnership with
them in the control of the finances of the State;
and, in pursuance of that traditional policy,
the peers have recently, after appeal to the
country, been shorn of the last vestige of
financial control.  Now we may perhaps see,                            47
in this jealousy of a House of Lords, which
represents inherited wealth, displayed by a
House of Commons representing voters elect-
ing on a financial qualification, an unconscious
groping after the moral principle that those
citizens who are solvent by their own efforts,
and only these, should control the finances of
the State.
    And if this analogy finds acceptance, it
would not--even if there were nothing else
than this against such proposals--be logically
possible, after ousting the peers who are large
tax-payers from all control over the finances
of the State, to create a new class of voters out
of the female representatives of unearned
wealth.
    The second parallel case which we have to
consider presents a much simpler analogy.
Consideration will show that the position oc-
cupied in the State by the woman who has
inherited money is analogous to that occupied
in a firm by a sleeping partner who stands in
the shoes of a deceased working partner, and                          48
who has only a small amount of capital in the
business.  Now, if such a partner were to
claim any financial control, and were to make
trouble about paying his pro rata establish-
ment charges, he would be very sharply called
to order.  And he would never dream of ap-
pealing to Justice by breaking windows, go-
ing to gaol, and undertaking a hunger strike.
    Coming back from the particular to the
general, and from the logical to the moral
aspect of woman's claim to control the finances
of the State on the ground that she is a tax-
payer, it will suffice to point out that this claim
is on a par with the claim to increased political
power and completer control over the finances
of the State which is put forward by a class of
male voters who are already paying much less
than their pro rata share of the upkeep of the
State.
    In each case it is a question of trying to get
control of other people's money.  And in the
case of woman it is of "trying on" in connexion
with her public partnership with man that prin-                          49
ciple of domestic partnership, "All yours is
mine, and all mine's my own."
    Next to the plea of justice, the plea which is
advanced most insistently by the woman who
is contending for a vote is the plea of liberty.
    We have here, again, a word which is a val-
uable asset to woman suffrage both in the re-
spect that it brings moral pressure to bear, and
in the respect that it is a word of ambiguous
meaning.
    In accordance with this we have John Stuart
Mill making propaganda for woman suffrage
in a tractate entitled the Subjection of
Women; we have a Woman's Freedom League
--"freedom" being a question-begging syn-
onym for "parliamentary franchise"--and
everywhere in the literature of woman's suf-
frage we have talk of woman's "emancipa-
tion"; and we have women characterised as
serfs, or slaves--the terms serfs and slaves
supplying, of course, effective rhetorical syn-
onyms for non-voters.
    When we have succeeded in getting through                         50
these thick husks of untruth we find that the
idea of liberty which floats before the eyes of
woman is, not at all a question of freedom from
unequitable legal restraints, but essentially a
question of getting more of the personal lib-
erty (or command of other people's services),
which the possession of money confers and
more freedom from sexual restraints.
    The suffragist agitator makes profit out
of this ambiguity.  In addressing the woman
worker who does not, at the rate which her
labour commands on the market, earn enough
to give her any reasonable measure of financial
freedom, the agitator will assure her that the
suffrage would bring her more money, describ-
ing the woman suffrage cause to her as the
cause of liberty.  By juggling in this way with
the two meanings of "liberty" she will draw
her into her toils.
    The vote, however, would not raise wages
of the woman worker and bring to her the
financial, nor yet the physiological freedom
she is seeking.                                                                         51
    The tactics of the suffragist agitator are the
same when she is dealing with a woman who is
living at the charges of a husband or relative,
and who recoils against the idea that she lies
under a moral obligation to make to the man
who works for her support some return of
gratitude.  The suffragist agitator will point
out to her that such an obligation is slavery,
and that the woman's suffrage cause is the
cause of freedom.
    And so we find the women who want to have
everything for nothing, and the wives who do
not see that they are beholden to man for any-
thing, and those who consider that they have
not made a sufficiently good bargain for them-
selves--in short, all the ungrateful women--
flock to the banner of Women's Freedom--
the banner of financial freedom for woman at
the expense of financial servitude for man.
    The grateful woman will practically always
be an anti-suffragist.
    It will be well, before passing on to another                          52
class of arguments, to summarise what has
been said in the three foregoing sections.
    We have recognised that woman has not
been defrauded of elementary natural rights;
that Justice, as distinguished from egalitarian
equity, does not prescribe that she should be
admitted to the suffrage; and that her status
is not, as is dishonestly alleged, a status of
serfdom or slavery.
    With this the whole case for recrimina-
tion against man, and a fortiori [for greater reason] the case for
[a] resort to violence, collapses.
    And if it does collapse, this is one of those
things that carries consequences.  It would
beseem man to bethink himself that to give in
to an unjustified and doubtfully honest claim
is to minister to the demoralisation of the
claimant.                                                                                  53
 
 

                                  II

ARGUMENTS FROM INTELLECTUAL GRIEV-
                      ANCES OF WOMAN

Complaint of Want of Chivalry--Complaint of "Insults"
         --Complaint  of  "Illogicalities"--Complaint  of
         "Prejudices"--The Familiar Suffragist Grievance
         of the Drunkard Voter and the Woman of Property
         Who is a Non-Voter--The Grievance of Woman be-
         ing Required to Obey Man-Made Laws.

    WE pass from the argument from elemen-
tary natural rights to a different class of argu-
ments--intellectual grievances.  The suffra-
gist tells us that it is unchivalrous to oppose
woman's suffrage; that it is insulting to tell
woman that she is unfit to exercise the fran-
chise; that it is "illogical" to make in her case
an exception to a general rule; that it is mere
"prejudice" to withhold the vote from her;
that it is indignity that the virtuous and highly
intelligent woman has no vote, while the                                   54
drunkard has; and that the woman of property
has no vote, while her male underlings have;
and, lastly, that it is an affront that a woman
should be required to obey "man-made"
laws.
    We may take these in their order.
    Let us consider chivalry, first, from the
standpoint of the woman suffragist.  Her no-
tion of chivalry is that man should accept
every disadvantageous offer which may be
made to him by woman.
    That, of course, is to make chivalry the prin-
ciple of egalitarian equity limited in its appli-
cation to the case between man and woman.
    It follows that she who holds that the suf-
frage ought, in obedience to that principle of
justice, to be granted to her by man, might
quite logically hold that everything else in
man's gift ought also to be conceded.
    But to do the woman suffragist justice, she
does not press the argument from chivalry.
Inasmuch as life has brought home to her that
the ordinary man has quite other conceptions                           55
of that virtue, she declares that "she has no
use for it."
    Let us now turn to the anti-suffragist view.
The anti-suffragist (man or woman) holds that
chivalry is a principle which enters into every
reputable relation between the sexes, and that
of all the civilising agencies at work in the
world it is the most important.
    But I think I hear the reader interpose,
"What, then, is chivalry if it is not a question
of serving woman without reward?"
    A moment's thought will make the matter
clear.
    When a man makes this compact with a
woman, "I will do you reverence, and protect
you, and yield you service; and you, for your
part, will hold fast to an ideal of gentleness, of
personal refinement, of modesty, of joyous
maternity, and to who shall say what other
graces and virtues that endear woman to
man," that is chivalry.
    It is not a question of a purely one-sided                              56
bargain, as in the suffragist conception.  Nor
yet is it a bargain about purely material things.
    It is a bargain in which man gives both
material things, and also things which pertain
perhaps somewhat to the spirit; and in which
woman gives back of these last.
    But none the less it is of the nature of a con-
tract.  There is in it the inexorable do ut des;
facio ut facias [give me this, and I will give you that; do this for me, and I will do that for you].
    And the contract is infringed when woman
breaks out into violence, when she jettisons
her personal refinement, when she is ungrate-
ful, and, possibly, when she places a quite ex-
travagantly high estimate upon her intellectual
powers.
    We now turn from these almost too intimate
questions of personal morality to discuss the
other grievances which were enumerated above.
    With regard to the suffragist's complaint
that it is "insulting" for woman to be told that
she is as a class unfit to exercise the suffrage,
it is relevant to point out that one is not in-                                57
sulted by being told about oneself, or one's
class, untruths, but only at being told about
oneself, or one's class, truths which one dis-
likes.  And it is, of course, an offence against
ethics to try to dispose of an unpalatable gen-
eralisation by characterising it as "insulting."
But nothing that man could do would be
likely to prevent the suffragist resorting to
this aggravated form of intellectual immor-
ality.
    We may now turn to the complaint that it
is "illogical" to withhold the vote from women.
    This is the kind of complaint which brings
out in relief the logical endowment and legis-
lative sagacity of the suffragist.
    With regard to her logical endowment it
will suffice to indicate that the suffragist
would appear to regard the promulgation of a
rule which is to hold without exception as an
essentially logical act; and the admission of
any class exception to a rule of general ap-
plication as an illogicality.  It would on this
principle be "illogical" to except, under con-                             58
scription, the female population from military
service.
    With regard to the suffragist's legislative
sagacity we may note that she asks that we
should put back the clock, and return to the
days when any arbitrary principle might be
adduced as a ground for legislation.  It is as
if Bentham had never taught:--
    "What is it to offer a good reason with re-
spect to a law?  It is to allege the good or
evil which the law tends to produce; so much
good, so many arguments in its favour; so
much evil, so many arguments against it.
    "What is it to offer a false reason?  It is
the alleging for, or against a law, something
else than its good or evil effects."
    Next, we may take up the question as to
whether an unwelcome generalisation may
legitimately be got out of the way by char-
acterising it as a prejudice.  This is a funda-
mentally important question not only in con-
nexion with such an issue as woman suffrage,
but in connexion with all search for truth in                               59
those regions where crucial scientific experi-
ments cannot be instituted.
    In the whole of this region of thought we
have to guide ourselves by generalisations.
    Now every generalisation is in a sense a pre-
judgment.  We make inferences from cases
or individuals that have already presented
themselves to such cases or individuals of the
same class as may afterwards present them-
selves.  And if our generalisation happens to
be an unfavourable one, we shall of necessity
have prejudged the case against those who are
exceptions to their class.
    Thus, for example, the proposition that
woman is incapable of usefully exercising the
parliamentary franchise prejudges the case
against a certain number of capable women.
It would none the less be absolutely anarch-
ical to propose to abandon the system of
guiding ourselves by prejudgments; and un-
favourable prejudgments or prejudices are
logically as well justified, and are obviously                               60
as indispensable to us as favourable prejudg-
ments.
    The suffragist who proposes to dispose of
generalisations which are unfavourable to
woman as prejudices ought therefore to be told
to stand down.
    It has probably never suggested itself
to her that, if there were a mind which was not
stored with both favourable prejudgments
and prejudices, it would be a mind which
had learned absolutely nothing from experi-
ence.
    But I hear the reader interpose, "Is there
not a grave danger that generalisations may
be erroneous?"
    And I can hear the woman suffragist inter-
ject, "Is there not a grave danger that unflat-
tering generalisations about woman may be
erroneous?"
    The answer to the general question is that
there is of course always the risk that our gen-
eralisations may be erroneous.  But when a                              61
generalisation finds wide acceptance among
the thoughtful, we have come as close to truth
as it is possible for humanity to come.
    To the question put by the suffragist the
reply is that experience with regard to the
capacity of woman has been accumulating in
all climes, and through all times; and that the
belief of men in the inherent inferiority of
women in the matter of intellectual morality,
and in the power of adjudication, has never
varied.
    I pass now to the two most familiar griev-
ances of the suffragist; the grievance that the
virtuous and intelligent woman has no vote,
while the male drunkard has; and the griev-
ance that the woman of property has no vote,
while her male underlings have.
    All that is worth while saying on these points
is that the suffragist is here manufacturing
grievances for herself, first, by reasoning from
the false premiss that every legal distinction
which happens to press hardly upon a few in-
dividuals ought for that to be abrogated; and,                           62
secondly, by steady leaving out of sight that
logical inconsistencies can, for the more part,
be got rid of only at the price of bringing others
into being.
    The man who looks forward to the intel-
lectual development of woman must be
brought near to despair when he perceives that
practically every woman suffragist sees in
every hard case arising in connexion with a
legal distinction affecting woman, an insult
and example of the iniquity of man-made
laws, or a logical inconsistency which could
with a very little good-will be removed.
    We have come now to the last item on our
list, to the grievance that woman has to submit
herself to "man-made laws."
    This is a grievance which well rewards study.
It is worth study from the suffragist point of
view, because it is the one great injury under
which all others are subsumed.  And it is
worth studying from the anti-suffragist point
of view, because it shows how little the suf-
fragist understands of the terms she employs;                           63
and how unreal are the wrongs which she re-
sents.
    Quite marvelously has the woman suffra-
gist in this connexion misapprehended; or
would she have us say misrepresented?
    The woman suffragist misapprehends--it
will be better to assume that she "misappre-
hends"--when she suggests that we, the male
electors, have framed the laws.
    In reality the law which we live under--and
the law in those States which have adopted
either the English, or the Roman law--
descends from the past.  It has been evolved
precedent, by precedent, by the decisions of
generation upon generation of judges, and it
has for centuries been purged by amending
statutes.  Moreover we, the present male elec-
tors--the electors who are savagely attacked
by the suffragist for our asserted iniquities in
connexion with the laws which regulate sexual
relations--have never in our capacity as elec-
tors had any power to alter an old, or to sug-
gest a new law; except only in so far as by                               64
voting Conservative or Liberal we may indi-
rectly have remotely influenced the general
trend of legislation.
    "Well but"--the suffragist will here rejoin
--"is it not at any rate true that in the draft-
ing of statutes and the framing of judicial
decisions man has always nefariously discrim-
inated against woman?"
    The question really supplies its own answer.
It will be obvious to every one who considers
that the drafting of statutes and the formula-
ting of legal decisions is almost as impersonal a
procedure as that of drawing up the rules to
govern a game; and it offers hardly more op-
portunity for discriminating between man and
woman.
    There are, however, three questions in con-
nexion with which the law can and does make
a distinction between man and woman.
    The first is that of sexual relations: rape,
divorce, bastardy, and the age of consent.  In
connexion with rape, it has never been alleged
that the law is not sufficiently severe.  It is, or                           65
has been, under colonial conditions, severe up
to the point of ferocity.  In the matter of
divorce the law of a minority of man-governed
States differentiates in favour of man.  It
does so influenced by tradition, by what are
held to be the natural equities, and by the fact
that a man is required to support his wife's
progeny.  The law of bastardy [illegitimate childbirth] is what it is
because of the dangers of blackmail.  The law
which fixes the age of consent discriminates
against man, laying him open to a criminal
charge in situations where woman--and it is
not certain that she is not a more frequent of-
fender--escapes scot-free.
    The second point in which the law differ-
entiates is in the matter of exacting personal
service for the State.  If it had not been that
man is more prone to discriminate in favour of
woman than against her, every military State,
when exacting personal military service from
men, would have demanded from women some
such equivalent personal service as would be
represented by a similar period of work in an                           66
army clothing establishment, or ordnance fac-
tory, or army laundry; or would at any rate
have levied upon woman a ransom in lieu of
such service.
    The third point in which the law dis-
tinguishes between man and woman is with ref-
erence to the suffrage.  The object of this
book is to show that this is equitable and in the
interests of both.
    The suffragist further misapprehends when
she regards it as an indignity to obey laws
which she has not herself framed, or specifically
sanctioned.  (The whole male electorate, be
it remarked, would here lie under the same
dignity as woman.)
    But in reality, whether it is a question of the
rules of a game, or of the reciprocal rights and
duties of members of a community, it is, and
ought to be, to every reasonable human being
not a grievance, but a matter of felicitation,
that an expert or a body of experts should have
evolved a set of rules under which order and
harmony are achieved.  Only vanity and folly                            67
would counsel amateurs to try to draw up rules
or laws for themselves.
    Again, the woman suffragist takes it as a
matter of course that she would herself be
able to construct a system of workable laws.
In point of fact, the framing of a really useful
law is a question of divining something which
will apply to an infinite number of different
cases and individuals.  It is an intellectual
feat on a par with the framing of a great
generalisation.  And would woman--that be-
ing of such short sight, whose mind is always
so taken up with whatever instances lie near-
est to her--be capable of framing anything
that could pass muster as a great generalisa-
ition?
    Lastly, the suffragist fails to see that the
function of framing the laws is not an essential
function of citizenship.
    The essential functions of citizenship are the
shaping of public policy, and the control of
the administrative Acts of Government.
    Such directive control is in a state of political                        68
freedom exercised through two quite different
agencies.
    It is exercised--and it is of the very essence
of political freedom that this should be the
normal method of control--in the first place,
through expressed public opinion.  By this
are continuously regulated not only momen-
tous matters of State, such as declarations of
war and the introduction of constitutional
changes, but also smaller and more individual
matters, such as the commutation of a capital
sentence, or the forcible feeding of militant suf-
fragists.
    In the background, behind the moral com-
pulsion of expressed public opinion, there is,
in the case of a Parliamentary State, also an-
other instrument of control.  I have in view
that periodical settlement of the contested
rulership of the State by the force of a majority
of electors which is denoted a general elec-
tion.
    The control exercised by the suffrages of
the electors in a general election is in certain                             69
important respects less effective than that ex-
ercised by the everyday public expression of
opinion.  It falls short in the respect that its
verdicts are, except only in connexion with the
issue as to whether the Government is to be
retained in office or dismissed, ambiguous ver-
dicts; further, in the respect that it comes into
application either before governmental pro-
posals have taken definite shape, or only after
the expiration of a term of years, when the
events are already passing out of memory.
    If we now consider the question of woman's
franchise from the wider point of view here
opened up, it will be clear that, so far as con-
cerns the control which is exercised through
public opinion on the Government, the intelli-
gent woman, and especially the intelligent
woman who has made herself an expert on any
matter, is already in possession of that which is
a greater power than the franchise.  She has
the power which attaches to all intelligent opin-
ion promulgated in a free State.  Moreover,
wherever the special interest of women are in-                         70
volved, any woman may count on being lis-
tened to if she is voicing the opinions of any
considerable section of her sex.
    In reality, therefore, woman is disfran-
chised only so far as relates to the confirmation
of a Government in office, or its dismissal by
the ultima ratio [ultimate reason] of an electoral contest.  And
when we reflect that woman does not come into
consideration as a compelling force, and that
an electoral contest partakes of the nature of
a civil war, it becomes clear that to give her the
parliamentary vote would be to reduce all those
trials of strength which take the form of elec-
toral contests to the level of a farce.
    With this I have, I will not say completed
the tale of the suffragist's grievances--that
would be impossible--but I have at any rate
dealt with those which she has most acrimoni-
ously insisted upon.                                                                 71
 
 

                                    III

ARGUMENTS WHICH TAKE THE FORM OF
         "COUNSELS OF PERFECTION" AD-
                     DRESSED TO MAN

Argument that Woman Requires a Vote for her Protec-
          tion--Argument that Woman ought to be Invested
          with the Responsibilities of Voting in Order that
          She May Attain Her Full Intellectual Stature.

    THERE, however, remains still a further class
of arguments.  I have in view here arguments
which have nothing to do with elementary
natural rights, nor yet with wounded amour
propre.  They concern ethics, and sympathy,
and charitable feelings.
    The suffragist here gives to man "counsels
of perfection."
    It will be enough to consider here two of
these:--the first, the argument that woman,
being the weaker vessel, needs, more than man,
the suffrage for her protection; the second,                             72
that woman, being less than man in relation
to public life, ought to be given the vote for
instructional purposes.
    The first of these appeals will, for instance,
take the following form:--"Consider the poor
sweated East End woman worker.  She
knows best where the shoe pinches. You men
can't know.  Give her a vote; and you shall see
that she will very soon better her condition."
    When I hear that argument I consider:--
We will suppose that woman was ill.  Should
we go to her and say: "You know best, know
better than any man, what is wrong with you.
Here are all the medicines and remedies.
Make your own selection, for that will assur-
edly provide what will be the most likely to
help."
    If this would be both futile and inhuman,
much more would it be so to seek out this
woman who is sick in fortune and say to her,
"Go and vote for the parliamentary candidate
who will be likely to influence the trend of
legislation in a direction which will help."                                   73
    What would really help the sweated woman
labourer would, of course, be to have the best
intellect brought to bear, not specially upon
the problem of indigent woman, but upon the
whole social problem.
    But the aspect of the question which is, from
our present point of view, the fundamentally
important one is the following: Granting that
the extension of the suffrage to woman would
enable her, as the suffragist contends, to bring
pressure upon her parliamentary representa-
tive, man, while anxious to do his very best
for woman, might very reasonably refuse to
go about it in this particular way.
    If a man has a wife whom he desires to treat
indulgently, he does not necessarily open a
joint account with her at his bankers.
    If he wants to contribute to a charity he
does not give to the managers of that charity
a power of attorney over his property.
    And if he is a philanthropical director of a
great business he does not, when a pathetic
case of poverty among his staff is brought                                74
to his notice, imperil the fortunes of his under-
taking by giving to his workmen shares and a
vote in the management.
    Moreover, he would perhaps regard it as a
little suspect if a group of those who were
claiming this as a right came and told him that
"it was very selfish of him" not to grant their
request.
    Precious above rubies to the suffragist and
every other woman who wants to apply the
screw to man is that word selfish.  It furnishes
her with the petitio principii that man is under
an ethical obligation to give anything she
chooses to ask.
    We come next--and this is the last of all
the arguments we have to consider--to the
argument that the suffrage ought to be given
to woman for instructional purposes.
    Now it would be futile to attempt to deny
that we have ready to hand in the politics of the
British Empire--that Empire which is swept
along in "the too vast orb of her fate"--an ideal
political training-ground in which we might                                75
put woman to school.  The woman voter would
there be able to make any experiment she
liked.
    But one wonders why it has not been pro-
posed to carry woman's instruction further,
and for instructional purposes to make of a
woman let us say a judge, or an ambassador,
or a Prime Minister.
    There would--if only it were legitimate to
sacrifice vital national interests--be not a
little to say in favour of such a course.  One
might at any rate hope by these means once
for all to bring home to man the limitations
of woman.                                                                              76
 
 

                                  PART II

ARGUMENTS AGAINST THE CONCESSION OF THE
       PARLIAMENTARY SUFFRAGE TO WOMAN
 

                                      I

WOMAN'S DISABILITY IN THE MATTER OF
                      PHYSICAL FORCE

International Position of State would be Imperilled by
      Woman's Suffrage--Internal Equilibrium of State
       would be Imperilled.

    THE woman suffrage movement has now
gone too far to be disposed of by the over-
throw of its arguments, and by a mere indica-
tion of those which could be advanced on the
other side.  The situation demands the bring-
ing forward of the case against woman's suf-
frage; and it must be the full and quite unex-
purgated case.
    I shall endeavour to do this in the fewest pos-
sible words, and to be more especially brief
where I have to pass again over ground which
I have previously traversed in dealing with the
arguments of the suffragists.
    I may begin with what is fundamental.                                  79
It is an axiom that we should in legislating
guide ourselves directly by considerations of
utility and expediency.  For abstract princi-
ples--I have in view here rights, justice, egali-
tarian equity, equality, liberty, chivalry, logi-
cality, and such like--are not all of them
guides to utility; and each of these is, as we
have seen, open to all manner of private mis-
interpretation.
    Applying the above axiom to the issue be-
fore us, it is clear that we ought to confine
ourselves here to the discussion of the ques-
tion as to whether the State would, or would
not, suffer from the admission of women to
the electorate.
    We can arrive at a judgment upon this by
considering, on the one hand, the class-char-
acters of women so far as these may be rele-
vant to the question of the suffrage; and, on
the other hand, the legislative programmes
put forward by the female legislative re-
former and the feminist.
    In connexion with the class-characters of                             80
woman, it will be well, before attempting to
indicate them, to interpolate here the general
consideration that the practical statesman,
who has to deal with things as they are, is not
required to decide whether the characters of
women which will here be considered are, as
the physiologist (who knows that the sexual
products influence every tissue of the body)
cannot doubt, "secondary sexual characters";
or, as the suffragist contends, "acquired char-
acters."  It will be plain that whether defects
are "secondary sexual characters" (and there-
fore as irremediable as "racial characters"); or
whether they are "acquired characters" (and
as such theoretically remediable) they are
relevant to the question of the concession of
the suffrage just so long as they continue to
be exhibited.¹

     ¹ This is a question on which Mill (vide Subjection of Women ,
last third of Chapter I) has endeavoured to confuse the issues
for his reader, first, by representing that by no possibility can
man know anything of the "nature," i.e. , of the "secondary
sexual characters" of woman; and, secondly, by distracting at-
tention from the fact that "acquired characters" may produce
unfitness for the suffrage.                                                            81
 

    The primordial argument against giving
woman the vote is that that vote would not
represent physical force.
    Now it is by physical force alone and by
prestige--which represents physical force in
the background--that a nation protects itself
against foreign interference, upholds its rule
over subject populations, and enforces its own
laws.  And nothing could in the end more cer-
tainly lead to war and revolt than the decline
of the military spirit and loss of prestige which
would inevitably follow if man admitted
woman into political co-partnership.
    While it is arguable that such a partnership
with woman in government as obtains in Aus-
tralia and New Zealand is sufficiently unreal
to be endurable, there cannot be two opinions
on the question that a virile and imperial race
will not brook any attempt at forcible control
by women.
    Again, no military foreign nation or native
race would ever believe in the stamina and                               82
firmness of purpose of any nation that submit-
ted even to the semblance of such control.
    The internal equilibrium of the State also
would be endangered by the admission to the
register of millions of electors whose vote would
not be endorsed by the authority of physical
force.
    Regarded  from this point of view a
Woman's Suffrage measure stands on an ab-
solutely different basis to any other extension
of the suffrage.  An extension which takes in
more men--whatever else it may do--makes
for stability in the respect that it makes the
decrees of the legislature more irresistible.
An extension which takes in any women
undermines the physical sanction of the
laws.
    We can see indications of the evil that would
follow such an event in the profound dissatis-
faction which is felt when--in violation of the
democratic principle that every man shall
count for one, and no man for more than one                           83
--the political wishes of the large constituen-
cies which return relatively few members to
Parliament, are overborne by those of con-
stituencies which, with a smaller aggregate
population, return more members.
    And we see what such evil finally culminates
in when the over-representation of one part of
a country and the corresponding under-rep-
resentation of other portions has led a large
section of the people to pledge themselves to
disregard the eventual ordinances of Parlia-
ment.
    If ever the question as to whether the will
of Ulster or that of the Nationalists is to pre-
vail is brought to the arbitrament of physical
force, it will be due to the inequalities of parlia-
mentary representation as between England
and Ireland, and as between the Unionist and
Nationalist population of Ulster.
    The general lesson that all governmental
action ought to be backed by force, is fur-
ther brought home to the conscience when we
take note of the fact that every one feels that                            84
public morality is affronted when senile, in-
firm, and bedridden men are brought to the
poll to turn the scale in hotly contested elec-
tions.
    For electoral decisions are felt to have moral
prestige only when the electoral figures quan-
titatively represent the physical forces which
are engaged on either side.  And where vital
interests are involved, no class of men can be
expected to accept any decision other than one
which rests upon the ultima ratio.
    Now all the evils which are the outcome of
disparities between the parliamentary power
and the organised physical force of contend-
ing parties would "grow" a hundredfold if
women were admitted to the suffrage.
    There would after that be no electoral or
parliamentary decision which would not be
open to challenge on the ground that it was
impossible to tell whether the party which
came out the winner had a majority which
could enforce its will, or only a majority ob-
tained by the inclusion of women.  And no                               85
measure of redistribution could ever set that
right.
    There may find place here also the considera-
tion that the voting of women would be an un-
settling element in the government of the
State, forasmuch as they would, by reason of a
general lack of interest in public affairs, only
very; seldom come to the poll: would, in fact,
come to the poll in full strength only when
some special appeal had come home to their
emotions.
    Now an electorate which includes a very
large proportion of quite uninterested voters
would be in the same case as a legislature
which included a very large proportion of
members who made a practice of staying away.
It would be in the same case, because the ab-
sentees, who would not have acquired the train-
ing which comes from consecutive attention
to public affairs, might at any moment step
in and upset the stability of State by voting
for some quite unconsidered measure.
    Coming back in conclusion to our main is-                           86
sue, I would re-emphasise an aspect of the
question upon which I have already elsewhere
insisted.¹   I have in view the fact that woman
does, and should, stand to physical violence in
a fundamentally different relation to man.
Nothing can alter the fact that, the very mo-
ment woman resorts to violence, she places
herself within the jurisdiction of an ethical
law, which is as old as civilisation, and which
was framed in its interests.

   ¹ Vide Appendix, pp. 176-179.                                                    87
 
 

                                II

WOMAN'S DISABILITY IN THE MATTER OF
                            INTELLECT

Characteristics of the Feminine Mind--Suffragist Il-
       lusions with Regard to the Equality of Man and
       Woman as Workers--Prospect for the Intellectual
       Future of Woman--Has Woman Advanced?

    THE woman voter would be pernicious to
the State not only because she could not back
her vote by physical force, but also by reason
of her intellectual defects.
    Woman's mind attends in appraising a state-
ment primarily to the mental images which it
evokes, and only secondarily--and sometimes
not at all--to what is predicated in the state-
ment.  It is over-influenced by individual in-
stances; arrives at conclusions on incomplete
evidence; has a very imperfect sense of pro-
portion; accepts the congenial as true, and re-
jects the uncongenial as false; takes the imagi-                          88
nary which is desired for reality, and treats the
undesired reality which is out of sight as non-
existent---building up for itself in this way,
when biased by predilections and aversions, a
very unreal picture of the external world.
    The explanation of this is to be found in all
the physiological attachments of woman's
mind: ¹ in the fact that mental images are in
her over-intimately linked up with emotional
reflex responses; that yielding to such reflex
responses gives gratification; that intellec-
tual analysis and suspense of judgment involve
an inhibition of reflex responses which is felt as
neural distress; that precipitate judgment
brings relief from this physiological strain;
and that woman looks upon her mind not as an
implement for the pursuit of truth, but as an
instrument for providing her with creature
comforts in the form of agreeable mental im-
ages.
    In order to satisfy the physical yearning

    ¹ Certain of these have already been referred to in the letter
printed in the Appendix ( vide p.167 infra ).                                                   89
 

for such comforts, a considerable section
of intelligent and virtuous women insist
on picturing to themselves that the reign of
physical force is over, or as good as over; that
distinctions based upon physical and intellec-
tual force may be reckoned as non-existent;
that male supremacy as resting upon these is a
thing of the past; and that Justice means
Egalitarian  Equity--means  equating the
weaklings with the strong and the incapable
with the capable.
    All this because these particular ideas are
congenial to the woman of refinement, and be-
cause it is to her, when she is a suffragist, un-
congenial that there should exist another prin-
ciple of justice which demands from the phys-
ically and intellectually capable that they shall
retain the reins of government in their own
hands; and specially uncongenial that in all
man-governed States the ideas of justice of
the more forceful should have worked out so
much to the advantage of women, that a
large majority of these are indifferent or ac-                             90
tively hostile to the Woman's Suffrage Move-
ment.
    In further illustration of what has been said
above, it may be pointed out that woman, even
intelligent woman, nurses all sorts of miscon-
ceptions about herself.  She, for instance, is
constantly picturing to herself that she can
as a worker lay claim to the same all-round
efficiency as a man--forgetting that woman
is notoriously unadapted to tasks in which se-
vere physical hardships have to be con-
fronted; and that hardly any one would, if
other alternative offered, employ a woman
in any work which imposed upon her a com-
bined physical and mental strain, or in any
work where emergencies might have to be
faced.
    In like manner the suffragist is fond of
picturing to herself that woman is for all
ordinary purposes the intellectual equal, and
that the intelligent woman is the superior of
the ordinary man.
    These results are arrived at by fixing the at-                          91
tention upon the fact that an ordinary man
and an ordinary woman are, from the point of
view of memory and apprehension, very much
on a level; and that a highly intelligent woman
has a quicker memory and a more rapid power
of apprehension than the ordinary man; and
further, by leaving out of regard that it is not
so much a quick memory or a rapid power of
apprehension which is required for effective
intellectual work, as originality, or at any rate
independence of thought, a faculty of fel-
icitious generalisations and diacritical judg-
ment, long-sustained intellectual effort, an un-
selective mirroring of the world in the mind,
and that relative immunity to fallacy which
goes together with a stable and comparatively
unresponsive nervous system.
    When we consider that the intellect of the
quite ungifted man works with this last-
mentioned physiological advantage, we can
see that the male intellect must be, and--
pace [with the permission of] the woman suffragist---it in point of fact
is, within its range, a better instrument for                                 92
dealing with the practical affairs of life than
that of the intelligent woman.
    How far off we are in the case of woman
from an unselective mirroring of the world in
the mind is shown by the fact that large and
important factors of life may be represented
in woman's mind by lacunæ [gaps] of which she is
totally unconscious.
    Thus, for instance, that not very unusual
type of spinster who is in a condition of re-
tarded development (and you will find this
kind of woman even on County Council's), is
completely unconscious of the sexual element
in herself and in human nature generally.
Nay, though one went from the dead, he could
not bring it home to her that unsatisfied sex-
uality is an intellectual disability.
    Sufficient illustration will now have been
given of woman's incapacity to take a com-
plete or objective view of any matter in which
she has a personal, or any kind of emotional
interest; and this would now be the place to
discuss those other aspects of her mind which                          93
are relevant to her claim to the suffrage.  I
refer to her logical endowment and her political
sagacity.
    All that I might have been required to say
here on these issues has, however, already been
said by me in dealing with the arguments of
the suffragist.  I have there carefully writ-
ten it in between the lines.
    One thing only remains over.--We must,
before we pass on, consider whether woman
has really, as she tells us, given earnest for the
future weeding out of these her secondary sex-
ual characters, by making quite phenomenal
advances within the lifetime of the present gen-
eration; and, above all, whether there is any
basis for woman's confident assurance that,
when for a few generations she shall have en-
joyed educational advantages, she will at any
rate pull up level with man.
    The vision of the future may first engage
our attention; for only this roseate prospect
makes of any man a feminist.
    Now the basis that all this hope rests upon                           94
is the belief that it is a law of heredity that ac-
quired characteristics are handed down; and,
let it be observed, that whereas this theory
found, not many decades ago, under the in-
fluence of Darwin, thousands of adherents
among scientific men, it finds to-day only here
and there an adherent.
    But let that pass, for we have to consider
here, not only whether acquired characteristics
are handed down, but further whether, "if we
held that doctrine true," it would furnish scien-
tific basis for the belief that educational ad-
vantages carried on from generation to gen-
eration would level up woman's intellect to
man's; and whether, as the suffragist also be-
lieves, the narrow education of past genera-
tions of women can be held responsible for their
present intellectual shortcomings.
    A moment's consideration will show--for
we may here fix our eyes only on the future---
that woman could not hope to advance rela-
tively to man except upon the condition that
the acquired characteristics of woman, instead                         95
of being handed down equally to her male and
female descendants, were accumulated upon
her daughters.
    Now if that be a law of heredity, it is a law
which is as yet unheard of outside the sphere
of the woman suffrage societies.  Moreover,
one is accustomed to hear women, when they
are not arguing on the suffrage, allege that
clever mothers make clever sons.
    It must, as it will have come home to us, be
clear to every thoughtful mind that woman's
belief that she will, through education and the
cumulation of its effects upon her through
generations, become a more glorious being,
rests, not upon any rational basis, but only on
the physiological fact that what is congenial
to woman impresses itself upon her as true.
All that sober science in the form of history
and physiology would seem to entitle us to
hope from the future of woman is that she will
develop pari passu [step by step] with man; and that educa-
tion will teach her not to retard him overmuch
by her lagging in the rear.                                                         96
    In view of this larger issue, the question as
to whether woman has, in any real sense of the
word, been making progress in the course of
the present generation, loses much of interest.