The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage | Page 7

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 instincts, and claims on that
ground to override the distinctions of which formal law takes account.
But let us reflect that we have here a principle 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 followed out, would make of every man and woman
_in primis [at first]_ a socialist; then a woman suffragist; 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 insects.
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 the cranks who are so
numerously represented in the ranks of woman suffragists.
If, on the other hand, we accept the doctrine of egalitarian equity with
the qualification 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 writings 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 displayed on the banners of
woman suffrage is, I suppose, deliberately and intentionally a suggestio
falsi. For only that taxation is tyrannous which is diverted to objects
which are not useful to the contributors. And even the suffragist 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, hastily 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 consideration 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 according as that duty has been
paid at home or abroad.
In reality the moral and logical nexus between the payment of taxes and
the control of the public revenue is that the solvent and selfsupporting
citizens, and only these, are entitled 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
administration 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 citizen even though I pay such taxes
as the State insists upon my paying.
Now if a woman insists, in the face of warnings 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