The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage | Page 8

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 contribution 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 investments are derived from man.
Nay; but the very revenues which the Woman Suffrage Societies
devote to man's vilification are to a preponderating extent derived 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, in this jealousy of a House of Lords, which represents inherited
wealth, displayed by a House of Commons representing voters electing
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 occupied 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 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
establishment charges, he would be very sharply called to order. And
he would never dream of appealing to Justice by breaking windows,
going 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 principle 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 valuable asset to woman
suffrage both in the respect 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
synonym for "parliamentary franchise"--and everywhere in the
literature of woman's suffrage we have talk of woman's "emancipation";
and we have women characterised as serfs, or slaves--the terms serfs
and slaves supplying, of course, effective rhetorical synonyms for
non-voters.

When we have succeeded in getting through 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
liberty (or command