The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage | Page 7

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 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