Woman and the Republic | Page 7

minor forms of franchise. As to the other British colonies, what is the situation? Much stress has been laid on what has been termed the progress of the Suffrage movement in Australasia. There is but one Australian colony in which the legislative assembly is elected; in the others it is appointed for life, or for short terms. Where it is thus appointed, women vote on various matters. In Victoria, which contains the capital city, Melbourne, and which is the most progressive and democratic colony in Australia, the Legislative Assembly is elected, and that body is chosen by unrestricted male suffrage only, while, as with the House of Commons in the mother country, clergymen are not allowed to sit in it. In West Australia, the newest colony, the voting is done by men alone. In Cape Colony women have restricted municipal suffrage; but the Assembly is elected by the vote of men who own a certain amount of property.
In the Orange Free State every adult white male is a full burgher, having a vote for the President, who is chosen for five years. The Transvaal Republic has no woman suffrage amid its hand-to-hand struggles.
To comprehend the condition of European governmental affairs, one must follow the condition of things produced by the struggle of socialistic and anarchistic elements. Between the King on the one hand, and these forces on the other, the true Liberal parties are slowly progressing toward free institutions; both aristocratic and anarchistic movements being more favorable than liberalism to woman-suffrage aspirations.
The countries where woman has full suffrage (save in the United States) are all dependencies of royalty. They are: The Isle of Man, Pitcairn's Island, New Zealand, and South Australia. The most important of these, New Zealand, was once a promising colony, but it has been declining for a quarter of a century. The men outnumber the women by forty thousand. The act conferring the parliamentary franchise on both European and Maori women received the royal sanction in 1892. At the session of Parliament that passed the act a tax was put upon incomes and one upon land, so that a desperate civilization seemed to be trying all the experiments at once. Certainly, woman suffrage in New Zealand was not adopted because the Government was so stable, so strong, so democratic, that these conditions must thus find fit expression. [Footnote: The Australasian colonies are taking steps toward the formation of a Federal Union. While this book is in press news comes that the Federal Convention, by a vote of 23 to 12, has refused to allow women to vote for members of the House of Representatives.]
South Australia not only gives women full suffrage, but makes them eligible to a seat in Parliament. The colony is a vast, mountainous, largely unsettled region, with a high proportion of native and Chinese, and, in 1894, had but 73,000 voters, including the women. The Socialistic Labor movement, which has played a large part in Australasian politics, here succeeded in dominating the government. There was an attempt to establish communistic villages with public money, a proposal to divide the public money pro rata, and one to build up a system of state life- insurance; and taxes were to be levied on salaries, and on all incomes above a certain point. It was found that the sixty thousand women who were authorized to vote throughout Australia assisted the socialistic schemes that are hindering progress and that tend to anarchy and not to republicanism. There is a royal Governor, and suffrage is based on household and property qualifications. It is an aristocratic and social combination, not a triumph of democratic ideas or principles. Dr. Jacobi, in her "Common Sense applied to Woman Suffrage," says: "The refusal to extend parliamentary suffrage to women who are possessed of municipal suffrage, does not mean, as Americans are apt to suppose, that women are counted able to judge about the small concerns of a town, but not about imperial issues. It means that women are still not counted able to exercise independent judgment at all, and, therefore, are to remain counted out when this is called for; but that the property to which they happen to belong, and which requires representation, must not be deprived of this on account of an entangling female alliance. This is the very antipodes of the democratic doctrine, perhaps also somewhat excessive, that a man requires representation so much that he must not be deprived of it on account of the accident of not being able to read or write!"
With Dr. Jacobi's interpretation, I will deal later. What I wish now to do is, to call attention to her admission of the fact that woman suffrage in England and in her colonies is not democratic, and to connect it with the other fact that no