Woman and the Republic | Page 6

clergyman can hold a seat, and for members of Parliament no woman votes. Would any Suffragist hold that a clergyman was the inferior of men who do sit in the House of Commons? They are excluded for the same reason that woman has not the parliamentary vote--they are looked upon as non-combatants.
The Greek and Roman republics appear to have followed an instinct that was unerring in the condition of society when they removed women from the seats of power as the commonwealth gathered strength. Gibbon, in the sentences quoted, attributes the fact that queens as well as kings have occupied the thrones of modern Europe to the chivalry of men toward those who would yet be incapable of exercising actual power except for the backing of a standing army, or an hereditary nobility sworn to their support, both of which are composed solely of men. If this be true, it should be visible in the workings of the constitutional restrictions upon monarchies that have developed in the past fifty years, during which the principle of democratic government has advanced with enormous strides over a great portion of the globe.
In the Austro-Hungarian monarchy there is restricted woman suffrage. The kingdom of Italy has restricted municipal woman suffrage. The little republic that separates those countries, the land of Tell and the Vaudois, has direct manhood suffrage only.
Sweden and Norway are apparently parting company. Sweden chooses to keep its king and its aristocracy, and it has restricted woman suffrage; but Norway, which is working toward free institutions, and last year voted to remove the insignia of union from the Norwegian flag, has no woman suffrage. [Footnote: In the city of Berne, Switzerland, in 1852, a proxy vote was given to independent women who paid a commercial tax, but they made no effort to use it until 1885, when contending political factions compelled them to do so in a measure. Norway's women have a local school vote. Both these cases of exception serve to prove the rule that I am trying to set forth.]
Autocratic Russia and its Asiatic colonies have more woman suffrage than England. Finland, a constitutional monarchy, was ceded to the Emperor of Russia in 1809. Women there have all except the parliamentary suffrage. The Governor-General of the Senate is nominated by the Emperor, and is chief of the military force. The National Assembly is convoked by the Emperor whenever he sees fit. The duties of that Assembly are to consider laws proposed by the Emperor and elaborated by the Committee of Affairs and four members nominated by the Emperor, who sit in St. Petersburg. The Emperor has the veto power over any act of theirs. That National Assembly consists of representatives of the nobility, the clergy, the burghers, and the peasantry, the consent of all of whom must be obtained to any measure that makes a change in the constitution or imposes taxes. But the royal veto can set aside any decision.
Iceland, a dependency of Denmark, has municipal woman suffrage, and women are eligible to municipal office. It has its own legislature, which governs jointly with the King, the executive power being in the hands of the King alone.
In the great extensions of suffrage in England in 1848, an amendment for the extension of suffrage to women was introduced in Parliament by Mr. Disraeli. Lord Northcote, Lord John Manners, and other conservatives, upheld it; but the liberal leaders opposed it, Gladstone and John Bright among them. John Blight's family were strenuous for the movement, and he had fancied himself its friend until the issue came; then the old champion of freedom, proved true to the instinct that guards it in the nation. In the constantly increasing liberty of the lower classes of England, an essential principle which excludes women from the parliamentary vote has been maintained. Lady Spencer Churchill and other Suffrage leaders look to Viscount Templeton and Lord Salisbury for support to-day.
A woman-suffrage bill of many years' standing and absurd provisions, has just passed to a second reading in the House of Commons. Although it was treated as a joke by all parties, it served to emphasize the fact that Sir Vernon Harcourt and the Liberals are opposed to any advance in this direction.
In the late extension of suffrage in Canada, the movement for woman suffrage had conservative support, while every liberal leader opposed it. No South American Republic has woman suffrage. With the deposition of Liliuokalani, woman's directs political power in the Hawaiian Islands died. In France only the Anarchists "admit women" to public council, and that party in Germany has here and there inscribed woman suffrage upon its banners.
Not only England, Scotland and Wales, but Canada, definitely excepts the vote for members of parliament in giving suffrage to woman, and only widows and spinsters are admitted to the