Women and Politics | Page 6

are voluntary and self-imposed; and, most usually, are fulfilled as secretly as possible. The State commits an injustice in debarring a woman from the rights of a citizen because she chooses, over and above them, to perform the good works of a saint.
And, after all, will it be the worse for these women, or for the society in which they live, if they do interest themselves in politics? Might not (as Mr. Boyd Kinnear urges in an article as sober and rational as it is earnest and chivalrous) their purity and earnestness help to make what is now called politics somewhat more pure, somewhat more earnest? Might not the presence of the voting power of a few virtuous, experienced, well- educated women, keep candidates, for very shame, from saying and doing things from which they do not shrink, before a crowd of men who are, on the average, neither virtuous, experienced, or well-educated, by wholesome dread of that most terrible of all earthly punishments--at least in the eyes of a manly man--the fine scorn of a noble woman? Might not the intervention of a few women who are living according to the eternal laws of God, help to infuse some slightly stronger tincture of those eternal laws into our legislators and their legislation? What women have done for the social reforms of the last forty years is known, or ought to be known, to all. Might not they have done far more, and might not they do far more hereafter, if they, who generally know far more than men do of human suffering, and of the consequences of human folly, were able to ask for further social reforms, not merely as a boon to be begged from the physically stronger sex, but as their will, which they, as citizens, have a right to see fulfilled, if just and possible? Woman has played for too many centuries the part which Lady Godiva plays in the old legend. It is time that she should not be content with mitigating by her entreaties or her charities the cruelty and greed of men, but exercise her right, as a member of the State, and (as I believe) a member of Christ and a child of God, to forbid them.
As for any specific difference between the intellect of women and that of men, which should preclude the former meddling in politics, I must confess that the subtle distinctions drawn, even by those who uphold the intellectual equality of women, have almost, if not altogether, escaped me. The only important difference, I think, is, that men are generally duller and more conceited than women. The dulness is natural enough, on the broad ground that the males of all animals (being more sensual and selfish) are duller than the females. The conceit is easily accounted for. The English boy is told from childhood, as the negro boy is, that men are superior to women. The negro boy shows his assent to the proposition by beating his mother, the English one by talking down his sisters. That is all.
But if there be no specific intellectual difference (as there is actually none), is there any practical and moral difference? I use the two epithets as synonymous; for practical power may exist without acuteness of intellect: but it cannot exist without sobriety, patience, and courage, and sundry other virtues, which are 'moral' in every sense of that word.
I know of no such difference. There are, doubtless, fields of political action more fitted for men than for women; but are there not again fields more fitted for women than for men?--fields in which certain women, at least, have already shown such practical capacity, that they have established not only their own right, but a general right for the able and educated of their sex, to advise officially about that which they themselves have unofficially mastered. Who will say that Mrs. Fry, or Miss Nightingale, or Miss Burdett Coutts, is not as fit to demand pledges of a candidate at the hustings on important social questions as any male elector; or to give her deliberate opinion thereon in either House of Parliament, as any average M.P. or peer of the realm? And if it be said that these are only brilliant exceptions, the rejoinder is, What proof have you of that? You cannot pronounce on the powers of the average till you have tried them. These exceptions rather prove the existence of unsuspected and unemployed strength below. If a few persons of genius, in any class, succeed in breaking through the barriers of routine and prejudice, their success shows that they have left behind them many more who would follow in their steps if those barriers were but removed. This has been the case in every forward movement, religious, scientific, or social.