Women and Politics | Page 4

at every turn. They ask--and they have surely some cause
to ask--What greater right have men to dictate to women the rules by
which they shall live, than women have to dictate to men? All they
demand--all, at least, that is demanded in the volumes noticed in this
review--is fair play for women; 'A clear stage and no favour.' Let

'natural selection,' as Miss Wedgwood well says, decide which is the
superior, and in what. Let it, by the laws of supply and demand,
draught women as well as men into the employments and positions for
which they are most fitted by nature. To those who believe that the
laws of nature are the laws of God, the Vox Dei in rebus revelata; that
to obey them is to prove our real faith in God, to interfere with them (as
we did in social relations throughout the Middle Ages, and as we did
till lately in commercial relations likewise) by arbitrary restrictions is to
show that we have no faith in God, and consider ourselves wise enough
to set right an ill-made universe--to them at least this demand must
seem both just and modest.
Meanwhile, many women, and some men also, think the social status of
women is just now in special peril. The late extension of the franchise
has admitted to a share in framing our laws many thousands of men of
that class which--whatever be their other virtues, and they are many--is
most given to spending their wives' earnings in drink, and personally
maltreating them; and least likely--to judge from the actions of certain
trades--to admit women to free competition for employment. Further
extension of the suffrage will, perhaps, in a very few years, admit many
thousands more. And it is no wonder if refined and educated women, in
an age which is disposed to see in the possession of a vote the best
means of self-defence, should ask for votes, for the defence, not merely
of themselves, but of their lowlier sisters, from the tyranny of men who
are as yet--to the shame of the State--most of them altogether
uneducated.
As for the reasonableness of such a demand, I can only say--what has
been said elsewhere--that the present state of things, 'in which the
franchise is considered as something so important and so sacred that
the most virtuous, the most pious, the most learned, the most wealthy,
the most benevolent, the most justly powerful woman, is refused it, as
something too precious for her; and yet it is entrusted, freely and
hopefully, to any illiterate, drunken, wife-beating ruffian who can
contrive to keep a home over his head,' is equally unjust and absurd.
There may be some sufficient answer to the conclusion which

conscience and common sense, left to themselves, would draw from
this statement of the case as it now stands: but none has occurred to me
which is not contrary to the first principle of a free government.
This I presume to be: that every citizen has a right to share in choosing
those who make the laws; in order to prevent, as far as he can, laws
being made which are unjust and injurious to him, to his family, or to
his class; and that all are to be considered as 'active' citizens, save the
criminal, the insane, or those unable to support themselves. The best
rough test of a man's being able to support himself is, I doubt not, his
being able to keep a house over his head, or, at least, a permanent
lodging; and that, I presume, will be in a few years the one and
universal test of active citizenship, unless we should meanwhile obtain
the boon of a compulsory Government education, and an educational
franchise founded thereon. But, it must be asked--and answered
also--What is there in such a test, even as it stands now, only partially
applied, which is not as fair for women as it is for men? 'Is it just that
an educated man, who is able independently to earn his own livelihood,
should have a vote: but that an equally educated woman, equally able
independently to earn her own livelihood, should not? Is it just that a
man owning a certain quantity of property should have a vote in respect
of that property: but that a woman owning the same quantity of
property, and perhaps a hundred or a thousand times more, should have
no vote?' What difference, founded on Nature and Fact, exists between
the two cases?
If it be said that Nature and Fact (arguments grounded on aught else are
to be left to monks and mediaeval jurists) prove that women are less
able than men to keep a house over their head, or to manage their
property, the answer is that Fact is the