Women and Politics | Page 5

other way. Women are just as
capable as men of managing a large estate, a vast wealth. Mr. Mill
gives a fact which surprised even him--that the best administered
Indian States were those governed by women who could neither read
nor write, and were confined all their lives to the privacy of the harem.
And any one who knows the English upper classes must know more
than one illustrious instance--besides that of Miss Burdett Coutts, or the
late Dowager Lady Londonderry--in which a woman has proved herself

able to use wealth and power as well, or better, than most men. The
woman at least is not likely, by gambling, horseracing, and profligacy,
to bring herself and her class to shame. Women, too, in every town
keep shops. Is there the slightest evidence that these shops are not as
well managed, and as remunerative, as those kept by men?--unless,
indeed, as too often happens, poor Madame has her Mantalini and his
vices to support, as well as herself and her children. As for the woman's
power of supporting herself and keeping up at least a lodging
respectably, can any one have lived past middle age without meeting
dozens of single women, or widows, of all ranks, who do that, and do it
better and more easily than men, because they do not, like men, require
wine, beer, tobacco, and sundry other luxuries? So wise and thrifty are
such women, that very many of them are able, out of their own pittance,
to support beside themselves others who have no legal claim upon them.
Who does not know, if he knows anything of society, the truth of Mr.
Butler's words?--'It is a very generally accepted axiom, and one which
it seems has been endorsed by thoughtful men, without a sufficiently
minute examination into the truth of it, that a man--in the matter of
maintenance--means generally a man, a wife and children; while a
woman means herself alone, free of dependence. A closer inquiry into
the facts of life would prove that conclusions have been too hastily
adopted on the latter head. I believe it may be said with truth that there
is scarcely a female teacher in England, who is not working for another
or others besides herself,--that a very large proportion are urged on of
necessity in their work by the dependence on them of whole families,
in many cases of their own aged parents,--that many hundreds are
keeping broken-down relatives, fathers, and brothers, out of the
workhouse, and that many are widows supporting their own children. A
few examples, taken at random from the lists of governesses applying
to the Institution in Sackville Street, London, would illustrate this point.
And let it be remembered that such cases are the rule, and not the
exception. Indeed, if the facts of life were better known, the hollowness
of this defence of the inequality of payment would become manifest;
for it is in theory alone that in families man is the only bread-winner,
and it is false to suppose that single women have no obligations to
make and to save money as sacred as those which are imposed on a
man by marriage; while there is this difference, that a man may avoid

such obligation if he pleases, by refraining from marriage, while the
poverty of parents, or the dependence of brothers and sisters, are
circumstances over which a woman obliged to work for others has no
control.'
True: and, alas! too true. But what Mr. Butler asserts of governesses
may be asserted, with equal truth, of hundreds of maiden aunts and
maiden sisters who are not engaged in teaching, but who spend their
money, their time, their love, their intellect, upon profligate or
broken-down relations, or upon their children; and who exhibit through
long years of toil, anxiety, self-sacrifice, a courage, a promptitude, a
knowledge of business and of human nature, and a simple but lofty
standard of duty and righteousness, which if it does not fit them for the
franchise, what can?
It may be, that such women would not care to use the franchise, if they
had it. That is their concern, not ours. Voters who do not care to vote
may be counted by thousands among men; some of them, perhaps, are
wiser than their fellows, and not more foolish; and take that method of
showing their wisdom. Be that as it may, we are no more justified in
refusing a human being a right, because he may not choose to exercise
it, than we are in refusing to pay him his due, because he may probably
hoard the money.
The objection that such women are better without a vote, because a
vote would interest them in politics, and so interfere with their
domestic duties, seems slender enough. What domestic duties