THE WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE DEBATE.
AATE read with true astonishment Mr. Stansfeld's statement V V in the flebate of Wednesday that Mr. Forsyth's Bill would not be "a stepping-stone to future legislation," nay, that "it was a bond fide measure, which would conduce to some- thing like finality in our representative institutions." How any man of Mr. Stansfeld's political brain and well-known political sympathies should believe this, is to our 'minds abso- lutely unintelligible. In the first place, Mr. Forsyth's Bill is utterly unjust on the principles of those whom it professes to satisfy. Many of them say, and say with incontrovertible logic, that in giving the vote only to those women who are also legally householders, it excludes the great majority of women who best deserve a vote. Not only do many of them say this, but they proclaim it. Miss Bright's statement quoted by Sir Henry James, was, as he said, an anticipatory declaration of war against Mr. Forsyth's Bill, in case it should become law. More- over, as a matter of fact, nothing can be more ridiculous than to assert that this Bill would really put men and women on the same footing in relation to electoral rights. No doubt nominally it does so, if it really gives the vote to all women who are householders, of which, in the case of married women with real or leasehold property settled on them, there seems to be much question. But that is only nominal equality. What can be more obvious than that the choice of household franchise as a test of electoral qualification would never have been made at all, if the object had been to put women and men on an equality, or would at least never have been made till the law had been so altered as to recognise both the man and his wife as the joint legal occupiers of any house in which they resided. You might almost as well say that if it had been one essential qualification for the franchise that a man, in order to possess it, must have attained the height of five feet nine, and that then you had so altered the rule as to give it to either men or women who had attained that height,—such an alteration would put women on an equality with men. Obviously no limitation likely to exclude the great majority of the fittest women, would ever have been thought of, if the original framers of the fran- chise law had contemplated putting women on an equality with men. It is absurd to argue that Parliament regarded the pecuniary responsibilities of a householder as affording a specific guarantee of political fitness. No doubt it did. But no one ever supposed that that was the only conceivable guarantee; and no one would ever have thought of selecting that particular one at all as the chief guarantee, if it had been supposed at the time that it was one which could not be possessed by a very large class of well-qualified voters. Therefore, unless Mr. Stansfeld is prepared to maintain that, as compared with single women, a wife is specially unfitted for the franchise, in consequence of her matrimonial status,—and we are sure ho is not pre- pared to maintain any such extraordinary thesis,—he must have been in a very dreamy state when he declared that a measure excluding the great majority of mature and prudent and responsible women altogether from the franchise, would be seriously accepted by the friends of woman franchise as in some substantial sense a final settlement of the question. Of course the first thing they would say, after this concession had been fairly wrung from Parliament, would be,—' women have now been put on an equality with men in relation to a test of political fitness devised at a time when no one dreamt of giving women the franchise ; the equality, however, is but a mockery until you make the test itself one that is fair to women, instead of merely admitting the right of women who happen to satisfy it to be admitted under a most unjust and unequal test.' Nor is there any conceivable answer in equity to such an argument. It would, indeed, be so obviously and over- poweringly complete, that the battle would immediately begin again on the old issue, only that the opponents of the women's franchise would now be at the great disadvantage of having to argue for withdrawing altogether the fragmentary privilege accorded, while its friends would be appealing to Parliament to abide by its accepted logic and complete its work. Mr. Stans- feld is usually as lucid as he is fair in argument. And we can ill understand how he, of all men, who is certainly not at all unfamiliar with the prevalent Continental belief that universal suffrage is the only reasonable franchise, should have been able to persuade himself that a device of this kind, which puts women on an equality with men only in relation to a species of electoral condition which by its essence excludes the great majority of women altogether, could ever be accepted by reasonable beings as in any sense, however limited, a final settle- ment of the question. That impression was, we are convinced, in Mr. Stansfeld a mere hallucination of debate,—a species of illu- sion to which we should have said he is usually as little liable as any leading man in the Liberal party. Had we ourselves been favourable to the concession of the women's franchise, we could never have supported Mr. Forsyth's Bill as anything but a very small instalment of what was due to women. Being opposed to it, as we are, we object to it doubly,—first on the ground of its principle, which is very wide, and then for its preposterous moderation in proposing to accept as a settlement what is in no true sense a satisfaction of that principle.
- The debate of Wednesday was unsatisfactory in more ways than one. The friends of Mr. Forsyth's measure were either very reserved or very dim of vision, while its opponents seem to us not to have made clear to themselves what it is they really wish to guard against. On one point they were clear enough. They wish to keep the ultimate political power co-extensive with the ultimate physical power, and that, as we have often said, seems to us thoroughly wise. It might be fatal to set up an electorate which desired one result, while
the physical force of the nation was devoted to the object of effecting an opposite result. But though that consideration is important, it is not the only important one which bears on the case. After all, if it were, as it might be, the predominant wish of men to be guided as much by the judgment of women as by that of men in political discussion, there would be no danger in the possibility of an abstract divergence between the moral and the physical force of the nation, for in that case the desire of men to defer to the wishes of a majority, whether constituted of men or of women, would be so much stronger than their dislike of the particular measures likely to be carried by a feminine majority, that they would willingly execute even a law they did not approve. The ultimate question, therefore, even admitting to the full the force of the consideration we have named, is whether or not men would ever really wish to give equal effect to men's and women's political judgment. And that, again, must depend in some measure on another question,—whether either men or women wish to encourage the entrance of women into the more conspicuous arenas of public life. Say what you will, Women's Suffrage means women's entrance into public life. Parliament could not and would not long exclude women after they had once been admitted to the electoral franchise. Sooner or later, if the same line of thought and concession were continued, we should have women devoting themselves as seriously to the cultivation of qualifications for public life as men, and endeavouring with
more or less success to take up the careers which best fitted them for it. Now is that what either men or women in general de- sire ? It is idle to say that nature will prevent women from doing what they are not fitted for doing well. That is not true. It will of course prevent women from doing well what they are not fitted to do well, but it will not at all prevent them from doing it badly. The world is already full of examples of wasted careers, of mis-directed efforts, nay, even of what may be called abortive successes, —that is, of careers which never attain the great qualities of those careers which they supersede, and yet render the latter practically impossible. Just as wealth is so great a poli- tical power that it more and more tends to shoulder political capacity out of the Parliamentary arena, and yet does not in the least produce the great political qualities which it overshadows, so it is perfectly conceivable that women might develop a sort of political "push" which would be most effective as a mode of winning in the conflict with men, and might yet not combine with that political "push" any of the greater qualities of political life. We confess to having no confidence in Nature in that sense in which Mr. Stansfield exhorts us to have confidence in her. Nature does not prevent us from making great and fatal mistakes. Nature does not preclude periods of real social and political retrogression. Nature admits and often appears to welcome the multiplication of bad types, supposing some of the lower conditions to be more favour- able to those bad types than to the good. If we deliberately believe that women will be not only more perfect beings while they are kept as far as possible, out of the field of public life, nay that they will exercise a higher influence even on politics while that influence is limited to the discussions of private life and the sphere of the intellect and the affections, it is worse than childish, it is blind and fatalistic, to rely on Nature' for preventing them from going wrong after we have done all in our power to open the field of public life to their competition. We are not at all disposed to doubt that the influence of women on politics will become a much greater and much more positive and salutary influence than it now is. So far, we go a long way with the party of Women's Rights. But we more than doubt whether that influence will ever be near as good if it is exercised by direct competition with men at the polls and in Parliament, as it will be while it is confined to the use of private influence over the direct electors. We wish to see the fullest culture for women's minds, the fullest occupation for their consciences and hearts. But we do not believe, as far as we can interpret the signs either of the the past or of the present, that women will ever be as ideally perfect, or as powerful for good, if they are to strive to do all that men do in the way that men do it. This is why we altogether disbelieve that men would ever really defer to direct majorities composed of women, and even that the vote of those direct majorities would ever be half as sagacious and as beneficial to the nation as the influence of the women who compose them, if exercised indirectly, might very well be. In the last resort, the question is, after all, one of the true
ideal for women ; and on that question our ideal is not that of the Women's Rights party, though it is by no means that of the conventional antagonists of that party who describe woman as a pretty toy or even as a delicate "presence."
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