The Franchise Bill
THE Government Franchise Bill, for Parliamentary and Local elections, was formally presented in the House of Commons by the Home Secretary on Monday. It is intended that it should become law in time to take its full effect upon the Registers before the next General Election. This means that there will then be a very substantial majority of female voters over male voters. It is an astonishing revolution which has come about so rapidly that it needs some courage not to call it an alarm- ing one. It is so short a time since men alone approached the urns in this country as they had in others through the centuries of recorded history of civilization. Yet, com- pared with other revolutions, it has been slow and orderly. The first step was when the woman rate-payer found her name justly registered with those of her male neighbours on the list of voters for Local Authorities. Step by step women have advanced to the apparently supreme power which is to be hers in Local and in Parliamentary govern- ment. Whether she will really increase the enormous power that she has always wielded indirectly, no one can say.
Our world to-clay has to confess that it lacks the wit of an Aristophanes who might clear our thinking by a new Ecclesiazusae. The War, however, cleared many people's minds and changed others. Our position is probably the same as that of a large number. During the Suffragette agitation we opposed female Parliamen- tary suffrage as strongly as any of the wise men and women who were wholly in sympathy with us, and we still believe that in those days the great majority of women were apathetic about it, if not opposed to it. We still see truth in the generalizations that were urged against • it, generalizations to which, of course, there always were, and always will be, particular exceptions. Woman has not, on the whole, shown herself to be a" political animal." She sees private duty in a different perspective from 'public duty. She admires and condemns by intuition rather than by judgment. Is not a woman who reasons fairly and patiently still tainted as having a "masculine mind " ? Has the "charm," which is still the glory that she would possess above all other qualities and which men seek first in her, any relation to judicious opinion or intellectual power ? These objections still • have force, but the arguments in favour of female suffrage • have gained great weight, so much so that we have fully acquiesced in the grant of the vote. Those arguments had some weight with us before the War, although so ill-presented by the conspicuous leaders. We admitted years ago that they were not only better presented by women's conduct during the War and after, but thatthey became irresistible. It is of little use to urge that this should have been the moment to enact that no one man or woman (or should we say boy or girl ?) should hence- forth begin to vote before the age of twenty-five years. The difficulties are obvious, but it would reduce the unwieldy numbers which will be mechanically trouble- some, and a raising of the age would be biologically sound, since it is recognized that as a species develops in intelligence its members reach maturity more slowly. The savage quickly reaches his physical and mental maturity at an early age and stops there. The higher types are naturally not fully developed until they reach a progressively later age. It is of more use to point to the faith we may have in the advance of education which is the excuse for, and our safeguard in, this peaceful revolution. Contrast our people with -the Russians. In that unhappy land a cynical oligarchy prates of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, knowing that they hold as in a vice millions of scarcely educated people who cannot yet rise to any high degree of self-government! In England, thanks to Church and State, educational. advance has been steady throughout the centuries and ' made our revolutions peaceful and really progressive. Therein lies our true hope now.
Though the pace of the advance has been astonishing; the Prime Minister and others hare not been hasty Or thoughtless about it. Mr. Baldwin made two speeches about it last week, in which he dealt with it very seriously and with a broad mind, connecting it with the bigger subject of democracy, the democracy that he said must be made safe for the world. He knows the seriousness of the task of every man and woman voter. He knows, for instance, the kind of vices into which democracy is tempted to fall, and which were rammed home last week by that clever and independent -thinker, Mr. Austin Hopkinson, who recounted before the Charity Organiza- tion Society some of the tales of public corruption which were familiar td him ; the corruption and the incompe- tence that lead Men to accept, as in Italy, or even to demand a saviour from themselves to whom they surren- der in despair their liberty. Mr. Baldwin's speech to the Society for Equal Citizenship did not hide his knowledge that emotion is a bad basis for political work. His speech to the Junior Imperial League, quite delightful in its. almost fatherly tone, had so much wisdom in it that we should like to think that every new possessor of the suffrage could hear or read it. It was full of hope and encouragement, salted with practical sense, and it bade his audience shirk none of the responsibility that comes with privilege. "You do not go into politics for what • you can get, you go there for what you can give and do.. . . Do not talk about our rights, talk about our duties." For democracy is on its trial. Again he urged the need of patience. If anything makes us feel chari- table towards the wrong-headed theories preached by Socialists, it is the youthful, inexperienced enthusiasm which accepts them as a means of setting the wrongs of the -world right by the day after to-morrow. But all sure progress is slow. Those who bear the burden and heat of the day in sowing must be content to know that others will reap the benefits of- their labour. In holding out his hopes of steady progress of the world or of our nation, Mr. Baldwin evidently had in mind, not only the last line, but the whole passage in which Lucretius applies his atomic theory to -the aggregate and ends by saying :--- "Inter se mortales mutua vivunt. Augeseunt- aliae gentes, aliae minuuntur. Inque brevi spatio mutantur meek anittiantum Et quasi eursores vitai lampada tradunt."
It is by the advances of individuals putting their good will and ability into the common stock that the world will justify its survival and achieve its progress. The spreading of political power among a greater number • of men and women may well lead to more sense of duty,' • more sense of responsibility, a greater sense of the union • of the whole nation and the unity of effort that should make for ordered progress. Democracy led by high-: • minded men and spurning the demagogue is the British ideal of government. The new Franchise Bill ought to be for it may well be, regarded as one of the final steps - tip to -that ideal.
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