20 MAY 1876, Page 12

THE JOCULAR PLEAS FOR AND AGAINST WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE.

yr is, we suppose, possible to be jocular on most human subjects.

Certainly there are but few on which something of the kind is not attempted, though there are very few on which anything of the kind is attempted with much success. But whenever the relations of the sexes is concerned, it is quite certain that jocularity will be largely drawn upon to prejudge or settle the question under discussion, and all but certain that the jocular argument will be worth very little, beyond the excuse it will find for those to laugh who were anxious to laugh before. The few women who are in favour of Women's Suffrage are sometimes angry when the jocular argument is turned against them, as it often is, with a certain amount of popular effect, for nothing touches the " Philis- tine " mind more deeply than the dread of being identified with a cause which can be made to look ridiculous. But they are not slow to turn the same sort of artillery, so far as it is possible, against their opponents, and in the meeting on Saturday at St. George's Hall there was a somewhat liberal use of the jocular argument against the adversaries of women's suffrage. Of course, one knows beforehand very well how the jocular argument will run, when one knows the mouth from which it proceeds. We know that in Mr. Smollett's mouth, it will take- the form of somewhat coarse ridicule at the notion of women meddling in matters the treatment of which by them, in any form, is much more likely to unfit them for the use of women's characteristic influence over life than to exercise any healthy influence on the particular question at issue. We know equally well that in the month of one of the great female champions of women's rights, the jocular argument will take the form of quizzing men for the vanity and self-conceit which induce them to regard themselves, as a sex, as so much more im- portant to women than all other sublunary affairs. Again, in the mouths of the opponents of women's suffrage, the jocular argument is apt to take the form of ridiculing the want of logic in the woman who first claims her right to be regarded as an ordinary politician, and then lays claim to all the immunities of her sex when she finds herself treated as an ordinary politician and consequently receives a certain share of the mud which is so freely used in political discus- sion, or as Miss Cobbe termed it, "the brickbats and rotten eggs of politics"; while in the mouths of the friends of women's suffrage the jocular argument will, of course, be turned the other way ; and scorn will be poured on the men who, while holding up to the world their high ideal of the purity of women as the reason why they cannot bear to see them soiled by contact with political life, yet do not scruple to impute freely very questionable tendencies to the women who happen to be their especial antagonists in this controversy.

For our own parts, we think there is truth in all the various modes of presenting the jocular argument on the different sides of this question, but we venture to suggest that the more jocular the argument becomes,—the more fitted, that is, to produce shouts of laughter in the audience,—the less of real justice there is in it. We do not doubt that many women take up from the highest motives subjects with which it is very unpleasant for them to meddle, and from which they shrink ; nor do we doubt that they would in general do much better to leave them alone, since, in the first place, they lose a great deal more influence on affairs in general than they gain, even if they happen to be right, by intervening in questions the treatment of which robs them of their characteristic power ; and in the second place, because they are very unlikely, and as a rule, are in fact, very unfit, to treat such questions with the impartiality and coolness requisite for any good result. But the more this paradox is displayed and its ludicrous aspect insisted on, the less of justice there is in it. At best it is not a thing to laugh at, but rather to regret. Inconsistencies of this kind run down to the very heart of human practice, and are dis- coverable on all subjects ; but even if there be a certain uncon- scious mixture of unhealthy with healthy motives in the characters of those who take a new course in relation to matters of this kind, there is infinitely more danger of doing a gross injustice in making their conduct the subject of ridicule than there is hope of rectifying the blunder of the innovators. And so, too, when Miss Cobbe returns the fire by saying what, as far as we know, is quite the reverse of true, that "masculine juries are cold enough when a woman loses herproperty, her limbs, or even her life ; but when she loses a man' [by a breach of promise of marriage], their sympathy and sense of indignation at her wrong is to the last degree affecting and in- structive ;" and when, again, she quotes the saying of some brute of a murderer,—" Do you think they would hang a man for kill- ing an old woman?"—as evidence how much more lightly women's life is prized than men's, by vulgar criminal opinion, she clearly fires off her brickbat or her decomposing egg with almost as little scruple or hesitation as Mr. Smollett him- self, though, no doubt, it hits an obtuser head. As Miss Cobbe, who has a very large knowledge of human nature, knows perfectly well, the motive which influences a jury to give excessive damages to a woman and none to a man in a case of breach of promise, is simply the conviction that having been jilted never hurts a man's prospect of marrying, if he is so inclined, and that it is somewhat mean of him to attempt to fine a woman in money for a caprice of feeling ; while a man's public refusal to marry a woman to whom he has been engaged, will tend greatly to pre- vent her marrying in future, so that it is less unfair to fine him for a caprice of feeling which has graver material consequences than the other. All that may be a very conventional computation

of very vulgar interests, but there is no masculine self-importance or egotism in it, and we suspect that a jury of women would not only take the same view, but that they might take it in an ex- aggerated form. What Mr. Bright appealed to the well-known issues of breach-of-promise cases to prove, was simply that women's interests are not judged by men from the point of view of a hostile or competing class, but rather with a decided bias of sympathy, a disposition to think many transgressions of the law grave in a man which are venial in a woman,—and for this purpose it was quite to the point. That men can be silly and coxcombical as to their all-importance to women every one knows, but Miss Cobbe has not put her finger on any illustration of this fact, but rather on one which is quite irrelevant to it ; and as for the murderer who seemed to think it venial to kill an old woman, why, if he had killed an old man or a little child he would, no doubt, have urged that that was much more venial. The notion that giving the suffrage to a handful of women would alter the moral importance attached by murderers to the character of their crime when committed on a member of the female sex, is one which we must say that it took a very wild imagination—we will not offend Miss Cobbe by suggesting, what would not be true, that it took a woman's imagination—to conceive,—for in point of fact, when either men or women are in search of a taunt that will tell in a speech, they are very apt indeed to make the wildest conjectures do duty for sober truths. It seems to U8 that in relation to female suffrage, neither the advocates nor the opponents of the measure do their cause much good by the fun they poke at the other side. Either it touches the heart of very grave paradoxes, and then jocularity is generally flagrantly unjust ; or it puts a false interpreta- tion on well-known facts, and then it is beside the mark. Even with regard to the bad logic which makes women claim at once an equal share in the struggles of political life, and at the same time a perfect immunity from all the levities and harsh- nesses of that rough-and-tumble phase of existence, and which makes men speak of women as too sacred for the wear-and-tear of politics, in the same breath in which they are doinitheir best to make some women at least appear mean and ridiculous, we do not think that either side has turned to any very good account the comic properties of 'which there has been so liberal a use made. The knowledge of these inconsistencies is of the very essence of the case on both sides. The friends of women's suffrage cannot help seeing the unreality of the chivalry which idealises the sex, and yet casts mud at all those members of it who are opposed to themselves. The opponents of women's suffrage cannot help seeing the unreality of the political justice which asks for equality, and complains of the very first symptoms of equality. But as far as we can see, neither the one party nor the other gains anything by the attempt to put this inconsistency in a jocular light.. The result in both cases is no doubt to stimulate in some degree the prepossessions of theirhiends, but in a still greater degree the prepossessions of their opponents. Let us add, that as far as we can see, the humour is thin and somewhat acid on both sides. The jokes at the expense of the masculine agitating women may well be set off against the jokes at the expense of the self-centred, conceited men, and withdrawn from the argument, without in any degree diminishing the weight of the considerations on either side. The conventional notion that the mutual view of each other taken by the two sexes is an inexhaustible store of laughter- producing images is, we suspect, a bit of used-up Philistinism. After all, the current jokes, at least in relation to this subject, are thin, and not always very good-humoured.

But though we decline to add to the stock of very common- place sarcasms on the subject, we would, in conclusion, entreat the friends of women's suffrage to reconsider for a moment their logical position, when they take such very high ground on behalf of a reform which, as they solemnly tell us, is to have its com- plete consummation in the addition of a few thousand women- householders, widows or spinsters, to the Register. What we observe is, that while every speaker of any note at the meeting on Saturday disclaimed any ulterior end at all beyond this, almost all, of the ladies at least, used language which made this humble object appear perfectly ludicrous. Miss Cobbe, for instance, eomplained of the educational wrongs of women, a complaint ihr which we quite agree with her, though we believe that women have had and have rather more to do with the apathy on this sub- ject, than men. But if she be right and we wrong, if this wrong be really due to the deficiency in women's representation, does she pretend for a moment that the addition of a handful of women in every constituency will turn the scale? if her interpretation of the facts be correct, ought she not to ask for the representation of all grown-up women, having equal claims to a sound political

I judgment with the represented men, whether householders or not? I Again, she urges the gross wrongs of mothers, who have not equal ! power with fathers to direct the education of their children, and I she asks as a remedy the enfranchisement of a minute class of women who can hardly by any possibility be suffering from the wrong to which she refers. And Miss Tod quotes Burke's saying that he did not know how to qualify "by odious and unworthy !names" "millions of our countrymen contending with one heart for an admission to privileges which we have ever thought our own happiness," and then she asks for what?—not the en- franchisement of the millions of Englishwomen, but of the little knot of women who happen to rent a house in their own name. Can any non-sequitur be more absurd? We are told that the change will make women, as a class, more public- spirited and less effeminate, and then we are told that it will only affect a very few women almost accidentally selected out of that class. It is argued that if women possess the qualifications of voters, they should not be denied the privileges only because they are women. Well, if that be true, is it not just as true that in settling or revising the qualification itself, you ought to choose one which is as just to women as it is to men ? And would any human being who held that women and men should do the same kind of work in life, affirm that a householding qualification is as just to women as it is to men ? We do not agree with the friends of women's franchise, but if we did agree with them at all, we should be ashamed to pretend that our present householding qualification would be just to women, even if it were fairly and equally appVd. The moderates in this movement have thoroughly hollow ground under their feet, which they cannot maintain for a moment. No one can deny that when the householding qualification was fixed upon, it was fixed upon without any dream of the arguments now used for a woman's franchise, and would never have been thought of as a fair test of political sobriety, by any one who was possessed with the notion that women had the same kind of work to do in life as men. The first thing for women to do who really wish to prosecute political aims is to rid their mind of shams. And it is a sham, and nothing else, to pretend that the arguments put forward for the political duties of women will be satisfied by their inclusion under a political formula which could only have been conceived by politicians who never for a moment thought of including in their net am many competent persons of the one sex as of the other, and who, if they had contemplated such a result, would have devised either some large supplementary test for women separately, or some common test of an altogether different nature. The jocular arguments on both sides are not very useful, and indeed, in some respects, mischievous ; but both sides might with advantage compete with each other in the attempt to get rid of shams ; and if they did, we should not hear much more of "the moderates" in the agitation for the women's franchise.