THE INSURRECTIONARY WOMEN.
1VIRb. FAWCETT delivered last week at Brighton a very temperate and clever lecture in favour of extending the political franchise to women,—a lecture of which any unpre-
judiced man would say at least thus much, that it showed no feminine disposition at all to ignore the arguments on the other side, and quite as much candour and logic as any lecturer of the other sex would have been likely to evince in appreciating their worth. Her lecture contains a far more complete and exhaustive treatment of the subject than could be expected from a number of stray speakers, even such as the Cavendish Square Rooms heard on Saturday ; and yet Mrs. Fawcett does not seem to us to have dealt with the strongest argument against her case at all, nor to have put some of the less strong ones in their strongest form. She admits, indeed, very candidly the force of the argument from the exceedingly little wish existing among women for the
suffrage, and remarks thereon with perfect fairness that, though this is no theoretic reason at all for not giving the
suffrage to all, and letting those who do wish for it use it, still Englishmen are practical beings, who will not, as a rule, right theoretic grievances, but will demand evidence that the grievance .is something more than theoretic before they right it. There would be no disposition, for instance, to pass a bill giving married women full rights over their own property if there were no producible cases, or if there were only a very few and insionificant cases producible, of serious grievance resulting from the present state of the law. We have enough to fighting with evils that have a very substan- tial existence. 'sT'o one would wish the practical English Legislature to begin contending against potential, or hardly more than potential, evils. Mrs. Fawcett then distinctly sees, — what the Cavendish-Square orators and oratrixes hardly seem to see, — that the strongest fact against them is the faintness of the women's own hearts on the sub- ject ; but even Mrs. Fawcett does not see apparently one grossly mischievous result of conferring political power on a large class utterly indifferent to its use. That evil is the tendency to increase enormously the already too great corruption of our political constituencies. There is nothing plainer than that if we force power on an indifferent constituency we do not simply waste our labour, but do an immense deal of harm. Human nature is not equal to the temptation of certain gain to arise from an action which it is otherwise absolutely indif- ferent to me whether I do or let alone. Of course, if I care nothing at all whether I vote for A or B, and A promises me a sovereign, while B promises me nothing, I shall in all probability vote for A, and hardly even realize that it is wrong, because there is no standard of wrong and right in the matter, and the offer of the sovereign occupies what would other- wise be a moral vacancy. No evidence is more striking than that which relates to the active interest taken by the women of a corrupt place in the bribes to be obtained. Very naturally, poor things, not having a political idea in their own heads, they
think it John's bounden duty to think of the interests of his family,—" the little mouths to be fed" and the possible Sunday clothes to be bought,—and make exceedingly impressive appeals to the father of their family to get the highest attainable price.
This is no matter of moral conjecture. All the recent in- quiries into electoral corruption show the women's influence to be one of the principal incentives to corruption, and chiefly for this reason, that they have no positive political interests of their own, and consider it all one which candidate beats, but not all one what the winning candidate pays. Give the women votes without giving them political interests, and you will much more than double the area of corruption. Whether they bargain for their husbands or not, they will bargain for themselves. They will hold it to be a sacred duty to their children to make their vote fetch some- thing tidy for the housekeeping if they can. We repeat, then, that it is not to be thought of for a moment to give women equal rights with men,—and we are happy to see that Mrs. Fawcett and others of the advocates of the women's suffrage have abandoned the hypocritical little pretence of agitating only for votes for independent women-householders, and argue boldly that wives should have equal political privileges with their husbands,—so long as only a very small proportion of them betray real political interests. The only security against political corruption is sincere political conviction. If you entrust swords to those who have no cause of their own to fight for, of course they will sell them and become mercenary troops.
But if this be so, the very essence of the case for according political rights to women, should be a proof not yet forth- coming, and not apparently very likely to be forthcoming, that a fair proportion of the women to be endowed with them, concern themselves about the use of them. As we have often pointed out, it was the demeanour of the operative class in relation to the Manchester cotton famine and the American war, which finally and justly overcame n11 the arguments against its complete enfranchisement. It was the absence of any such indication of political competence in relation to the agricultural labourers which excluded them even from the all-embracing political love of Mr. Disraeli's Radical heart. And before an absolute majority of the whole constituency,—for women being in excess of men would no doubt constitute an absolute majority if wives voted as well as husbands, and daughters on the same terms as sons,—is admitted to the franchise, we do not feel the least doubt that Parliament will require convincing proof of their real interest in the franchise for other than marketable purposes.
Bat this objection, which Mrs. Fawcett and Mr. Mill and Lord Amberley, and the rest of the agitators and agitatrixes really ignore, goes perhaps even further to the root of the matter. We are quite alive to the possibility that what one man calls instinct and another man calls prejudice, cannot be decided by the ipse dixit of either to be either instinct or prejudice. It is quite a possible thing,—we admit it freely,—that the dislike felt by men and women alike, but, on the whole, much more keenly by women than by men, to the entrance of women into active political life, may be a mere pre- judice. Still, if a prejudice, it is the prejudice of cen- turies. It is a prejudice which no nation in Europe or America has ever yet shaken off. It is in very close' analogy indeed to the prejudice against women-soldiers. That, too, may be a prejudice. We are not at all sure whether Mr. Mill and some of his supporters may not be prepared to assert that it is one, and to demand the formation of a woman's regiment for any women anxious to serve. But that at least is not as yet asserted, and we refer to it not in the least to throw ridicule on the other assertion, but simply to illustrate the position that there are some preposses- sions on subjects closely akin, which the women's rights' advo- cates themselves have scarcely dared as yet to call mere preju- dices, and are disposed to leave to the domain,—rather quickly vanishing,—of natural instincts. Now our point is this,—if
it be admitted that there is such a thing at all as instinct in the matter,—if there be such an instinct, which can indeed be violated, but which every one, even the friends of women's rights, would deprecate violating, and which restricts the occupa- tions and the so-called sphere' of women,—is it not quite
possible at least that the instinct may extend further than the new school of reformers suppose ? If physical struggle and conflict be really alien to the nature of women, if daring,— we do not mean courage,—is not exactly the kind of virtue
which even the new political school regard as suitable to women, may not the same instinct which keeps women out
of open strife in physical warfare have a legitimate field in moral
matters also ? and may it not be at the root of that aversion to claim and exercise political rights, and to some extent, though of course very much less, at the root of that domestic in- difference to questions of abstract politics, which so large a number of women evidently do, as a matter of fact, feel We do not presume to assert that this is so. But we do say that the absolute confidence with which it is now assumed that there can be no moral field appropriate for the labour of men which is not equally appropriate for the labour of women, is at least as utterly unjustifiable from analogy as it is from history. If women are equally well fitted with men for all ordinary spheres of labour, surely it is strange that in point of fact the history of all nations has told a different tale up to the present day. Of course it may be said that it is solely in physical spheres of labour that the difference lies ; but, at least, it is a priori extremely improbable that the great physical difference should not involve larger differences both of capacity and taste.
But after all, our argument only comes to this,—that while we are ready to admit that prejudice has most mischievously curtailed the province and interfered with the rights of women, we are not ready to admit so sweeping a proposition as that every such limitation,—even those which women have so eagerly co-operated in imposing on themselves,—is a mere result of prejudice. A priori it seems in the highest degree natural and probable that some such marked limitations will remain even when the gradual influence of discussion and experi- ment has removed all blind prepossessions. It is precisely as likely that women will habitually take up all men's functions and duties, as that men will habitually take up all women's. And in the meantime, and while we are feeling our way to the true mean between the present foolish conventional limita- tions on women's field of action and the extreme women's rights theory, what can be wiser than to deliver our judgment on each particular case as it arises on the evidence before us. That women will make first-rate physicians and first-rate teachers, and that a very special want exists for the aid of women in both departments of life, is, we take it, clearly demonstrated. That they may one day exercise a very bene- ficial influence on politics we are quite inclined to believe. Hut whether it will be by directly dividing the suffrage with men, or by more indirect methods, seems to us exceedingly doubtful. But this, at all events, is clear :—so long as the vast majority of women care nothing for politics and know nothing of politics, and would decline political functions as such if urged upon them, you cannot, without vastly extending the area of corruption, give the franchise experimentally to the many, for the sake of the few. As it is, there is no influence more notoriously favourable to selling votes than the woman's. To attempt to cure this by giving her a vote of her own to sell, would indeed be outbidding Hahnemann, but certainly not curing like by like. If women want votes, and are to have votes, let us have some evidence such as we had con- cerning the artizans, that they are politically instructed enough to wish for votes for political reasons, and to use them politically, and not as mere disposable property, when they have got them. There is no use launching out on the high a priori line in a case like this. It may well be that we • shall find that we have had our prejudices on this matter, as women have had theirs. But the way to prove this is to show us women in large numbers taking a rational and intelligent view of political questions, and sincerely desiring the right of direct representation. Mrs. Fawcett and the women who spoke in the Hanover Square Rooms, talk, we admit, like very sensible persons indeed. But as yet they have quite failed to evoke any considerable sympathy with the movement, and while they talk of tens of thousands of petitioners, there are millions of women who not only are no politicians, and remain silent, but are actively opposed to the attempt to claim the suffrage. This is clearly a case for tentative action, and not for grand generalizations. The women's movement in America at least seems to us to be doing almost pure harm, and to have brought to the surface a knot of the most intemperate and indecent writers and speakers with whom it has ever pleased Provi- dence to scourge the earth. In this country we have got a very different and far wiser set of heads at the top of the movement. But we have no evidence at all as yet that direct political power is coveted for women by any but the very few ; and we have the clearest evidence that to give it to the indifferent many for the sake of the few would be the greatest of immediate political mischiefs, as well as a reckless guess at the solution of a question for solving which we have not as yet half the data.
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