MR. WOODALL'S AMENDMENT.
NOTHING, perhaps, shows better the morbid and almost monomaniac suspicion with which some of the Con- servative Party regard the Liberal Leader, than the singularly unreasonable attacks made upon him for his supposed despotism in refusing to admit Mr. Woodall's Amendment to the honours of a neutral position for which Members of the Liberal Party might vote without endangering the Franchise Bill. Even Sir Stafford Northcote, moderate as he usually is, echoed this extraordinary feeling of resentment at the Prime Minister for venturing to declare that if Mr. Woodall's amendment were carried, the Government could no longer accept any respon- sibility for the Bill. In truth, however, Mr. Gladstone had no reasonable choice in the matter. Whatever the Opposition may say, whatever even Mr. Stansfeld may say, no one can deny that the Franchise Bill was not asked for by the country in general, and was not introduced by the Government, with any idea of altering the political and social relation between the two sexes. Such a design was absolutely alien to the design of the people in general in demanding this Bill, and to the design of those members of the Liberal party who were most deeply pledged to secure its success. It is true, of course, that the Leeds Conference accepted the women's franchise ; and it is equally true that 110 members of the Liberal Party declared that they desired it. But it is not in the least true that the popular cry for the women's franchise can be even compared in force with the popular cry for the extension of household franchise to the counties. It is not in the least true that the two cries, so far as the former can be called popular at all, cover the same political ground ; and it is not in the least true that those leaders, like Mr. Bright, who have been longest pledged to the extension of household franchise to the counties, are conspicuous as leaders of the party for women's franchise,—to which, indeed, we believe, Mr. Bright is personally opposed. Well, this being so, how could the Government properly have consented to bind together two issues so radically different. two issues on both of which con- victions are so held,—vehemently and tenaciously held,— that a great many supporters of household franchise for the counties would rather have seen the Bill wrecked than amended by the introduction of the women's franchise ; while a good many of the supporters of the women's franchise would much rather have seen the household franchise refused to the counties than have refused the enfranchisement of women. The issues involved were totally different; and the Government would have been simply neglecting the simplest and most obvious of its duties if it had consented to tie together these totally distinct proposals. Why, the result must have been that, on the carrying of Mr. Woodall's amendment, influential members of the Government would have resigned in order to be free to vote against the third reading of the Bill, —a consequence which would have more than justified the Lords in rejecting it, even if it had, nevertheless,
passed its third reading. It may be said that Mr. Fawcett and Mr. Courtney, who have so long advocated the women's franchise, are placed in the same position of difficulty by the refusal of the Government to leave Mr. Woodall's amendment an open question. But that, of course, is not the case. Mr. Fawcett and Mr. Courtney are not committed to a principle which they have long and earnestly resisted by the carrying of the Franchise Bill with- out a woman's franchise. Sir Henry James, and, as we believe, other members of the Government, would have been committed to a principle which they had long and earnestly resisted, if, after the carrying of Mr. Woodall's amendment, they had been compelled to vote for the third reading of the Bill in order to save it from destruction. The whole question lies in a nutshell. Is it fair to tie together two totally different issues, even though they may most easily and properly be separated ? Is it fair to compel the supporters of household franchise in the counties who dislike women's suffrage, to choose whether they like the former more than they dislike the latter I And is it fair to compel them, if they do happen to dislike the women's franchise more than they like
the extension of household franchise to the counties, to appear hostile to a measure which they eagerly desire, only because the two have been most needlessly and arbi- trarily bound together ? The Prime Minister was not only justified in saying—he was absolutely bound to say—that the Government would never consent to risk the Franchise Bill by accepting this alien graft upon it, which, if effectually made, would have compelled a number of the most earnest sup- porters of the Bill to vote against it on its third reading. If Mr. Gladstone's enemies can find no better illustration of the Prime Minister's arbitrariness and self-will than this, they may safely say that he is as destitute of self-will as any Prime Minister in our history. It was not open to him, as a man of common sense and common equity, to take any other course. It would have been about as sane a proceeding to do—what, indeed, some Members seemed to wish to do—to improve the condition of the dwellings of the poor under cover of a Franchise Bill, as to alter the political status of women under cover of that Bill. If Sir Stafford Northcote had been in Mr. Gladstone's place, Sir Stafford Northcote would have been obliged to act precisely as Mr. Gladstone acted. The mere common sense of the position absolutely required it.
Moreover, Mr. Woodall himself showed how extremely weak was his own case when he admitted that his own amendment did not express his meaning, since it proposed that the Bill should enfranchise women just as it enfranchised men. The friends, as it appeared, of the household franchise for women were not in the least friends of the lodger franchise for women. They are willing to give votes to women who are the heads of households ; but they are not willing to give votes to women who are permanent lodgers ; and this for very good reason,—that such women include a numerous class who are a disgrace to the sex, and whose, votes would indeed be the votes of a very bad kind of residuum. Well, what could prove the extreme impropriety of attempting to enfranchise women under the general provisions of a Franchise Bill more clearly than this S What could better prove that the controversy as to the political status of the female sex involves thorny points of all kinds, which require to be entirely dis- entangled from the political question which is at present before the country V Here we find the very advocate of the enfranchise- ment of women himself admitting that what he proposes does not properly express what he wishes to effect, while other friends of the women's vote bitterly complain that Mr. Goschen in denouncing the lodger franchise for women, had not taken account of the intention to provide by further amendments that women should not get the benefit of the lodger-franchise. Certainly the whole country would have cried out if single women had been permitted to obtain the lodger franchise, whilst married women had been denied the vote altogether ; and so the acceptance of Mr. Woodall's amendment would have involved the Committee on the Franchise Bill in the discus- sion of a number of delicate and difficult questions as to the relative capacity of different classes of women for political duties and political life. No discussion more incongruous could be imagined. As Mr. Goschen said in his admirable speech, here was a Bill suggested for the enfranchise- ment of the county householder, in which it had never- theless became necessary to discuss whether the right of married women to the custody of their children, would be better represented in Parliament after the enfranchisement of single women and widows than it now is,—which seems to us to present as ludicrous a confusion of incommensurable issues as was ever yet suggested to the mind of man. Nothing
can be clearer than this,—that whatever may be the decision of the nation on the enfranchisement of women, it is a question sui generis, which demands the most careful discussion on
grounds hardly even connected with the grounds of the present Franchise Bill ; and that to mix up the two questions would be the most unpardonable and disastrous of political muddles. For our own parts, we do not believe that the question of women's franchise, though it may have been discussed as a toy question for seventeen years, has ever really been grap- pled with by the political mind of the country. It has been regarded hitherto by a great many of those who have dealt with it as an unreal question. They have sometimes said, c Oh yes, give women votes by all means, if they choose to use them,—why not I' But they have not really put their minds to the question whether they really wish to see women voting, and taking all the parts in life which voters must take, —speaking, agitating, becoming the direct objects of political confidence, getting into Parliament—which, of course, when they become the direct objects of political confidence, they
will do—getting into the Administration, becoming the subjects of political squibs, of political vituperation, of poli- tical rancour. This is what the question really means, and this the nation has never really discovered. When it does discover it, we think we shall find the whole nation—the women especially—deciding with almost one mind that there is a sex in mind as well as in body, and that the duties con- nected with exasperating conflicts are no more the sort of duties which women ought to covet or undertake, consistently with the working out of their true ideal as women, than the duties of warriors themselves. But be that as it may, one thing is certain,—that this great question should be discussed on its own merits, and not grafted on a totally different ques- tion, with which it has no real affinity at all. The vote of the House of Commons, decisive as it was, was not more decisive on this subject than the judgment of the people.
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