THE WOMEN'S PROTEST AGAINST WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE.
MRS. FAWCETT will probably say that nothing has been written which goes further towards estab- lishing women's intellectual claim to the suffrage than the admirably conceived protest in the Nineteenth Century against that concession. It is a protest rich in the strength of judgment and moderation of feeling characteristic of strong men, expressed with all the thoughtful grace and refinement of strong (though not " strong-minded ") women. But the reply to Mrs. Fawcett would be,—first, that the suffrage is not based, and that no one would wish that it should be based, on mere intellectual capacity ; and next, that if it were, there would be no decent case for household suffrage at all, whether exercised by men or women. We should be the very last to discourage women from exercising their influence over the course of politics. Politics would be a great deal less interesting than they are, and much more in danger of falling into mean hands, if women did not take a lively interest in political issues, and exert themselves very energetically for the causes which they happen to espouse. The same, of course. is true as to the interest women take in the issue of a campaign, and the influence they exert in stimulating the Government of the day to render any campaign successful, or in undertaking to tend and nurse the soldiers who are disabled in it. It does not follow, of course, that women ought themselves to enter the ranks, to fight in the trenches, or to man (should we not say, to woman ?) the Navy ; and it certainly would not follow that if they were encouraged to do these things, their influence in urging the Government to a greater military and naval efficiency would be increased. Rather do we suppose that it would be greatly diminished. It would then be supposed that their influence was exerted from the purely selfish instead of from the unselfish point of view ; and as women's influence is never so great as when its unselfishness is universally recognised, it would be thrust impatiently aside when urged from the selfish point of view, even though it would be profoundly respected when urged from the unselfish point of view. Our whole contention is, that the sphere of women is not battle either physical or mental ; that their power should always be the influence which is indirectly exercised, and which is not the less but the greater in its proper field for that ; and that they would lose a very great proportion of this vast modi- fying power instead of gaining any, by attempting to pit their votes against the votes of those who have, and always must have, the physical force upon which ultimately every political constitution rests. When it is said, as we have just said, that women's truest influence over anything like the development of force, is, and ought to be, indirect, some people seem to think that we wish to suggest that they should exert an under- handed influence. Nothing can be further from our meaning. There is no proper connection at all between that which is frankly indirect in our sense of the term, and that which is underhanded. All that we mean by indirect influence is that it takes effect through the changes which it produces in the minds and purposes and wishes of others, and not through the sole individual agency of those who exert it. It would be as absurd to call women's influence underhanded or sinister because it is indirect, as it would be to call the influence of the Press under- handed or sinister because it is indirect. It is just as in- direct and just as honest as women's influence is at its best, though not perhaps quite so powerful. Arid as every- body would say that to give newspapers direct weight at the polls, in addition to the vast influence which they now exercise over those who do turn the polls this way or that, would practically destroy instead of increasing the influence of the Press over the polls, so we believe that to give women votes in Parliamentary elections, where the ardour of battle has always been and always will be conspicuous in ordinary times, would ultimately have the result of diminishing instead of increasing the natural influence which they do actually, and very properly, exert over the votes of men. Once let women be regarded as political Amazons, and you will have a positive dislike springing up for the political influence of women amongst the electors and amongst the non-voting women themselves ; nor can we conceive any condition of things so certain to take the gentler and better enthusiasm out of political life than this. The great difference between the spheres of domestic life, of education, of poor-law administration, of local economies generally, in which women do take an active share, and as we hope, always will take an active share, and political struggle, has always been this,—that in these more domestic fields passion seldom does run high, and when it does, the better class of women endeavour either to keep out of the strife or to soften its asperities ; while in Par- liamentary strife passion always has run high, and probably always will ; and women, if they were to be actually em- barked in the physical struggle, could not but be more or less unsexed by it. Now they are not so unsexed, mainly because they feel that the part they have to play is in its very nature a gentler part,—the part of encouraging, reanimating, refreshing, consoling, or even reconciling,— and that it is going out of their proper way, failing to play the proper part instead of playing it, to let the heat rise as high in them as it does in those who have to bear the burden and the heat of the battle. But once let them feel that they are amongst the political rank and file, that they are fighting for their own hand and not for others, and we should soon see this milder attitude vanishing, and the women-voters becoming the fiercest and least scrupulous of the combatants. No blunder seems to us greater than Lord Salisbury's blunder in assuming that women-voters would, as a rule, swell the Conservative Party ; though if they did, we should object to the change no less earnestly than we do now, as a change going much deeper than any party question. But, as a matter of fact, the Conservative-minded women, who may perhaps be the majority (or they may not, for we have very little knowledge indeed of the political bias of the cooks, housemaids, and working women of the world), would, always be the most likely to keep at, home, while the feminine revolutionists would be the surest to register their votes, and to make all the fuss they could about them. The more genuinely feminine a woman is, the more decided will be her bias against rushing into the thick of a party fight, so that the most characteristically feminine votes would not be given at all, while the characteristically Amazonian votes would be given to the last vote.
We heartily agree with the remark made in the women's protest, that as the main power of the State must, both in military and civil matters, rest on the shoulders of men, it is desirable that the main responsibility of finally deter- mining the lines of action and progress should rest on the shoulders of men also. Of course, if men choose to divide the responsibility in these matters with women, they may, if they please, do so, and there is nothing further to be said ; though, of course, what they choose to give they might at any time choose to take away, and this sharing of political responsibility, even if it were determined upon, might be, and very likely would be, very short- lived. But the whole drift of the protest is to suggest that men would probably make a great mistake, and make a mistake on the very point which is of most importance, in thus dividing direct political responsibility with women. The effect of that division would, in our opinion, be not to increase the best and most natural kind of feminine in- fluence over politics, but to substitute for that best and most natural kind of influence a worse and less natural, not to say unnatural kind of influence, which would posi- tively diminish the tenderness and respect with which the electors at present listen to women's political wishes and views. As the writer of the protest justly says, nothing has been so remarkable in recent days as the eagerness of Parliaments elected by a purely male suffrage to protect women and redress their wrongs. Whether Parliaments elected by a mixed male and female suffrage would show anything like the same eagerness, is a question to which, if it could ever be answered decisively, we should fully expect a negative reply.