MR. GLADSTONE ON FEMALE SUFFRAGE.
MR. GLADSTONE cannot be accused of shuffling on the question of Female Suffrage. He concludes the letter on the subject, which Mr. Murray has just issued in the form of a pamphlet of six pages, with an "earnest hope that the House of Commons will decline to give a second reading to the Woman's Suffrage Bill," and the arguments by which he justifies his hope are good, not only as against Sir A. Rollit's Bill, but for any Bill and for all time. Women may cease as a sex to be indifferent to the suffrage, though we do not think they will, and their advocates may acquire more courage, and ask for the inclusion of married women in the franchise ; but Mr. Gladstone, though he comments on immediate obstacles to the proposed revolution, does not rest his case upon them. He maintains that the Bill places the "individual woman on the same footing in regard to Parliamentary elections as the individual man," and that as "a fair and rational, and therefore morally necessary consequence," she must be allowed to become a Member of Parliament, and if allowed to become a Member, must be allowed to fill any office in the State. "Can we," he says, "determine to have two categories of Members of Parliament, one of them, the established and the larger one, consisting of persons who can travel without check along all the lines of public duty and honour ; the other, the novel and the smaller one, stamped with disability for the discharge of executive, administrative, judicial, or other public duty ? Such a stamp would I apprehend be a brand. • There is nothing more odious, nothing more untenable, than an inequality in legal privilege which does not stand upon some principle in its nature broad and clear. Is there here such a principle, adequate to show that when capacity to sit in Parliament has been established, the title to discharge executive and judicial duty can be withheld? Tried by the test of feeling, the distinction would be offensive. Would it stand better under the laws of logic ? It would stand still worse, if worse be possible." To such a pro- spect Mr. Gladstone is altogether, and for a permanent reason, adverse. He maintains that the "difference of social office" between the two sexes is part of the structure of things ; that it does not rest upon custom or convention or any action of the stronger sex, but "upon causes not flexible and elastic like most mental qualities, but physical and in their nature unchangeable. I for one am not prepared to say which of the two sexes has the higher and which has the lower pro- vince. But I recognise the subtle and profound character of the differences between them, and I must again, and again, and again, deliberate before aiding in the issue of what seems an invitation by public authority to the one to renounce as far as possible its own office, in order to assume that of the other." That argument, if sound, as an immense majority of men believe it to be, is of course final, and will prevent the grant of the suffrage to women as completely a century hence as it does at present. It, in fact, converts the whole agitation into one of those speculative projects which a few thinkers will always consider with interest, deepening in some cases into hope, but which, like the dream of universal peace or universal well-being, exercises no appreciable influence upon the conduct of human affairs.
It is large-minded of Mr. Gladstone to speak out so frankly, for he is naturally seeking votes, and his pamphlet may cost him a good many. The present position of the question we believe to be a little peculiar. Female Suffrage, as Mr. Gladstone intimates, has never been considered, much less accepted, by any large body of electors, and if proposed to the country for a mass-vote, would probably be rejected summarily by 95 per cent. of the whole electoral body, which would, perceive instinc- tively that it must in the end transfer the ultimate governing power from one sex to the other. The voters would refuse with blunt and final decision to enter upon any such course, and the measure would be laid aside certainly for a century, probably for ever. Nevertheless, the question has its influence at elections. In every electoral district, female suffrage is supported by a few who are honestly convinced of its justice, by a few more who think it would strengthen their own party, and by a few more who are willing to gratify women to whom they are attached, or on whom they are dependent, and who think their, exclusion involves a sort of humiliation. It is as an assertion of equality with men, and not as an instrument of power, that the majority of " advanced " women desire the vote. As the proposal is not practical, and irritates no "interest," a candidate in a severe contest is therefore much tempted to give a pledge which he is confident is unreal, and which binds to his side—this is equally true of both parties— some of the most successful and enthusiastic canvassers in the world. A close election may therefore be frequently carried by the friends of Female Suffrage, and Mr. Glad- stone in speaking out so plainly will undoubtedly lose votes. The fanatics of the cause will abstain from support- ing him, and many of his most active female supporters will not only abandon him, but will be profoundly irritated, not by his refusal to vote for the Bill, but by his "fatal" reasons. That sentence about the "difference of social office" between the sexes conveys the doctrine which is to them anathema, and which, as the differences are incurable, cuts off hope. They will cry aloud, and perhaps snatch eagerly at an unreal hope which they may think they can see on the other side. It is utterly unreal, for though one or two of the Tory leaders have coquetted with the proposal, and one appears sincerely to believe in it, the mass of the party are just of the type to whom the whole proposal appears a monstrous inversion of the natural order of things, if it be not, indeed, irreligious. Still, as between Mr. Gladstone and Lord Salisbury, the balance will, in the women's minds and their friends' minds, incline to the latter ; and we, therefore, heartily congratulate Mr. Gladstone, who is never blind to an electioneering" point," upon his courage and his principle. He has ended the question for this generation by a declaration which, as he m, doubt fully perceives, may redound to his own hurt. We are treating the subject to-day entirely as one of practical politics, which has been gravely affected by the declaration of the Liberal leader, and we will finish by saying that, in our judgment, the current view, that he is afraid of the party effect of Female Suffrage, is entirely unfounded. There is no evidence whatever that the mass of women would incline to the Tory side. Women of society may be inclined, as a rule, to the Conservative doctrine, as the one least opposed to social refinements and distinctions ; but women of society would be nowhere if all women could vote ; and the majority of the active poli- tical women who influence, or attempt to influence, masses, who sit on School Boards, and vote at municipal elections, are apt to be rather pronouncedly Radical, not to say Red. They are even more carried away by the passion of pity than the men are, and by the grand illusion of the day that for every evil, even London fog, society can pro- vide a remedy. They do not know the limits of things, and cannot bear to acknowledge that the desolating hail and the fertilising rain exist equally by God's per- mission, and are equally outside human control. The whole body of Nonconformist women would 'vote solid as a rock on the same side, and we are by no means so confident as are some poetical minds, of the attitude of artisans' wives and daughters. They have been Red enough at times on the Continent, in all conscience ; and though we neither expect nor fear revolution in this country, we do expect wild legislative attempts to produce general well-being, with which working women, pressed by want of means and the claims of many children, and a sense of the hardship of their lot as compared with that of the rich, will almost fanatically sympathise. We very much doubt the Toryism of the majority of those who, if Sir A. Rollit's Bill passes, must logically be admitted next year to the suffrage—for the country will not bear even for months a measure which gives a vote to every prostitute in lodgings, and refuses it to every experienced matron— and have all the greater honour for the respect which Mr. Gladstone has on this occasion shown to his internal con- victions. He has proved to us at least that there are steps which he will not take even to secure Home-rule for Ireland, and that among them is a revolutionary transfer of political power from one sex to the other. Whatever the conse- quences, before doing that he will, in his own strange method of expression, "again, and again, and again deliberate" on the best method of expressing a polite but also a complete and final refusal. It is impossible, with the painful ex- perience of the Home-rule Question still before us, to say that Mr. Gladstone cannot change even on a policy in which morality is involved ; but we may affirm freely that we should expect to see him a Tory or a Presbyterian sooner than an advocate of Female Suffrage, and without his advocacy, that cause has no place on a list of projects which may be realised.
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