CHAPTER IX.
THE MORAL BASE OF ENFRANCHISEMENT
THE general sketch I have just completed, of the evolution of woman's political position from the earliest and dimmest human communities to the twentieth century, has vindicated the law which I set out to prove. This essay is in no sense a chronicle of women's agitations, women's disabilities, and women's victories. It is a simple effort to discover a principle, and only sufficient details have been included for its purpose. They have made it clear that, in the first place, the subordination of woman springs from a barbaric institution, is always challenged (both by men and women) when a nation reaches a high stage of culture, and is continuously modified as the mental and moral cultivation of the community grows. Since it is inconceivable that civilisation should perish or retrograde again, in the new world of our time, it follows that the present feminist movement cannot sink back into submission, but will continue with the spread of culture, until woman's position is adjusted on principles of general equity and reason.
This position is further strengthened by the reflection, which I have vindicated, that changes have taken place in the structure of modern life which have of themselves destroyed the old partition between man's sphere and woman's sphere. Parliaments, in their embryonic form, grow out of the informal discussions among the men of a tribe about matters that they alone were competent and naturally designed to carry out. The broad scope of a modern Parliament is so remote from this narrow institution that the old reason for excluding women has utterly disappeared. But I have said enough of the four social revolutions of the nineteenth century that make up this change. In principle they are fully recognised, and the reader must therefore not be surprised at the relative scantiness and incompleteness of the details given in the last chapter. They suffice to show that it is now an unthinking repetition of an outworn phrase to say that woman's place is the home _only_.
In concluding, I would glance for a moment at a few subsidiary aspects of the question, which may throw further light on the general position of this essay. The first point is an examination of the just and rational basis of enfranchisement, as political moralists have determined it. The various extensions of the franchise during the nineteenth century have been wrung from the reluctant holders of power by force, or the threat of force. We flatter ourselves, not quite unreasonably, that the age of violence has given place to an age of justice, and it is therefore extremely advisable to determine precisely why _anybody_ has a vote--in other words, what is the moral basis of enfranchisement--and then test the claim of women on the principle we may detect.
For this purpose I briefly examine the conclusions of a few of the most distinguished political moralists. We must, naturally, confine ourselves to a democratic age, so that in effect we can only consult writers of ancient Athens or modern England. From these, however, I do not make a purposive selection, but will consider those whose authority is most regarded.
Plato and Aristotle are the two political writers, as they are the two outstanding philosophers, of ancient Greece. We have already seen something of the political ideas of Plato, and know how thoroughly he resisted the theory of woman's inferiority. Beyond this sturdy defence of woman's capacity, however, Plato helps us little in the search for the moral base of political power. In his _Gorgias_ he expresses great disdain of the actual Athenian democracy, and insists on the superiority of the aristocratic ideal. The wiser are to rule the community, and such rulers were by no means always chosen by the democracy of Athens. In the _Republic_, from which I have previously quoted, Plato goes on to sketch his ideal political system. The rulers and administrators are to be a special and hereditary caste, with distinct education, beside the classes of workers and of soldiers. Within their limits there will be election for the higher offices, and women are to be put on a level of absolute equality with men in the political body. Thus Plato is emphatic in his protest against any sex limitation of political power, but it must be admitted that he misses or ignores the most difficult point in the problem--how the workers are to be reconciled to a permanent exclusion from politics--and his Utopian commonwealth has never been taken seriously.
Aristotle, a realist and a critic of Plato, brings us at once to the practical problem. He, too, disdains the boisterous democracy of Athens, with its shallow mob and their frothy orators, and believes democracy would always have the same weaknesses. Oligarchy and despotism are equally unsound. Kingship is an admirable political form, but the uncertainties of kings make it impracticable. Aristocracy is the ideal constitution. A few leisured and cultivated landowners, supported by the work of slaves, would be the best body to entrust with the choice of rulers. But Aristotle sees that democratic Greece will never admit that system, and he proposes a compromise. Excluding the poorest, on the ground of incompetency, he would have the magistrates elected by the vote of the majority of the men in the free cities; and he would grant an increased power to property-holders, for the defence of their possessions. We have seen that Aristotle would exclude women from political life, apparently on the ground of incompetency. In this the contrast to Plato is merely superficial. Plato did not proclaim the actual competency of women for public life, but shrewdly attributed their present weakness to the complete lack of education and experience--a point that Aristotle quite fails to meet. However, it is enough that he definitively assigns competency as the moral basis of enfranchisement.
I might close the inquiry at once by saying that no subsequent political moralist has brought us much further than Aristotle, but will glance at one or two interesting variations of the thesis in modern writers. In the time of Aristotle the shadow of Macedonia lay full on Athens, and, indeed, the whole of Greece was degenerating. Nor is it needful to glance at the literature of Rome, which produced no great thinker. The same problem of democracy and enfranchisement arose in Rome, but it was pushed aside by the founding of the Empire, and there is no serious discussion left for us to consider. In the Italian republics of the thirteenth century it arose again; but the republics were blotted out by empires or converted into principalities, and all political theorising was silenced by the general acceptance in Europe of the "divine right of kings." The successive Revolutions in France, and that gradual rise of class after class to claim a share in the political life, which I described in the last chapter, reopened the whole question. In the chaos of constitutions that were formed in different parts of Europe we see only grudging concessions to demands that had a show of force behind them. It was again incumbent on political moralists to seek a rational and just principle on which to determine the limits of enfranchisement, and I will briefly notice the chief efforts that have been made in this country to discover such a principle.
Mr. Walter Bagehot made the most ingenious attempt to formulate a principle that should at once limit the franchise, yet retain the sacred characters of logic and justice. Nearly all English writers start from the supposed natural "rights of man"--the principle of Rousseau and the Revolutionists, which was still urged by advanced politicians. To this Bagehot replies that, if there is any such thing as an inherent right of man, it is at least limited by the fact that he has no right to injure his fellow-men. The limitation, in theory, is perfectly just. On that principle even the most advanced Radical disfranchises criminals and lunatics and illiterates, and requires a certain age in voters. It at once forces Mr. Bagehot to fall back on competency alone as the moral basis of enfranchisement. All shall vote who can do so competently: the incompetent shall not vote, as it would mean injustice to their fellows. Mr. Bagehot draws up the principle: "A man has a right to so much political power as he can exercise without impeding any other who would more fitly exercise political power." The curious wording of the principle is, of course, due to a desire to prevent the mass of the workers or middle class from swamping the vote of the wealthy. But as it is only on the ground of their presumed greater culture and competence that Mr. Bagehot tampers with his franchise to favour the wealthy, and as the general growth of education has materially altered the situation, I need not go into the details of his electoral scheme. His principle of enfranchisement is competency alone.
When we turn to another political moralist of a very different school, Professor Sidgwick, we have, at first sight, an entirely novel attempt to reach a principle. Professor Sidgwick, as a sound utilitarian, rejects the transcendental idea of the inherent rights of man, and puts the utility of social life as the first principle. He then urges that the laws will have a better chance of being observed if they have the active consent of all who are subject to them--in other words, if the citizens have elected the law-makers. Thus he gets a general franchise, which he proceeds to limit. He at once admits that only mental or moral inferiority is a ground of exclusion from the franchise, and so neither sex nor poverty can be a legitimate bar. But when he comes to formulate his principle we get the astonishing declaration that "every sane, _self-supporting_ adult" should have a vote. The words I have italicised are put in, quite wantonly, to exclude married women from the franchise. But I need not discuss here the somewhat frivolous grounds on which Sidgwick would exclude wives, nor stay to point out how many highly cultivated males would be deprived of the vote by his arbitrary phrase. It suffices for my purpose that he takes competency alone as the just basis of enfranchisement.
Sidgwick somewhere suggests that the poorer citizens should be allowed to prove their competency by a public examination. This idea was elaborated by Mr. Holyoake, who advocated biennial examinations in economics and constitutional history, at which candidates for the vote, of either sex, should prove their capacity. The idea was seriously expounded in the House of Lords, and much discussed at one time. Apart from the question of practicability, however, it would have the peculiar disadvantage of annihilating the electorate. Its principle of competency was generally accepted.
Lastly, I may notice the political theorising of Professor Ritchie. In this there is no fantastic casuistry, but a plain restatement of the principle laid down by Aristotle and accepted, as a rule, without the aid of philosophy. The difficulty is practical, not theoretical. The work of government is to be discharged by experts, and the experts are to be elected, on a broad franchise, by an educated democracy. The principle is again competency, and we need not stay to criticise the vagueness of the "broad franchise."
There is thus a very positive agreement among political theorists on the principle by which we should determine which members of the State should have the vote. However they approach the problem, and whatever be their general theory, they agree that, when the political power is electoral, incompetence alone should exclude from a share in the election. There is no question in any of them of taxation as a basis of representation, no question of property as such forming a qualification. Until recent times the possession of property gave some presumption of education. In the days when the workers were almost all densely illiterate, when education was almost confined to the leisured and professional classes, it was quite natural to assume that the paying of taxes gave a general presumption of leisure, culture, or capacity. It, therefore, became the "basis of representation," but only in the sense that it was a rough test of competency or education. In the course of time unthinking people came to imagine that taxation carries with it a moral right to the franchise, and thought they could settle in that simple way who should or should not have a vote. I have shown that no political moralist will sanction the idea for a moment, and in point of fact English electoral law has departed from it in two ways: by excluding tax-paying women on the one hand, and by setting up a lodger vote on the other. The general spread of education has wholly altered the situation by giving competence and training to the non-propertied class.
The political thinkers we consulted were really more concerned with the limitation of the franchise than with its extension. This serves my purpose well enough, but I should like to draw up a positive principle of enfranchisement in harmony with their conclusions. I venture to formulate it thus: All those who share in the life of the State, are subject to its laws, and gain or suffer by its prosperity or adversity, are entitled to a share in the control of its policy, unless they are disabled by a moral or intellectual inferiority that would make their power a standing prejudice to the community's welfare. This is a positive statement of the basis of enfranchisement that accords entirely with all that has been written about it from Aristotle to Ritchie. On that principle we have to determine, with equity and reason, whether or no there is injustice in the political subordination of one sex to the other.
It is a remarkable thing that the only writer in our literature who has scientifically studied the psychological differences between man and woman concluded that woman's gifts were as high as, if not higher than, man's in relation to political work. Mr. Havelock Ellis (_Man and Woman_) quotes an older writer who had studied the matter from the historical and empirical point of view, and had concluded that "women are probably more fitted for politics than men." He then adds, on the ground of his own reading of history and his study of sex characters:--
Among all races and in all parts of the world women have ruled brilliantly and with perfect control over even the most fierce and turbulent hordes. Among many primitive races also all the diplomatic relations with foreign tribes are in the hands of women, and they have sometimes decided on peace or war. The game of politics seems to develop very feminine qualities in those who play it, and it may be paying no excessive compliment to women to admit the justice of old Burdach's remarks. Whenever their education has been sufficiently sound and broad to enable them to free themselves from fads and sentimentalities, women probably possess in at least as high a degree as men the power of dealing with the practical questions of politics.
Nor is the opinion so uncommon as one would imagine. I was myself astonished, on pleading with an experienced political worker for leniency in judging women's present political competence (on account of their lack of experience), to receive the reply: "But women are better to deal with than men, and grasp the issues more quickly"! This was said by a Conservative magistrate after twenty years' close experience of political work in a large town.
However that may be, I have merely to meet the objection that women are so incompetent that their participation in politics would endanger the welfare of the State. To meet the point I do not need to range the records of history, nor to dwell on the significant contrast of England under her three Queens and her dozens of Kings. The reply is simple. Precisely the same objection was raised to the extension of the franchise in 1832 and in 1868, and it was just as plausible. Men who had been excluded from the slightest influence on political affairs from all time had no incentive whatever to study them. No sooner were their minds quickened by a suffrage agitation, and their responsibility aroused by the concession of the vote, than they entered keenly upon political themes and developed a normal political judgment. There is not the slightest ground to assume that the present political apathy of the mass of women has any other cause, and will not disappear when they are invited or permitted to exercise their dormant powers. It is not judgment, but the material of judgment--knowledge--that women lack. This knowledge of political issues they not only had no incentive or motive to acquire, but public opinion positively discouraged them from acquiring. Wherever the vote has been given the competence has been proved at once. A century ago men were just as convinced that woman was incompetent to work in the score of industries and professions in which she works with success to-day.
The case is, therefore, that while those who urge the incompetence of woman have not a shred of evidence to rely upon--beyond the ridiculous and futile practice of referring us to some woman or group of women they have met--those who believe in her competence have an immense and increasing body of experience, besides the plain probabilities of the situation. We have opened a hundred doors to women, and have discovered a hundred aptitudes that men had not suspected. Communities amounting in the aggregate to eleven or twelve million souls have admitted women to the parliamentary franchise, and the result has been admirable. Larger countries, including England, have admitted women to a share in other branches of public life (local government), and no evils have been reported. To say that our women are not competent to take the further step of choosing once in five or seven years which party should be returned to power, which of two candidates they prefer as their representative, is either a piece of wanton cynicism or an insincere cloak for an obstinate prejudice. And for those who view with complacency the enlisting of thousands of women in the service of political parties, and their active employment in electoral battles, the position is intolerable.
The suggestion of Plato, of the Stoics, of medieval thinkers like Agrippa, and of so many more recent observers, that the chief mental difference between the sexes is a difference in education and experience, has been borne out by the whole experience of the latter half of the nineteenth century. The medieval world regarded the Jew with infantine wonder, and its theologians speculated learnedly on his aloofness, his distrust, his narrow capacities, and so forth. Luther broke in on their sophistry with the sensible remark that if you treat a man as a dog he may be forced to act as one. The freedom we have given to the Jew has brought out his essential humanity and capacity. We may apply the parable to the position of woman. She has been treated, politically, as a child. The moment we begin to abandon that treatment we find the maturity of her power.
* * * * * *
When, in 1866 and 1867, Lord Elcho, Lord Sherbrooke, and the "Adullamite" Whigs made public reflections on the political capacity of the hundreds of thousands of working men whom Gladstone proposed to enfranchise, and Disraeli did enfranchise, the working men retorted with a violence and disorder that one may regard as not unnatural. To-day the sons of these enfranchised workers make less polite reflections on the capacity of women, and are shocked at the "hysteria" that sometimes ensues. For my part, I have felt it unpleasant to have to discuss the question whether the prospective women electors of Britain are mentally inferior to the male electors. My apology must be that not only have I found the belief of their inferiority to lie at the root of most of the prejudices against the movement, but that, if their competence be granted, the argument is over. Hundreds of thousands of obviously competent women demand the vote to-day. No matter how many more thousands may not, we maintain an offensive medieval injustice when we continue to refuse it to those who do.
But a last word may be devoted to those women and men who think the granting of the vote would injure woman, and, indirectly, the community. It is, unfortunately, very difficult to grasp the precise fear that finds expression in this objection. The frequent statement that woman's "refined" and "angelic" nature should not be "dragged into politics" is usually a piece of insincere flippancy both as regards woman and politics. At the most, if political life were so corrupt, one would think the introduction of "angels" would greatly benefit it. But it is difficult to see, however prone one may be to pessimism, that the reading of a political journal every day, an occasional attendance at a political meeting, or membership of a political club, would greatly sully woman's high nature. The moment you reflect what the exercise of the vote really involves in the concrete, a great many rhetorical balloons collapse.
The same point holds in regard to the objection that admission to the franchise will distract woman from her domestic duties. It has even been gravely suggested that it might affect maternity. It is very difficult to treat such statements seriously. Vast numbers of women do not marry, vast numbers have no children, or only one or two, and a large number relegate the work to servants. But what makes it really difficult to meet the point seriously is: (1) The ridiculously slender amount of work the exercise of the vote will put on women; (2) the light-heartedness with which women were employed by political parties before they asked for the vote; and (3) the enormous amount of interest, distraction, and employment outside the home that we already willingly grant our women. The higher education of women is undoubtedly affecting maternity.[15] Does anyone propose to abolish it? The rush of life among the wealthy is even more exacting. The middle class, and even the working women, have corresponding distractions. Beside these the exercise of the suffrage is a sheer trifle, in relation to strain on the system.
Of the apprehended discord in families, which influenced even Professor Sidgwick, one can only say that the proposal to perpetuate a monstrous and offensive injustice on the ground of an imaginary evil of that character is astounding. I do not happen to know any such families, in a fairly extensive acquaintance, but I should fancy that they will not wait for politics to spread discord in them. The apprehension seems to be based on a very cynical estimate of the relations of married folk, or in the notion that they have always agreed on religion, on dress, on local affairs, or in their estimates of people. But as one half of the opponents of the enfranchisement of wives plead that the wife would be sure to vote as her husband does, and therefore needs no separate representation, while the other half of our opponents declare the opposite and apprehend widespread discord, one may leave them to reconcile their contradictory experiences.
High above all these trivial and inflated fancies one fact is clear. The admission of women to public life would give them a wider horizon and more balanced judgment. Men are growing more feminine in every century. A medieval man would gaze with astonishment at the growth of feminine qualities in the modern world--sympathy with suffering, refinement, even tenderness. Women are growing more masculine on the intellectual side. There is no such thing as a fixed and immutable type of organism. The sexes are approaching, after æons of separation, and the tendency is good. Politics is not a game--or should not be--but a concentration of the best intelligence and feeling of the nation upon the gravest issues of national life. Through every serious Parliament of the world some breath has passed of the new spirit, the determination to uplift the race, assuage suffering, mitigate poverty, and do battle with old evils. No finer thing can happen to woman than that she be enlisted, actively and responsibly, in that great crusade.
[The End]
FOOTNOTES
[1] For reasons which I give later, I follow Westermarck, against most sociologists, in thinking that the family expanded into the clan, rather than that the family emerged out of the clan. The uncertainty does not affect my argument.
[2] Frau Lily Braun's _Die Frauenfrage_ (1901) avoids the pitfall, but Eliza B. Gamble's _Evolution of Woman_ (1894) stumbles at it. Dr. Moscatelli (_La Conditione Della Donna Nelle Società Primitive_, 1886) seems to have been one of the last authorities to hold the theory.
[3] Many writers believe that it was the outcome of polyandry among the earlier ancestors. So Maspéro and others.
[4] I do not enlarge upon what is called "sacred prostitution" in the temples, as there is ample proof that this was not regarded as an onerous imposition on woman. It probably had its roots in some ancient superstition. The normal life of Babylon and Nineveh compares favourably enough even with modern times.
[5] _Republic_, Book V. Nearly the whole book is taken up with the most advanced claims for woman.
[6] Cato is so often the villain of the chapter in works of this kind that I am tempted to quote a saying of his: "The man who beats his wife and children lays impious hands on that which is most sacred," and he "would deem it higher praise to be a good husband than a good senator" (Plutarch, c. xx.). I know, of course, how Cato obliged Hortensius; but we are not aware that Mme. Cato objected to the eugenic arrangement.
[7] Dr. Reich also speaks of the "Voltairean atheism" of advanced women. Voltaire was not only an ardent _theist_, but wrote world-known works on the point.
[8] But admirers of Dr. Reich as an historian need not go beyond their favourite author. I know no defence of the Romans of the early Empire so ardent and so flattering as that made by Dr. Reich in his _History of Civilisation_ (p. 371). But this was written before he took up the cause of the anti-feminists.
[9] _Ancient Law_, p. 154. This section of Sir Henry's fine study should be read by every feminist.
[10] I leave chivalry and the early romanticism out of account deliberately. The whole movement was a cult of pretty faces and rounded limbs, leading to general laxity of morals. It essentially implied the subordination of woman in all but beauty and dress.
[11] The best summary survey, in chronological order, is in Lily Braun's _Die Frauenfrage_ (1901). More detailed and partial pictures are excellently given in A. G. Mason's _Women in the Golden Ages_ (1901).
[12] I take this and a few other details from Miss Helen Blackburn's _Women's Suffrage_ (1902), to which I must send the reader for a full account of the struggle in England. See, also, E. A. Pratt's _Pioneer Women in Victoria's Reign_.
[13] For further details about Wyoming, Colorado, Idaho, and Utah see Mrs. Borrmann Wells's _America and Woman Suffrage_ (price 1d.).
[14] For further details in regard to Australia (to the year 1901) see Helen Blackburn's _Women's Suffrage_ and Mrs. Martel's _Women's Vote in Australia_.
[15] This may very well be only temporary. Woman's energy has so long been absorbed in maternal and domestic work that a great diversion of it is bound at first to affect the older function. In time the organism may adapt itself to both functions. It would not concern many of us if it did not, but in any case it must be clearly understood that so slight an additional occupation as having a vote cannot for a moment be expected to have a like effect.
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES
Alterations to the text:
[Chapter II] Change _Hawai_ to _Hawaii_.
[Chapter VII] Change "start a brilliant and fiery _compaign_ for..." to _campaign_.
Relabel and relocate footnotes to the end of the book. Add footnotes to the TOC.
[End of Text]