There was a time in England when all the laws were made and executed by
the King.
Later he appointed certain favorites who acted for him, and these were
paid honors and emoluments accordingly.
Still later, all soldiers were allowed to express their political
preferences. And that is where we got the idea about not allowing folks
to vote who could not fight.
It was once the law in England that no Catholic should be allowed to
vote.
It was also once the law in England that no Jew could hold real estate,
could vote at elections, could hold a public office, or serve on a
jury.
Full rights of citizenship were not given to the Jews in Great Britain
until the year 1858. Deists, Theists, Quakers, and "Dissenters" were
not allowed to testify in courts, and their right to vote was
challenged in England up to 1885.
For centuries, Jews occupied the position of minors, mental defectives,
or men with criminal records.
Women now in England occupy the same position politically that the Jews
did a hundred years ago.
Until very recent times all lawmakers disputed the fact that women have
rights. Women have privileges and duties--mostly duties.
All the laws are made by men, and for the most part the rights only of
male citizens are considered. If the rights of women or children are
taken into consideration, it is only from a secondary point of view, or
because the attention of lawmakers is especially called to the natural
rights of women, children, and dumb animals.
Provisions, however, have always been made in England as well as all
other civilized countries for punishing Catholics, Jews, Quakers, and
women.
In old New England there was once a pleasing invention called a
"ducking stool," that was for "women only." For the most part, the
punishment for these individuals who were not citizens was very much
more severe than it was for the people who made and devised the
punishment for them.
Women are admitted into the full rights of citizenship in New Zealand
and Australia, and in several States in the United States.
There will surely come a time when we will look back and regard the
withholding of full political rights from women in the same way that we
now look back and regard the disfranchisement of Jews and Catholics.
There is no argument that can possibly be presented against the right
of women to express their political preferences which does not in equal
degree apply to the right of male citizens to express theirs.
Every possible logical argument has been put forward and answered.
The protest in England by certain women who are working for equal
suffrage has taken what is called a militant form.
These women, in many instances, have been guilty of violence.
The particular women who have been foremost in this matter of violence
are not criminals in any sense of the word. They are not plotting and
planning the overthrow of the government. They are not guilty of
treason; and certainly they are not guilty of disorder along any other
line than that springing out of their disapproval of the failure of the
government to grant the right of political representation to women.
"Taxation without representation" was the shibboleth of the men who
founded the government of the United States of America.
This shibboleth, or slogan, came to them from across the sea and was
first uttered in England before the days of Magna Charta.
That every adult individual, man or woman, possessed of normal
mentality, should be thoroughly interested in the government, and
should have the right of expressing his or her political preferences,
is beyond dispute, especially under any government that affects to
derive its powers from the governed.
The right to govern is conferred by the governed, and this is now
admitted even in the so-called monarchies. And the governed are not
exclusively males; the governed are men and women, for women are
responsible before the law.
So thoroughly are these facts fixed in the minds of a great many men
and women everywhere that a few men are possessed by the righteousness
of the cause to a degree that they are willing not only to live for it
and fight for it, suffer for it, but also to die for it.
Some of these women in London, who have been throwing stones into
windows, thus destroying property, have signified as great a
willingness to injure themselves as they have to injure the property of
their fellow citizens, provided by so doing they can bring to the
attention of the men in charge of the government the absolute necessity
of recognizing the political rights of women.
If certain people in the past had not been willing to stake their all
on individual rights, there would to-day be no liberty for any one.
The saviors of the world are simply those who have been willing to die
that humanity might live.
It may be hard for an individual of average purpose to understand or
comprehend this mental attitude where the individual is fired with such
zeal that he is willing to suffer physical destruction for it.
In England, the test has come to an issue of whether these women,
intent on bringing about governmental recognition of the rights of
women, should be allowed to die for the cause or not. And from all
latest reports, John Bull does seem troubled about it.