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]