Letters to a friend on votes for women/Arguments in favour of woman's suffrage
LETTER II
Arguments in favour of woman's suffrage
My dear C,
Will the grant of Parliamentary votes to English women promote the welfare of England?
This, my dear friend, is the inquiry to which you wish to have a candid and reasoned answer. It is assuredly a question which every elector throughout the United Kingdom will, as he values the prosperity of his country, be called upon, it may be within a few months, and certainly within two or three years, to answer. It is a problem to which not one man in a thousand has given careful attention. In the attempt to solve it an elector will receive little aid from his leaders. The hesitation of the Government and the ambiguous silence of the Opposition are of bad omen; they suggest transactions and intrigues; they foretell that a fundamental change in the constitution of England, to which the world presents no real parallel, may be carried through in obedience, not to the clearly expressed will of the nation, but to those calculations of election agents and wirepullers which guide the action even of honest statesmen who have too fully imbibed the spirit of Parliamentary partisanship.
My purpose in this correspondence is to make woman suffrage the subject of calm argument. I propose to examine the main reasons in favour of, and the objections which lie against, the establishment of woman suffrage, and then to insist upon the conclusion which such an investigation forces upon me, that a revolution of such boundless significance cannot be attempted without the greatest peril to England. My whole line of reasoning, let me point out, involves two assumptions. The one is that the concession of Parliamentary votes to women must be in the United Kingdom, either for good or bad, a revolution. The second is that woman suffrage must with us finally lead to its logical result—^that is, the complete political equality of men and women. Neither assumption can be disputed by any clear-headed suffragist. No such person can deny that the idea which underlies the claim of votes for women is fairly summed up in the dogma laid down by Mill: 'That the principle which regulates the existing social relations between the two sexes—the legal subordination of one sex to the other—is wrong in itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to human improvement; and that it ought to be replaced by a principle of perfect equality, admitting no power or privilege on other.'[1]
Nor can any sound thinker deceive himself or be allowed to deceive others by the argumentative sleight-of-hand which first conciliates opponents by treating the introduction of woman suffrage as a commonplace reform, comparable to the extension of the Parliamentary franchise to lodgers, and then excites the enthusiasm of supporters by putting the same measure forward as a revolution which will work the political, social, and moral renovation of England.
I shall in this and in the next letter go through and weigh the importance of the arguments in favour of woman suffrage; and let me admit at once that there is an obvious prima facie case in favour of giving Parliamentary votes to women. Its strength (which I have not the least wish to underrate) lies in five arguments or lines of thought.
First Argument.—All the ordinary democratic principles or maxims, it is argued, on which English reformers have been accustomed to rely, support in appearance the claim of women to vote for members of Parliament. 'Every citizen,' it is often said, and still more often assumed, 'has a right to a vote.' It is surely hard to prove that a woman does not share this natural right. Secondly, 'representation,' we are told, 'ought to accompany taxation.' Why, then, deny representation to a woman who pays every tax payable by a man? Thirdly, 'the Court of Parliament,' to use an ancient formula, 'is the great inquest of the nation; its special function is to remove the grievances of the people.' But no one can deny that women, no less than men, have grievances, and grievances which often have not obtained the attention they deserve. Fourthly, 'every class,' it is said, 'ought to be represented in Parliament'; and it is difficult to maintain that, in one sense of the word 'class,' English women do not make up a very large class—the majority, indeed, of the nation—and a division of human beings assuredly distinct from the whole body of men. We need not illustrate the point further. The reasoner who relies on any of these current maxims of popular government may readily be driven to admit that the principles or formulas dear to all English Liberals sanction, in words at least, the demand of votes for women.
Yet reasoning based on such democratic principles, effective though it be, admits of an easy reply. These so-called 'principles' are not anything like absolute truths. They are at best maxims, watchwords, catchwords, or shibboleths, which at particular crises of human progress have done good service by summing up ideas sound enough for the practical purposes of the moment. They have never, even as maxims, been rules which any statesman of common sense, even though he may have been the stanchest of democrats, unreservedly applied to the government of mankind.
Examine a few of them, and their true nature at once becomes apparent. The assertion that every person has a 'right' to a vote is, in any discussion with regard to woman suffrage, a mere assumption of the very point at issue. It belongs, further, to an obsolete school of thought. It is a remnant of that belief in 'innate rights' which was expelled from England by the passionate and irresistible reasoning of Burke, and by the cool and deadly analysis of Bentham. In France, indeed, at the time of the Revolution, the demand for natural rights was an excellent war-cry round which to rally men engaged in the assault upon obsolete, artificial, and noxious privileges. But the Republican statesmanship of modern France has forsaken the belief in natural rights, which in 1789 was the accepted faith no less of Constitutionalists than of Jacobins. The effect and the extent of this change of view may be measured by the contrast between the successful opportunism of Gambetta, which promised to the Third Republic a permanent existence, and the terrorism of Robespierre, which prepared the way for Napoleonic despotism.
Few, indeed, have been in England the reformers of any kind who could seriously believe in the absolute right of every person to a vote. Faith in this dogma would at this moment dictate the duty of providing at once for British India a Parliament elected by adult suffrage. The whole of the creed which leads to this reductio ad absurdum has, indeed, been formally repudiated by the ablest thinker who has advocated the rights of women to an equal share with men in the government of Great Britain.
'I forego,' writes Mill, any advantage which could be derived to my argument from the idea of abstract right as a thing independent of utility. I regard utility as the ultimate appeal on all ethical questions; but it must be utility in the largest sense, grounded on the permanent interests of man as a progressive being.'[2]
These words form part of Mill's noble apology for individual freedom. They apply with the utmost force to the far more dubious claim of every man or woman to an equal share in sovereign power.
Let me here incidentally call your attention to the way in which the very objects for which representative or Parliamentary government exists are, when properly understood, inconsistent with the idea or the delusion that every citizen has a moral right to a vote. Representative government, just because it is a form of popular 'government,' is intended to secure for the people of a given country what I may call the 'legislative effectiveness' of Parliament—that is, that Parliament shall consist of some of the best and most judicious members of the community, and shall enact good and wise laws. Representative government, further, just because it is 'representative,' is intended to secure what may be called 'legislative representativeness' of Parliament, or, in other words, that the laws of a country shall be in accordance with the wishes, the habits, and even the prejudices, of its people. These objects are each of great value. It is certainly desirable that the laws under which a country is governed should be wise laws. It is also desirable that these laws should be in harmony with the wishes of the people who have to obey them. Now, it is sometimes possible that a law may increase both the effectiveness and representativeness of the Legislature. The Reform Act of 1832 certainly made the House of Commons a better representative of the English people than it had been before 1832, and probably created a legislative body which passed laws better in themselves than would have been enacted by the unreformed Parliament. But then it may well happen that, on the one hand, a change which increases the effectiveness of a legislative body may diminish its representativeness, or, on the other hand, that a change which increases its representativeness diminishes its legislative effectiveness. The disfranchisement, for example, of Irish forty - shilling freeholders raised the character and increased the legislative effectiveness of the Imperial Parliament. But it assuredly made that Parliament represent less perfectly than before the wishes of a large body of Irishmen. It is probable that the legislative character of Congress would be raised if no American citizen were allowed a vote until he had given bona fide proof that he could read and write; but it is also certain that the imposition upon the electors, either in the United States or in England, of an educational test would in each country detract from the representative character of the National Legislature, which would clearly cease to represent the most ignorant part of the present electorate. On the other hand, increased representativeness may sometimes mean a decrease in legislative effectiveness. It is at least arguable that the establishment of household suffrage has lowered the legislative capacity of the House of Commons. Bold, indeed, would be the paradox-monger who maintained that in no State belonging to the American Commonwealth has the introduction of universal suffrage lowered the moral or intellectual character of the Legislature. We must always, therefore, in legislation which affects the constitution of Parliament, weigh against one another the different qualities of representativeness and effectiveness. Practical wisdom often requires some sacrifice of the one of these qualities to the other. From this necessity the result follows that the mere fact that persons of a particular class are not represented in Parliament is no proof of their right to enfranchisement. To shout 'Votes for women!' does not prove that English women ought to have votes.
Let us next examine the specially English dogma[3] that 'taxation involves representation.' During the War of Independence it was the war-cry of American patriots, and was re-echoed by English Whigs, and notably by Chatham. It was a really serviceable formula at a crisis when it was of vital importance to remind ordinary Englishmen that the moral right, as well as the power, of the British Parliament to legislate for the inhabitants of Massachusetts or New York was materially affected by the fact that neither Massachusetts nor New York sent a single representative to the Parliament at Westminster. But neither the leaders in the War of Independence nor the Whigs of England believed that the maxim on which they relied was absolutely true. Americans originally conceded that their favourite formula did not apply to duties on imports. Not a single English Whig, from Chatham downwards, meant to assert that every man in England who paid a tax ought to have a vote. They knew well enough that reckless extension of the suffrage, which might in the days of the Stewarts have been the destruction of Parliamentary government, might quite conceivably, during the reign of George III., give unlimited extension to that royal influence which every Whig professedly abhorred. It is allowable here to press a plain question upon suffragists. Would any Italian patriot, even though he were a Republican irreconcilable to the Monarchy, admit to the Parliamentary franchise the women of Italy at the risk of handing over the government of the country to priests and reactionists? Everyone can supply the true answer to this question. The reply, of course, decides nothing as to the advisability of introducing woman suffrage into England, but it does dispose of the authority attributed by many zealous suffragists to more than one sacred democratic watchword.
Second Argument.—English women, it is argued, have an irresistible claim to votes, based on the ground that they have suffered, and may again suffer, injustice which cannot be removed until they possess the Parliamentary franchise. My wish is to do the fullest justice to by far the strongest practical reason producible in favour of woman suffrage. It indubitably contains an amount of truth which ought never to be overlooked. Under a representative government any considerable body of persons who are not represented in Parliament is exposed, at best, to neglect. In a country such as England, the views of the unrepresented are overlooked far less through the selfishness than through the stupidity or preoccupation of the voters and their representatives. In 1861 Mill pointed out with truth, though with characteristic exaggeration, that the ideas of the wage-earners, and especially the policy of trade-unionists, did not receive proper attention, and would not command it until artisans were fairly represented in Parliament. The changed tone of the House of Commons in regard to trade-unionism, since the introduction of household suffrage, has justified Mill's complaint and his prediction.
Mill also insisted, and with substantial truth, that the law with regard to women, and notably in regard to married women's property, was one-sided and unjust; and he argued that this state of things gave strong ground for the claim of women to political equality with men. Nor can any impartial critic maintain that, even at the present day, the desires of women, about matters in which they are vitally concerned, obtain from Parliament all the attention they deserve. A recent proposal to exclude thousands of barmaids from a lawful means of earning an honest livelihood may well cause women of every class to feel that legislation passed by a Parliament representing only men may at any moment deal recklessly with the interests of women. Despotism is none the less trying because it may be dictated by philanthropy, and the benevolence of workmen which protects women from overwork is not quite above suspicion when it coincides with the desire of artisans to protect themselves from female competition.[4]
It has further been urged, and not without reason, that the present tendency to extend the area of social legislation, which practically restricts the sphere of individual liberty, increases the risk of legislative invasions on the freedom of women. Add to this that on any question which concerns the relation of the sexes—e.g., the law of divorce—a man will constantly assume, in and out of Parliament, that all women agree with him. Who has not heard it stated in debate that every woman condemned, or, with equal confidence, that every woman desired, the repeal of the law prohibiting marriage with a deceased wife's sister? In all probability feminine opinion was as much divided as the opinion of men. Still, it is certainly an evil, as to the magnitude of which judgments may differ, that women possess no constitutional means of expressing officially, so to speak, their opinion on subjects with which they are specially concerned.
This whole line of reasoning is open to at least two criticisms. In the first place, the cases in which the interest of women, as a class, even appears to come into conflict with the interest of men, as a class, are rare. Difference of sex, just because it is a natural division, not depending upon external circumstances, such as the difference between rich and poor, landlords and tenants, traders and agriculturists, does not—at any rate in a civilized country like England—often give rise to an opposition of interests. This is the important truth contained in the paradox attributed to John Bright—that 'women are not a class.' Where will you find a body of Englishmen who have legislated of set purpose against the interest of their daughters and in favour of their sons? Primogeniture itself, as a rule governing descent of land, does not in reality afford such an instance. It may to many of us seem a harmful survival of a bygone time. It found its justification in the circumstances of the age when it arose, as an institution which prevented the division of property, and in any case it told nearly as much against younger sons as against daughters. In no part of public life is the predominance of a class in general more apparent than in the sphere of taxation. But no woman in modern England is taxed where a man is not taxed. In plain truth, the civil or strictly private rights of an unmarried woman, when not in some way connected with a public function, are, broadly speaking, the same as those of a man. The few exceptions to this rule—e.g., the refusal of degrees to women at Oxford and Cambridge—might be got rid of to-morrow by half the exertion used for obtaining votes for women.
In the second place, the most effective part of the argument under consideration, and that on which Mill placed the greatest reliance, lay in the actual injustice of the law which in his time deprived the married women of England of their own property. It was the knowledge of this and of other grievous wrongs calling for redress, that, even more than the commanding influence of Mill, enlisted the most generous and the most public-spirited of the youth of England in his crusade in favour of women's rights. Reformers in the middle of the nineteenth century believed, not unreasonably, as assuredly did Mill, that the wrongs done to women could never be removed without giving them a share in sovereign power. The change in the law produced by the Married Women's Property Acts, 1870-1892, and for most practical purposes completed by 1882, has removed almost every grievance of which a married woman in respect of her property had reason to complain. The position of an English wife may in many respects be envied by the women of Prance, who a few years ago protested against the law of the land by publicly burning the Code Napoleon. The one question which an English reformer need now ask himself is. Whether the zeal to relieve a married woman from unjust disabilities may not, as against her creditors, have bestowed upon her unfair privileges?
But the Married Women's Property Acts, combined with other enactments, such as the Guardianship of Infants Act, 1886, do much more than merely remove acknowledged grievances. They place one fact past a doubt—they demonstrate that a Parliament whereof every member is a man, and every elected member is chosen by men, is ready, at the instance of men advocating the rights of women, to remove every proved defect or unfairness in the laws relating to women. In 1909 we know, what even down to 1882 might have been open to question, that from a Parliament of men elected by men women can obtain, because in fact they have obtained, relief from every proved wrong. Women, in short, in modem England, exert, through free discussion and the certainty with which it tells on public opinion, a legislative influence which indefinitely diminishes, if it does not absolutely annihilate, the force of the argument that the women of England need Parliamentary representation as a guarantee against probable oppression.
Third Argument.—Again, it is urged that the concession of Parliamentary suffrage to women is merely the final step in that extension of their liberties and rights which in England, above all other countries, has been the glory of the nineteenth century, and remains by far the most certain sign of human progress. This emancipation of women, as it is called, has been full of blessing to the world. There has been no pause, as regards women, in this movement towards freedom. Mill, if now alive, would rejoice with justifiable pride at the change which has come over the spirit of the English world. Few now are the employments unconnected with political power or the rights of the State which are forbidden to a woman.
There exist in the United Kingdom sixteen Universities; most, if not all of them, contain colleges or residential halls for women. In fourteen of these Universities degrees are given to women. Two alone—namely, Oxford and Cambridge—deny to a woman the technical right to a degree; but in Oxford and Cambridge colleges for women flourish, and Oxford and Cambridge, in fact, give to a woman the actual honour of the degree of which they still deny her the title. Everyone knows the name of the lady who, to the utmost satisfaction of the English world, became in fact, though not in name, Senior Wrangler, as well as that of the lady who in reality, though not in form, obtained the highest classical degree given by the University of Cambridge. Everyone is well assured that, unless the lawless follies of fighting suffragists excite some untoward reaction, degrees at Oxford and Cambridge will soon be as open to women as the degrees of Edinburgh, St. Andrews, or the University of Dublin. Women already enjoy the municipal franchise; they are Town Councillors; one woman is a Mayor. Nor does public opinion enforce restraints which are not imposed by law. A woman may express her religious or her political convictions with freedom. It would be ridiculous to describe George Eliot, Mrs. Humphry Ward, or Mrs. Fawcett as having been, or being, tongue-tied. Why not, it is urged, take one step more? Why not concede to women Parliamentary votes, and thus pursue to the end that path of progress which has hitherto led to nothing but freedom and happiness?
It is well to admit that this line of reasoning or of sentiment affords one of the most effective, though not the strongest, among the arguments at the disposal of suffragists. It contains, with some exaggeration, a great deal of truth. The exaggeration is all typified by the use of the misplaced and ambiguous terms 'emancipation' or 'enfranchisement.' From the beginning of the nineteenth century the course of events and of opinion has brought a large increase of freedom both to men and to women; but the women of England cannot now be 'emancipated,' for they have never been slaves. It is simply absurd to speak of Maria Edgeworth, Elizabeth Fry, Jane Austen, or Harriet Martineau as held in bondage. They gave expression to the ideas, and in many ways led the opinion, of their time. Even theological movements, such as the Evangelical revival, which did not make directly for freethought, have stimulated indirectly individual energy and the sense of individual responsibility, and have thus opened new spheres of action for women. Let us dismiss at once the cant concealed in the application of such terms as 'enfranchisement' or 'emancipation' to English women. These expressions, because they mean sometimes delivery from bondage and sometimes the acquisition of political rights, suggest the notion that to give English women votes is to give them freedom. They cannot be emancipated, because they are born free, are free, and will remain free, whether they obtain Parliamentary votes or not.
This point is the more important because the language used conceals from view the fact that personal freedom has little or nothing to do with participation in sovereign authority. I do not, however, for a moment doubt that the gradual removal, which has been going on for more than a century, of fetters placed on the free action and thoughts of women, as also of men, has been an unspeakable blessing to our country. Nor do I wonder at the argument drawn from this fact in favour of admitting women to a share in sovereignty. My contention is that this line of reasoning is open to a clear reply.
The answer is that the progress which gives satisfaction to every man who notes the increase of human freedom and of human welfare has assuredly not arisen from the attainment by women of political rights. The very complaint of suffragists is that these rights are still denied to English women. The source of the progress which most of us recognize lies in the extension of civil or private rights. It has been caused by the increase of personal freedom. It is due to the practical acceptance in Great Britain of Mill's own law of liberty—namely, that 'the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number is self-protection; that the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community against his will is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant.'[5]
This fundamental canon of individualism—that, in the words of Mill, 'over himself, his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign'—is, as an absolute principle of morals or politics, open to just criticism; but, as a good working rule of political practice, when tempered by the common sense of prudent statesmanship, it has conferred upon English women immense benefits. But this fact tells, if we think the matter out, rather against than in favour of the claim of votes for women—^that is, the claim to a share in sovereignty; for Mill's dogma rests at bottom upon the distinction which he insists upon, and even exaggerates, between matters which mainly concern the individual, and only indirectly, if at all, concern the public, and matters which immediately concern the public or the State, and only indirectly, if at all, concern the individual. Now, a man's rights as to his own concerns are his private or civil rights, and should be limited only, according to Mill, by respect for the equal rights of his neighbours. But the rights of an individual with reference to matters which primarily concern the State are public or political rights, or, in other words, duties or functions to be exercised by the possessor, not in accordance with his own wish or interest, but primarily, at least, with a view to the interest of the State, and therefore may, even according to Mill's doctrine, be limited or extended in any way which conduces to the welfare of the community.
This difference between civil and political rights is, for the present argument, essential. Civil rights ought, according to Mill, to be governed by his law of liberty. To political rights this law has hardly any application. No art of logic, even when aided by rhetoric, can convert a precept intended to determine the limits of an individual's freedom, in matters which primarily concern himself, into the dogma that a given individual, or a given class, has necessarily a right to the determination of matters which primarily concern the public or the State. A person's claim, in short, to govern himself is a totally different thing from his claim to govern others. Prove that an Englishwoman has, speaking generally, a rightful claim to the exercise of her natural talents and powers, or even to the education which makes that exercise possible, yet you have not advanced a step towards showing that an English woman has a right to take part by her vote in the government of the 300,000,000 of men and women who are natives of British India.
The more the difference between civil and political rights is considered, the more instructive it becomes. The deprivation of civil rights may amount to slavery. The non-possession of political rights may, to an individual man, be of the most trifling consequence. There are countries, and free countries (such, I believe, is Belgium), where the State is forced to impose penalties upon electors who do not give their votes. In no civilized country is it necessary to compel men to make use of and enjoy their private rights. Men of the very highest public spirit have felt again and again that, while civil rights—that is, personal freedom in its widest sense—are to every man of vital importance, the possession of political rights may be, if civil freedom is secured, of comparatively little value. One of the most eminent of English democratic leaders wrote in 1838: 'I very much suspect that at present, for the great mass of the people, Prussia possesses the best Government in Europe. I would gladly give up my taste for talking politics to secure such a state of things in England.'[6]
He held that the mild absolutism of Prussia was better for the people than 'that great juggle of the "English Constitution."'
These are the ideas of Richard Cobden. They do not command my assent, but they mark, with his customary clearness, the essential difference between the civil rights which constitute individual freedom and the political power which is in reality the imposition of public duties.
- ↑ Mill: 'Subjection of Women,' p. 1.
- ↑ 'On Liberty,' pp. 23, 24, ed. 1859.
- ↑ 'The principle of "no taxation without representation" is the foundation of English liberty, and we feel that it is one on which we ought not to appeal to a Liberal Government in vain' ('Statement of Association of Registered Medical Women,' Times, December 14, 1908, p. 6).
- ↑ This motive is generally charged against the Factory Acts by those who desire for themselves or for working women complete freedom of contract. It may be true in certain instances or in certain quarters, but it is untrue of the majority of those who passed or who wish to maintain these Acts. Are we to believe that women desire to be freed from the provision prohibiting mothers from employment in a factory within four weeks of giving birth to a child? If so, they require still, in the interests of the community, to be protected against themselves. And, even if women are to be free to sell their labour, under prejudicial conditions, what about the children?
- ↑ 'Liberty,' pp. 21, 22, ed. 1859. Compare this with the principle which underlies Mill's whole argument in his 'Subjection of Women.' The treatise 'On Liberty' is a demand for personal freedom; the 'Subjection of Women' is a demand for political equality. Each claim may or may not be valid, but there does not exist between them any necessary logical connection.
- ↑ Morley: 'Cobden,' vol. i., p. 130.