Letters to a friend on votes for women/Objections to woman suffrage
LETTER IV
Objections to woman suffrage
My dear C,
One of our friends, to whom you have shown the preceding letters, tells me that I have done nothing except render a service to the suffragists by placing their side of the question at issue in so masterly and conclusive a manner as nearly to convince him that they have the best of the argument. If this is the case, it is certainly time for me to press upon you the objections which lie against any proposal for the admission of English women at the present day to the Parliamentary franchise.
First Objection.—Woman suffrage must ultimately, and probably in no long time, lead to adult suffrage, and will increase all the admitted defects of so-called universal, or in strictness manhood, suffrage.
The close connection between woman suffrage and adult suffrage, though occasionally denied,[1] is to my mind as clear as day. Every reason and every sentiment which supports the cry of 'Votes for women!' tells, at any rate with nine people out of ten, in favour of adult suffrage. Every citizen of the United Kingdom, for example, pays taxes; how can any man or woman who relies on the dogma that taxation involves representation deny that every citizen of the United Kingdom is entitled to a vote? No one, again, who notes the development of popular government throughout the world can doubt the probability that manhood suffrage, which already exists in France, in Germany, in Switzerland, in the United States, and in most of our self-governing colonies, will at no distant date be established in the United Kingdom. But even the most moderate and sagacious of the agitators for woman suffrage admit, or rather demand, that manhood suffrage shall involve adult suffrage. It would, lastly, be no easy task to give, even in name, political equality to women under our present electoral system. The mere extension of the present system so as to include women would have some extraordinary results. It would in many cases exclude from what suffragists call 'the elementary rights of citizenship' a large number of married women; that is exactly the class of women who, in the judgment of most persons, are best qualified to exercise the franchise without disadvantage to the nation. Woman suffrage, moreover, combined with household suffrage as it actually exists, would lead to the creation of 'faggot votes,' but 'faggot votes' constitute an anomaly, harmless in itself, which Liberals out of office denounce, and even when in office promise to remove. But if it be difficult to combine household suffrage with woman suffrage, the feat of giving political equality to women could be performed with the greatest ease under a scheme of adult suffrage which should give a vote to every citizen, male or female, who has attained the age of twenty-one years.
Woman suffrage, then, I repeat, assuredly means, if not to-day, yet within a short time, the introduction of adult suffrage, and, independently of the new electors being women, must add to the defects of manhood suffrage. A huge constituency is, just because of its size, a bad electoral body. As the number of electors is increased, the power and the responsibility of each man are diminished. Authority passes into the hands of persons who possess neither the independence due to the possession of property nor the intelligence due to education. Our electorate now consists of some 7,000,000 men. Adult suffrage would create an electorate of, say roundly, at least 20,000,000[2] individuals, of whom considerably over 10,000,000 would be women. This mere increase in numbers is no slight evil. That more than half the new electors should be absolutely devoid of political training and traditions creates of itself a national peril; but common sense forbids any fair reasoner to stop at this point. This uneducated majority of the electorate would be women. The very advocates of woman suffrage make it part of their case that the civic virtues of women have never as yet been fully developed. Assuredly the most ordinary prudence warns us against admitting to a full share of sovereignty persons who have lacked all experience of its exercise.
Grant, for the sake of argument—though the concession is not justified by our knowledge of human nature—that possession of power invariably teaches its possessors to use it with justice. Still, it remains the height of folly to entrust the guidance of the State, at a time when the country is surrounded by perils of all kinds, to unskilled apprentices who have no experience in piloting the commonwealth through pressing dangers. The most sagacious advocates of women's rights do not deny that each sex exhibits virtues which are found only in a less degree, or, it may be, not at all, in the other. We hear, as I have pointed out to you, much of the keenness of women's personal sympathies, of their capacity for passionate and often generous emotion; we are told that either nature or training, or both in combination, may lead women to see more readily than men the minute details on which depends the transaction of business. Yet it would not be unfair to say that, while women often perceive more readily than men the actual facts before them, they have a less firm grasp on principles; that a woman, in short, compared with a man of equal ability, may have a better eye for the circumstances around her, but has less of foresight. She has assuredly also less of tenacity.
From differences, upon some of which, in whatever form they ought to be expressed, no man has insisted more strongly than Mill, it follows that the participation of women in sovereign power must introduce into English politics a new and incalculable element which will not work wholly for good. An English democracy, in common with all democracies, is too emotional. The strong point of popular government is assuredly neither foresight nor firmness of purpose. Now, every student of British history can see that more than once the statesmanlike foresight, and still more certainly the intense tenacity or obstinacy of purpose, which have marked the British aristocracy and the British middle classes, have been the salvation of the country. These qualities defended the independence of England against the despotism of Louis XIV., and, in a later age, against the attacks, first of revolutionary Jacobinism, and next of Napoleonic Imperialism. No one as yet knows whether our democracy can exhibit the unconquerable firmness which once and again has saved England from subjection to foreign power. Who can contemplate without dread a state of things under which democratic passion, intensified by feminine emotion, may deprive the country both of the calmness which foresees and the resolution which repels the onslaught of foreign enemies? There is, we venture to say, no man, and no woman either, who at moments of calm reflection can believe that, at a time of threatened invasion, the safety of the country would be increased by the possibility that British policy might be determined by the votes and the influence of the fighting suffragists.
Second Objection.—The grant of votes to women settles nothing. If conceded tomorrow, it must be followed by the cry of 'Seats in Parliament for women!' 'Places in the Cabinet for women!' 'Judgeships for women!' For the avowed aim of every suffragist, down from John Stuart Mill to Mrs. Pankhurst, is the complete political equality of men and of women. The opening of the Parliamentary franchise to women is the encouragement, not the close, of a long agitation.
Third Objection.—The proposed concession of sovereignty to women is in one important respect opposed to every precedent to be found in the constitutional history of England. It has hitherto been with Englishmen a primary and essential condition of the admission of any body of persons to a share in sovereign power that the class on whose behalf Parliamentary votes are demanded should be eager and ready to take up Parliamentary responsibilities. In 1832 nobody doubted that the middle classes, or in 1867 that the artisans, desired admission to the full powers of citizenship. But this primary condition of constitutional changes has in the present instance not been fulfilled. Many women, indeed, desire votes; a few women clamour passionately for votes. But a large number of English women[3] protest against the introduction of woman suffrage; they deprecate the concession to themselves of rights which they regard as intolerable burdens, and the concession to other women of powers which they believe the recipients cannot exercise with advantage to the country.
This protest must command attention; it reveals an exceptional state of opinion which must, so long as it exists, tell strongly against the introduction of woman suffrage into Great Britain. The position of these political protestants is in no way absurd. It is best expressed in the words of a woman: 'The women whose profound, though often unspoken, reluctance to the proposed addition to their duties and responsibilities I am endeavouring to interpret, do not regard the question as mainly referring to the value, or the best distribution, of a particular bit of political machinery; but as involving that of the right and fair division of labour between the sexes. We regard the suffrage not as conferring a necessarily advantageous position, but rather as the symbol, and to some extent the instrument, of a public participation in political functions; not as a prize to be coveted, but as the token of a task which should not be indiscriminately imposed—a task not to be lightly undertaken, or discharged without encountering both toil and opposition. We think that justice and fairness consist, not in ignoring actual differences, but in so adjusting necessary burdens with due regard to the lines of irremovable difference as to secure the most even distribution of pressure. We believe that the fact that Nature has irrevocably imposed certain burdens on our sex constitutes a claim, as a matter of justice, that we should be relieved from some part of those functions which men are competent to share with us.'[4]
Nor is there the least lack of public spirit in the protest by freeborn English women against subjection to a sovereignty of women which they neither desire nor revere, and which they believe would be disastrous to the country. One point is past dispute. Every reason which supports the claim of women to votes supports also the right of women to be consulted on the question whether they shall be given votes or not. It is impossible to maintain that women have a right to determine every matter which concerns the interest of England or of the British Empire, but have no right to be consulted whether it is well for England and for women themselves that the country should try the new experiment of woman suffrage. No serious reasoner will try to escape this conclusion by the idle retort that a woman who does not desire a vote need not use it. The very essence of her objection is that a vote imposes upon her a duty which may be an intolerable burden, and subjects her to the rule of a class—namely, women—which she deems incompetent to exercise sovereign power.
Fourth Objection.—The basis of all government is force, which means in the last resort physical strength. But predominant force lies in the hands of men. Now these facts, whether one likes them or not, tell in more ways than people often realize against giving a share in sovereignty to English women. The matter well deserves consideration.
There is, in the first place, a grave danger that the nominally sovereign body may not be in reality able to enforce the law of the land. In this country the legal or constitutional sovereign is Parliament—i.e., the King, the House of Lords, and the House of Commons acting together; but the 'political sovereign'[5] is the electorate, which, being wide enough to share and represent the feelings of the mass of the people, does in general obtain obedience to the laws which it approves. But the reason why laws made with the assent or acquiescence of the electorate are obeyed is that the electors constitute a power to which no single citizen and no class of citizens can offer permanent resistance.
That the employment of physical force is the basis of law and of sovereignty anyone may assure himself by observing the way in which law loses its authority whenever the support of the force whence law derives its power is withdrawn. Why has the law of the land little better than a nominal existence in some parts of Ireland? The answer is that, for reasons of party convenience, the British Government will not in Ireland use the power placed in its hands by Parliament for the enforcement of the law. Let a fighting suffragist in her calmer moments ask herself why it is that her petulance or her cunning is allowed occasionally to interrupt the sittings of the House of Commons, and lower the dignity of Parliament? The answer assuredly is that habitual consideration for the weakness of women makes Englishmen for the moment unwilling to use the force needed for the suppression of misbehaviour, which it may any day be necessary to punish with the severity due to serious crime. Meanwhile law is enfeebled unless supported by adequate force. Now the sovereignty of Parliament, or, in other words, the power of the electorate, might easily be imperilled if the majority of the electors were a class which, though more numerous, is weaker than a minority of the nation. But this is exactly the state of things which might arise under a system of adult suffrage, embracing not only men but women. Suppose an Act of Parliament passed which was opposed to the wishes of the decided majority of male electors, but carried practically by the votes of women. In such a case the ominous result would ensue that, whilst the political sovereign—that is, the majority of the electors—supported the law, the body possessed of predominant strength would be strongly opposed to the law. Rarely indeed could it happen that anything like the whole body of female electors would be opposed to anything like the whole body of male electors. It is not necessary for our argument to imagine so portentous a state of affairs. But it is certainly possible under a system of adult suffrage, and in a country where, as in England, women constitute the greater part of the population, that a body composed of a large majority of female electors acting together with a minority of male electors, might force upon the country a law or a policy opposed to the deliberate will and judgment of the majority of Englishmen. Is it certain that in such circumstances Englishmen would obey and enforce a law that punished as a crime conduct which they in general held ought to be treated as an offence, not against law, but against morality? Can we, again, feel assured that Englishmen might not forbid the making of an ignominious peace, even though the majority of the electorate, consisting for the most part of women, held that the horrors of war must be terminated at all costs by a treaty which, in the eyes of most Englishmen, sacrificed the dignity and imperilled the independence of the country?
Add to this a consideration to which little attention has been paid. The army, the police, governors of gaols, every person, in short, by whom the coercive power of the State is directly exercised, must, under any constitution whatever, be men. Whenever, therefore, a large majority of male electors is outvoted by a majority constituted mainly of women, the minority will command the sympathy of the officials by whose hands the State exercises its power. Woman suffrage, therefore, in common with every system which separates nominal sovereignty from the possession of irresistible power, involves the risk that the constitutional sovereign of the country may be rendered powerless by a class, in this instance the majority of the male electors, possessed of predominant physical force.
Look at the connection between force and government from another point of view. It is an open secret of sound constitutionalism that any polity which is to stand the trials to which every great institution devised by man is exposed must give effect, under whatever form, to the will of the class possessed of paramount and enduring power. In this sense, and in this sense only, statesmen who most honour law and justice must desire that might and right, law and strength, should harmonize with and support each other. The many failures and the rare successes of constitution-makers equally attest the importance of this principle. Why was it that the democrats and Puritans who planned institutions so ingenious as the constitution of 1653 could create no permanent form of popular government? A partial answer to a complicated question is surely to be found in the fact that the premature and democratic institutions of Puritanism, and even the Protectorate, with its approach towards the ancient kingship, did not represent the strength of England. The yeomanry, on which the Republicans of the Commonwealth relied, was already a declining power. Why, on the other hand, did the Revolution settlement of 1689, with all its defects, stand substantially unchanged for some 140 years? The answer is that this work of Whig statesmanship on the whole satisfied the large landowners, the merchants, and the traders, who constituted the true strength of England.
Consider for a moment the experiment, tried in our own times by the American democracy, of conferring full political rights on the negroes of the South. There was much to be said in its favour. In a democratic Republic, men argued, no class could obtain respect or secure its own civil rights unless it had its share in political sovereignty. This was the conviction of most, though not of all. Abolitionists. It was entertained by some of the best and wisest of American statesmen. In the decision finally adopted, noble enthusiasm and philanthropy played a far greater part than partisanship or the shallow astuteness of party managers. The generous experiment has turned out a dubious success, if not a failure. The negro vote is a sham and a fraud. Some candid observers will assert that the state of feeling between the whites and the blacks is worse than ever, though others happily draw a brighter picture of the condition of the South. No one, thank Heaven, regrets the abolition of slavery; but patriotic American citizens, among whom may be numbered some of the most sagacious of the men of colour, hold, it would appear, the opinion that the wiser course would have been to use the power of the reunited Republic at the end of the War of Secession for securing to the negroes every civil right, instead of hurrying on their accession to political rights which have certainly not given them political authority.
I know you will never suppose—hardly, I hope, can even an indignant suffragist imagine — that I am so dull as to suggest, what any man of sense knows to be strictly false, that English women occupy anything like the position of ignorant and scarcely civilized negroes. The suggestion that English women are slaves, patent as is its absurdity, comes, if at all, from the more heated and less wise advocates of woman suffrage. All that is here contended for is that page after page of history exemplifies the futility of giving to any class, whether of men or of women, political rights in excess of genuine political power.
Full participation, further, not in civil rights, but in sovereignty, depends on capacity to perform all the duties of citizenship; and the defence of his country is at certain periods the main, as at all times it ought to be the essential, duty of a British citizen. But this duty women as a class have not the capacity to perform. No one dreams of the formation of an army of amazons, and, were such a thing a possibility, it would be a step back towards barbarism. Nor is it only in the defence of the country against foreign enemies that women are by nature incapable of taking part. The same is the case with the maintenance of law and order at home. Law is a command; its sanctions are ineffective without force to apply them; and women are unable to share in the forcible maintenance of the laws which, if they had the vote, they would share in making. It is no argument, in this connection, to say that many men are incapable, from age or weakness, of defending the State, but enjoy the franchise all the same. The aged have taken, or been able to take, their share in public duties; the weaklings are exceptions. Of women, the reverse is true. No one dreams that they ought to be constables, officers of police, governors of gaols, or coastguards. No woman is bound, as is a man, to attend the Justices in suppressing a riot upon pain of fine and imprisonment. All this is no absolute ground for excluding women from a share in sovereign power, but it does afford a ground which is not palpably unjust for their exclusion from political authority.
Distinctions of rights founded upon sex have often given rise to injustice, but they have this in their favour—they rest upon a difference not created by social conventions or by human prejudice and selfishness, or by accidental circumstances (such as riches and poverty), which split society into classes, but upon the nature of things. This difference is as far-reaching as it is natural and immutable. It is one which, just because it is permanent and unchangeable, every honest thinker must take into account. That men are men and women are women is an obvious platitude; but it contains an undeniable truth which, like some other unwelcome facts, rhetoric, even when, as with Mill, it masquerades as strict reasoning, cannot conceal. This is a matter worth insisting upon, for there is nothing which hinders the calm discussion of a political problem requiring for its solution something like judicial serenity so much as the difficulty, inseparable from all discussions involving reference to sex, of putting plain facts into plain language. The comparative weakness of women inevitably means loss of power. Nor can it be forgotten not only that women are physically, and probably mentally, weaker than men, but that they are inevitably, as a class, burdened with duties of the utmost national importance, and of an absorbing and exhausting nature, from which men are free. In any case, the close connection between government and force tells against the claim made on behalf of women to the possession of as much political authority as is conceded to men.
- ↑ All suffragists, it is authoritatively announced, are now agreed on the formula that 'women demand the Parliamentary franchise on the same conditions as those on which it is now, or may be hereafter, granted to men.' Hence we are apparently meant to infer that women will contentedly accept the franchise, combined with the maintenance of so-called household suffrage. (See letter signed by Mrs. Fawcett and others, The Times, March 23, 1909, p. 6.) The formula is, however, like other articles of peace, ambiguous. (1) It may mean that women will be content with receiving the suffrage on strictly the same conditions as men, though with the result that, as these conditions are much more often fulfilled by men than by women, whilst male electors amount to some 7,000,000 persons, female electors would amount to at most 2,000,000 persons, and this although women constitute the decided majority of the population. I utterly disbelieve that such an arrangement would be permanently acquiesced in. (2) It may mean that the law should be modified so that under the present system of so-called household suffrage an equal number, broadly speaking, of men and of women should be admitted to the franchise, or, in other words, so that the electorate should consist of at least 14,000,000 electors. This, we may be certain, is the sense in which the formula is accepted by ardent suffragists. But this doubled electorate is open to all the objections, though in a slightly less degree, which lie against adult suffrage.
- ↑ It might amount to 24,000,000, containing again a majority of women.
- ↑ Of these more than a quarter of a million have already petitioned Parliament against any Bill conferring the suffrage upon women.
- ↑ Miss C. E. Stephen, 'Women and Politics,' The Nineteenth Century, February, 1907, pp. 228, 229.
- ↑ For the distinction between the legal and the political sovereign, see Dicey, 'Law of the Constitution' seventh edition, pp. 70-72.