Page:Letters to a friend on votes for women.djvu/71

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