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ON VOTES FOR WOMEN
hardly a step towards showing that, from a woman's right to govern herself, you may legitimately infer that she has a right to govern others. The claim to civil rights or private rights never has been, and never can be, placed on the same footing as the claim to political rights, or, in other words, duties.[1]
Women's votes, we are told, will raise women's wages; but, in the sense in which every overworked woman will understand this assertion, it is false. The current rate of wages cannot be fixed by law. In the only sense in which the assertion may be true, it supplies, as I have pointed out, the strongest of arguments against the extension of electoral rights to a body of persons
- ↑ It is worth noting that no man was less inclined than Mill to entrust the government of India to the British democracy. He deplored the transference of the administration of Indian affairs from the East India Company to Parliament. The good government of India depended, in his opinion, upon a much more profound study of the conditions of Indian government than British politicians had shown any willingness to undertake. There is no reason to suppose that even Mill expected such profound study to be promoted by giving to English women a share in sovereign power.
