The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage eBook
Almroth Wright
himself, after this, that he had in his possession
a vade mecum[handbook] to the comprehension
of human societies, he now took it upon himself to
expound the principles which govern and direct these.
Until such time as this procedure was unmasked, Mill’s
political economy enjoyed an unquestioned authority.
Exactly the same plan was followed by Mill in handling
the question of woman’s suffrage. Instead
of dealing with woman as she is, and with woman placed
in a setting of actually subsisting conditions, Mill
takes as his theme a woman who is a creature of his
imagination. This woman is, by assumption,
in mental endowments a replica of man. She lives
in a world which is, by tacit assumption, free
from complications of sex. And, if practical
considerations had ever come into the purview of Mill’s
mind, she would, by tacit assumption, be paying
her own way, and be making full personal and financial
contributions to the State. It is in connexion
with this fictitious woman that Mill sets himself
to work out the benefits which women would derive
from co-partnership with men in the government of the
State, and those which such co-partnership would confer
on the community. Finally, practising again upon
himself the same imposition as in his Political
Economy, this unpractical trafficker in abstractions
sets out to persuade his reader that he has, by dealing
with fictions of the mind, effectively grappled with
the concrete problem of woman’s suffrage.
This, then, is the philosopher who gives intellectual
prestige to the Woman’s Suffrage cause.
But is there not, let us in the end ask ourselves,
here and there at least, a man who is of real account
in the world of affairs, and who is—not
simply a luke-warm Platonic friend or an opportunist
advocate—but an impassioned promoter of
the woman’s suffrage movement? One knows
quite well that there is. But then one suspects
—one perhaps discerns by “the spirit
sense”—that this impassioned promoter
of woman’s suffrage is, on the sequestered side
of his life, an idealistic dreamer: one for whom
some woman’s memory has become, like Beatrice
for Dante, a mystic religion.
We may now pass on to deal with the arguments by which
the woman suffragist has sought to establish her case.
PART I
ARGUMENTS WHICH ARE ADDUCED IN SUPPORT OF WOMAN’S SUFFRAGE
I
ARGUMENTS FROM ELEMENTARY NATURAL RIGHTS
Signification of the Term “Woman’s Rights”—Argument
from “Justice” —Juridical Justice-"Egalitarian
Equity”—Argument from Justice Applied
to Taxation—Argument from Liberty—Summary
of Arguments from Elementary Natural Rights.
