Lesbia Newman (1889)/Chapter 19
CHAPTER XIX.
Englishwomen and the Politics of the Day.
At the date of our story, 189—, there were still nominally three great political parties in England, the Jingoes, the Shillyshallies, and the Thoroughgoers. The power of the last-named had been long in abeyance, but was now coming to the front with such impetus that it promised shortly to sway the national legislature exclusively, so that there remained little chance for the other two parties to regain their footing except by coalition.
This change in the balance of power had considerably furthered the cause of women’s rights. The Married Women’s Property Act, passed some dozen or fifteen years before, had been a move in the right direction, and latterly the suffrage had been extended to women possessing the same qualifications to vote as men. However, this plausible form of enfranchisement was in reality one-sided; it did not in practice bring the number of enfranchised females in the kingdom anywhere near that of enfranchised males, and the still surviving disabilities of women in other matters went far to neutralise the partial equality of the sexes in this one. Still it was the edge of the wedge inserted in the old fabric, and in the normal course of things the rest of the desired reforms should have followed rapidly. Already in some of the professions, notably in that of medicine, the female intruders were making their way, mostly by their own perseverance, but partly also by the encouragement they received from a few far-sighted and liberal men. But what told most of all was the improvement in young girls’ education; for with the rise in their education went that lever of all improvement, their ambition. Nobler aspirations began to fill their enlarged minds. University examinations and university establishments had now, for a generation of pupils, been making havoc of the little needlework, little music, little French, little history, little geography, little theology, which formerly had been judged proper for the young lady brain, and—no insignificant matter—the newspaper press had long ago dropped the bantering (not to say scurrilous and ribald) tone in which in past days it had been accustomed to criticise all efforts of women to compete with men. Much, very much, still remained to be accomplished, but the progressive and self-respecting portion of the female community felt that if it was a minority, it was a minority which had a great future before it, and which felt its strength increasing steadily year by year.
But the year 189— was destined to witness a disastrous reaction which threw out the calculations of the reformers. It may seem strange at first that the extension of the suffrage to women did not, after all, prove any safeguard against reaction, in fact, the contrary; but it is to be remembered that only a limited class, namely female householders, had as yet been included. A married woman, not a householder in her own right, might be as cultivated and experienced as you please, with the veriest dolt or brute for a husband; she had no voice in the making of the laws under which she lived; she bore her full share of burdens, but no share of privileges. The previous Parliament, though it had broken the ice, had not mustered courage to take the plain, straightforward course of giving a vote to every wife whose husband has a vote, and to every husband whose wife has one, in addition to the enfranchisement of spinster and widow householders. The consequence of such pusillanimity had been that the enfranchisement of women was restricted to a class who, as might have been foreseen, were likely to favour reaction; most of them had reached a time of life when their habits of thought were fixed, and these having been cast in the mould of the immemorial slavery and degradation of womanhood, there was no hope of much re-casting. So the prospect of having to throw off their slough at the bidding of their advanced and strong-minded sisters did not please these weakervessels and dollymopses, and they began to combine against the women’s rights movement, both socially and politically. Unfortunately their advantage of numbers and of the power of the purse made it easy enough to work mischief against the interests of their own sex, and the new Parliament returned by the General Election of 189— could be trusted to legislate so that the social piggery might slumber undisturbed on its old dirty straw. It proved, however, that this could not be done so as to clog only the obnoxious Women’s Rights movement, leaving home and foreign policy in general to develop healthily.
As already remarked, the Jingoes and the Shillyshallies, although they had no political love for each other, saw that in these days they had no chance against the Thoroughgoers, except by merging their differences. Accordingly it was agreed between them that the new Cabinet should form what was technically called a Bungling Coalition. Under these auspices the political atmosphere was growing close, stifled, charged with malarious elements requiring a storm to clear them away. The country, much to the surprise of resident foreigners who were not disposed to agree with their compatriots in regarding the British power as a ' puissance finie, was getting generally out of touch with an impatiently progressive age, hanging back and acting as a drag where formerly it had been the propeller. One serious result of this was a slackening of cordiality with the continental neighbours, especially with France, the rapidity of whose transition toward an enlightened Socialism made her the more susceptible of coldness and discouragement, so inconsistent with the former character of her old ally. Then again, in relation to the United States, untoward incidents connected with the fisheries disputes had recently occurred which, though in years past they would have been easily smoothed over, were now seized upon by the Irish-American faction in order to breed resentment between the old and the new portions of the Anglo-Saxon race. All this would have been difficult to bring about but for the Bungling Coalition which the influence of reactionary Englishwomen had done so much to set at the helm, and which thus continued to make such bad blood between the nation and its neighbours and natural allies that, what with little Ireland determined to trouble the waters if possible, and great Russia, also alienated, biding her time until they should be troubled, it needed no statesman of genius to foresee that any trivial dispute which in ordinary times would do no harm beyond agitating the money markets for a day or two, might now precipitate war.
But every dog has his day, and the Bungling Coalition had theirs. They spent it in snapping and snarling abroad, and in leaving their traces against every important institution at home. Venality began to appear in public concerns, while vulgarity was stamped on the surface of a society which had ceased to believe in its professed principles, and which cared little more to shape its own destiny than our three friends, in the trip previously narrated, would have cared to take personal charge of and navigate the steamer which carried them over the water to Queenstown.
Yet the unwitting lords of misrule who were guiding England thither were not exceptionally remiss nor stupid. They were not less conscientious than other men, but their official conscience was for place and power. The inherent badness of the ends for which they had been called to office left no worthier motives any scope; it paralysed their efforts for improvement, and destroyed their sense of proportion in government and legislation; in a word, it made them consummate Bunglers all round; and for this, as will afterwards appear, those responsible for the state of things over which they presided, had to bear the penalties equally.