56
ON VOTES FOR WOMEN
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
- ↑ 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.
