WOMEN AND REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT.
Those who have been labouring in behalf of the removal of the electoral disabilities of women, feel that a very critical time in the history of the agitation is now approaching. The question of parliamentary reform, and a further extension of the principle of household suffrage, will probably occupy the attention of the House of Commons during a great part of next session. The old familiar arguments that taxation without representation is tyranny, that those who are subject to the law and fulfil the obligations of citizenship cannot be justly excluded from all share of making the laws, will be heard again and again; and it will moreover be urged that it is alike unjust and inexpedient to place the stigma of political subjection upon whole classes of loyal, peaceable and industrious citizens, by making the qualifications for the franchise such as they cannot fulfil. On one side of the House it will be urged that property ought to be represented; on the other side of the House the words of Mr. Chamberlain at the Cobden Club dinner will be repeated, that 'full confidence in the people is the only sure foundation on which the government of this country can rest.' And what the advocates of a real representation of the people want to make sure of, is to remind the orators who make use of these telling phrases, that the human race consists of women as well as of men. They wish to remind the Radicals and Liberals, who have done so much to get rid of political disabilities, that the disability of sex is as repugnant to true Liberalism as are the disabilities of race and religion. They want to remind the Tory party that if a fair representation of property is what they are aiming at, they will be acting very inconsistently if they support a system which gives no kind of representation to property, however vast, which happens to be owned by a woman.
It is sometimes said by those who do not deny the justice of women's claim to representation, that it is necessary to show what practical good will be done to women and to the community at large by giving women votes. The answer is not far to seek. Exactly the same good that is done to other people by self-government and representative government, as opposed to government by an autocracy
