or an oligarchy. One overwhelming advantage which results from representative government is that it teaches people to take care of themselves; it teaches them that faults in their system of government are due, not to the tyranny of those who are set over them, but to their own lassitude and want of zeal in correcting those faults. What better remedy than this can exist against revolution? And what a miserable waste of noble qualities results from the opposite system—the system of repression and autocracy. It is not necessary to look further than to the contemporary history of Russia for examples. We see there courage, compassion, fidelity, devotion, ingenuity, and patience, turned aside from channels in which they might have made the whole world a better place to live in, into channels which lead to conspiracy, murder, and insatiable longings for revenge. These are the fruits of tyranny when tyranny is carried to extremes. It is the aim of representative government to avoid these social cankers; and it is the aim of those who favour the representation of women to make representative government in our own country as complete as possible by including all citizens, men and women, who fulfil the legal qualifications, and who have not forfeited their political liberty by crime or pauperism.
It is not necessary here to dwell at any length on the painful subject of laws that are unjust to women. No one who has ever given even a few minutes' attention to the subject will deny that there are many laws which, to use Mr. Gladstone's expression, give to women 'something less than justice.'[1] If it is necessary to quote examples, the inequality which the law has created between men and women in divorce suits furnishes one. The cruel law which gives a mother no legal guardianship over her children is another. I think there can be little doubt that if similar hardships had affected any represented class, they would long ago have been swept away. As it is, however, though the injustice of these and other laws affecting women is fully and almost universally recognised, year after year rolls by and nothing is done to remedy them. Here are matters almost universally admitted to involve injustice and wrong, and no one tries to remedy them. Why is this? It is because the motive power is wanting. Representation is the motive power for the redress of legislative grievances. If not what is the use of representation? People would be as well off without it as with it. But all our history shows the practical value of representation. Before the working classes were represented, trades-unions were illegal associations, and consequently an absconding treasurer of one of these societies was liable to no legal punishment. Not one man in a thousand attempted to justify such an iniquity, even when it was an established institution. It was a recognised injustice; but it was
- ↑ Mr. Gladstone's speech in the House of Commons on the Women's Suffrage Bill, 1871.
