The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage/Woman's Disability in the Matter of Physical Force
PART II
ARGUMENTS AGAINST THE CONCESSION OF THE
PARLIAMENTARY SUFFRAGE TO WOMAN
I
WOMAN'S DISABILITY IN THE MATTER OF PHYSICAL FORCE
International Position of State would be Imperilled by Woman's Suffrage—Internal Equilibrium of State would be Imperilled.
The woman suffrage movement has now gone too far to be disposed of by the overthrow of its arguments, and by a mere indication of those which could be advanced on the other side. The situation demands the bringing forward of the case against woman's suffrage; and it must be the full and quite unexpurgated case.
I shall endeavour to do this in the fewest possible words, and to be more especially brief where I have to pass again over ground which I have previously traversed in dealing with the arguments of the suffragists.
I may begin with what is fundamental.
It is an axiom that we should in legislating guide ourselves directly by considerations of utility and expediency. For abstract principles—I have in view here rights, justice, egalitarian equity, equality, liberty, chivalry, logicality, and such like—are not all of them guides to utility; and each of these is, as we have seen, open to all manner of private misinterpretation.
Applying the above axiom to the issue before us, it is clear that we ought to confine ourselves here to the discussion of the question as to whether the State would, or would not, suffer from the admission of women to the electorate.
We can arrive at a judgment upon this by considering, on the one hand, the class-characters of women so far as these may be relevant to the question of the suffrage; and, on the other hand, the legislative programmes put forward by the female legislative reformer and the feminist.
In connexion with the class-characters of woman, it will be well, before attempting to indicate them, to interpolate here the general consideration that the practical statesman, who has to deal with things as they are, is not required to decide whether the characters of women which will here be considered are, as the physiologist (who knows that the sexual products influence every tissue of the body) cannot doubt, "secondary sexual characters"; or, as the suffragist contends, "acquired characters." It will be plain that whether defects are "secondary sexual characters" (and therefore as irremediable as "racial characters"); or whether they are "acquired characters" (and as such theoretically remediable) they are relevant to the question of the concession of the suffrage just so long as they continue to be exhibited.[1]
The primordial argument against giving woman the vote is that that vote would not represent physical force.
Now it is by physical force alone and by prestige—which represents physical force in the background—that a nation protects itself against foreign interference, upholds its rule over subject populations, and enforces its own laws. And nothing could in the end more certainly lead to war and revolt than the decline of the military spirit and loss of prestige which would inevitably follow if man admitted woman into political co-partnership.
While it is arguable that such a partnership with woman in government as obtains in Australia and New Zealand is sufficiently unreal to be endurable, there cannot be two opinions on the question that a virile and imperial race will not brook any attempt at forcible control by women.
Again, no military foreign nation or native race would ever believe in the stamina and firmness of purpose of any nation that submitted even to the semblance of such control.
The internal equilibrium of the State also would be endangered by the admission to the register of millions of electors whose vote would not be endorsed by the authority of physical force.
Regarded from this point of view a Woman's Suffrage measure stands on an absolutely different basis to any other extension of the suffrage. An extension which takes in more men—whatever else it may do—makes for stability in the respect that it makes the decrees of the legislature more irresistible. An extension which takes in any women undermines the physical sanction of the laws.
We can see indications of the evil that would follow such an event in the profound dissatisfaction which is felt when—in violation of the democratic principle that every man shall count for one, and no man for more than one—political wishes of the large constituencies which return relatively few members to Parliament, are overborne by those of constituencies which, with a smaller aggregate population, return more members.
And we see what such evil finally culminates in when the over-representation of one part of a country and the corresponding under-representation of other portions has led a large section of the people to pledge themselves to disregard the eventual ordinances of Parliament.
If ever the question as to whether the will of Ulster or that of the Nationalists is to prevail is brought to the arbitrament of physical force, it will be due to the inequalities of parliamentary representation as between England and Ireland, and as between the Unionist and Nationalist population of Ulster.
The general lesson that all governmental action ought to be backed by force, is further brought home to the conscience when we take note of the fact that every one feels that public morality is affronted when senile, infirm, and bedridden men are brought to the poll to turn the scale in hotly contested elections.
For electoral decisions are felt to have moral prestige only when the electoral figures quantitatively represent the physical forces which are engaged on either side. And where vital interests are involved, no class of men can be expected to accept any decision other than one which rests upon the ultima ratio.
Now all the evils which are the outcome of disparities between the parliamentary power and the organised physical force of contending parties would "grow" a hundredfold if women were admitted to the suffrage.
There would after that be no electoral or parliamentary decision which would not be open to challenge on the ground that it was impossible to tell whether the party which came out the winner had a majority which could enforce its will, or only a majority obtained by the inclusion of women. And no measure of redistribution could ever set that right.
There may find place here also the consideration that the voting of women would be an unsettling element in the government of the State, forasmuch as they would, by reason of a general lack of interest in public affairs, only very seldom come to the poll: would, in fact, come to the poll in full strength only when some special appeal had come home to their emotions.
Now an electorate which includes a very large proportion of quite uninterested voters would be in the same case as a legislature which included a very large proportion of members who made a practice of staying away. It would be in the same case, because the absentees, who would not have acquired the training which comes from consecutive attention to public affairs, might at any moment step in and upset the stability of State by voting for some quite unconsidered measure.
Coming back in conclusion to our main issue, I would re-emphasise an aspect of the question upon which I have already elsewhere insisted.[2] I have in view the fact that woman does, and should, stand to physical violence in a fundamentally different relation to man. Nothing can alter the fact that, the very moment woman resorts to violence, she places herself within the jurisdiction of an ethical law, which is as old as civilisation, and which was framed in its interests.
- ↑ This is a question on which Mill (vide Subjection of Women, last third of Chapter I) has endeavoured to confuse the issues for his reader, first, by representing that by no possibility can man know anything of the "nature," i. e., of the "secondary sexual characters" of woman; and, secondly, by distracting attention from the fact that "acquired characters" may produce unfitness for the suffrage.
- ↑ Vide Appendix, pp. 176-179.