Female Suffrage | Page 9

moral
qualification we venture to ask a question. Why not enlarge the
criminal classes from whom the suffrage is now withheld? Why not
exclude every man convicted of any degrading legal crime, even petty
larceny? And why not exclude from the suffrage all habitual drunkards
judicially so declared? These are changes which would do vastly more
of good than admitting women to vote. {END FOOTNOTE}
This restriction connected with sex is, in fact, but one of many other
restrictions, considered more or less necessary even in a democracy.
Manhood suffrage is a very favorite term of the day. But, taken in the
plain meaning of those words, such fullness of suffrage has at the
present hour no actual existence in any independent nation, or in any
extensive province. It does not exist, as we have just seen, even among
the men of America. And, owing to the conditions of human life, we
may well believe that unrestricted fullness of manhood suffrage never
can exist in any great nation for any length of time. In those States of
the American Union which approach nearest to a practical manhood
suffrage, unnaturalized foreigners, minors, and certain classes of
criminals, are excluded from voting. And why so? What is the cause of
this exclusion? Here are men by tens of thousands--men of widely
different classes and conditions-- peremptorily deprived of a privilege
asserted to be a positive inalienable right universal in its application.
There is manifestly some reason for this apparently contradictory state
of things. We know that reason to be the good of society. It is for the
good of society that the suffrage is withheld from those classes of men.
A certain fitness for the right use of the suffrage is therefore deemed
necessary before granting it. A criminal, an unnaturalized foreigner, a
minor, have not that fitness; consequently the suffrage is withheld from
them. The worthy use of the vote is, then, a qualification not yet
entirely overlooked by our legislators. The State has had, thus far, no
scruples in withholding the suffrage even from men, whenever it has
believed that the grant would prove injurious to the nation.
Here we have the whole question clearly defined. The good of society
is the true object of all human government. To this principle suffrage
itself is subordinate. It can never be more than a means looking to the

attainment of good government, and not necessarily its corner- stone.
Just so far is it wise and right. Move one step beyond that point, and
instead of a benefit the suffrage may become a cruel injury. The
governing power of our own country--the most free of all great
nations--practically proclaims that it has no right to bestow the suffrage
wherever its effects are likely to become injurious to the whole nation,
by allotting different restrictions to the suffrage in every State of the
Union. The right of suffrage is, therefore, most clearly not an
absolutely inalienable right universal in its application. It has its limits.
These limits are marked out by plain justice and common-sense.
Women have thus far been excluded from the suffrage precisely on the
same principles--from the conviction that to grant them this particular
privilege would, in different ways, and especially by withdrawing them
from higher and more urgent duties, and allotting to them other duties
for which they are not so well fitted, become injurious to the nation,
and, we add, ultimately injurious to themselves, also, as part of the
nation. If it can be proved that this conviction is sound and just,
founded on truth, the assumed inalienable right of suffrage, of which
we have been hearing so much lately, vanishes into the "baseless fabric
of a vision." If the right were indeed inalienable, it should be granted,
without regard to consequences, as an act of abstract justice. But,
happily for us, none but the very wildest theorists are prepared to take
this view of the question of suffrage. The advocates of female suffrage
must, therefore, abandon the claim of inalienable right. Such a claim
can not logically be maintained for one moment in the face of existing
facts. We proceed to the third point.
THIRDLY. THE ELEVATION OF THE ENTIRE SEX, THE
GENERAL PURIFICATION OF POLITICS THROUGH THE
INFLUENCE OF WOMEN, AND THE CONSEQUENT ADVANCE
OF THE WHOLE RACE. Such, we are told, must be the inevitable
results of what is called the emancipation of woman, the entire
independence of woman through the suffrage.
Here we find ourselves in a peculiar position. While considering the
previous points of this question we have been guided by positive facts,
clearly indisputable in their character. Actual, practical experience,
with the manifold teachings at her command, has come to our aid. But
we are now called upon, by the advocates of this novel