The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage | Page 5

be paying her own way,
and be making full personal and financial contributions to the State. It
is in connexion with this fictitious woman that Mill sets himself to
work out the benefits which women would derive from co-partnership
with men in the government of the State, and those which such
co-partnership would confer on the community. Finally, practising
again upon himself the same imposition as in his Political Economy,
this unpractical trafficker in abstractions sets out to persuade his reader
that he has, by dealing with fictions of the mind, effectively grappled
with the concrete problem of woman's suffrage.

This, then, is the philosopher who gives intellectual prestige to the
Woman's Suffrage cause.
But is there not, let us in the end ask ourselves, here and there at least, a
man who is of real account in the world of affairs, and who is--not
simply a luke-warm Platonic friend or an opportunist advocate--but an
impassioned promoter of the woman's suffrage movement? One knows
quite well that there is. But then one suspects --one perhaps discerns by
"the spirit sense"--that this impassioned promoter of woman's suffrage
is, on the sequestered side of his life, an idealistic dreamer: one for
whom some woman's memory has become, like Beatrice for Dante, a
mystic religion.
We may now pass on to deal with the arguments by which the woman
suffragist has sought to establish her case.

PART I
ARGUMENTS WHICH ARE ADDUCED IN SUPPORT OF
WOMAN'S SUFFRAGE
I
ARGUMENTS FROM ELEMENTARY NATURAL RIGHTS
Signification of the Term "Woman's Rights"--Argument from "Justice"
--Juridical Justice-"Egalitarian Equity"--Argument from Justice
Applied to Taxation--Argument from Liberty--Summary of Arguments
from Elementary Natural Rights.
Let us note that the suffragist does not--except, perhaps, when she is
addressing herself to unfledged girls and to the sexually
embittered--really produce much effect by inveighing against the legal
grievances of woman under the bastardy laws, the divorce laws, and the
law which fixes the legal age of consent. This kind of appeal does not
go down with the ordinary man and woman--first, because there are

many who think that in spite of occasional hardships the public
advantage is, on the whole, very well served by the existing laws;
secondly, because any alterations which might be desirable could very
easily be made without recourse to woman's suffrage; and thirdly,
because the suffragist consistently acts on the principle of bringing up
against man everything that can possibly be brought up against him,
and of never allowing anything to appear on the credit side of the
ledger.
The arguments which the woman suffragist really places confidence in
are those which are provided by undefined general principles,
apothegms set out in the form of axioms, formulae which are vehicles
for fallacies, ambiguous abstract terms, and "question-begging" epithets.
Your ordinary unsophisticated man and woman stand almost helpless
against arguments of this kind.
For these bring to bear moral pressure upon human nature. And when
the intellect is confused by a word or formula which conveys an ethical
appeal, one may very easily find oneself committed to action which
one's unbiased reason would never have approved. The very first
requirement in connexion with any word or phrase which conveys a
moral exhortation is, therefore, to analyse it and find out its true
signification. For all such concepts as justice, rights, freedom,
chivalry--and it is with these that we shall be specially concerned--are,
when properly defined and understood beacon-lights, but when ill
understood and undefined, stumbling-blocks in the path of humanity.
We may appropriately begin by analysing the term "Woman's Rights"
and the correlative formula "Woman has a right to the suffrage."
Our attention here immediately focuses upon the term right. It is one of
the most important of the verbal agents by which the suffragist hopes to
bring moral pressure to bear upon man.
Now, the term right denotes in its juridical sense a debt which is owed
to us by the State. A right is created when the community binds itself to
us, its individual members, to intervene by force to restrain any one
from interfering with us, and to protect us in the enjoyment of our

faculties, privileges, and property.
The term is capable of being given a wider meaning. While no one
could appropriately speak of our having a right to health or anything
that man has not the power to bestow, it is arguable that there are,
independent of and antecedent to law, elementary rights: a right to
freedom; a right to protection against personal violence; a right to the
protection of our property; and a right to the impartial administration of
regulations which are binding upon all. Such a use of the term right
could be justified on the ground that everybody would be willing to
make personal sacrifices, and to combine with his fellows for the