Letters to a friend on votes for women/Introduction
LETTERS TO A FRIEND ON
VOTES FOR WOMEN
LETTER I
Introduction
You ask how it has happened that, though I was for many years an advocate, I have now become a convinced opponent of the introduction of woman suffrage into England? The question is a natural one. It is the better worth an answer because my own change of opinion has been shared by many of my contemporaries who began to take an interest in politics some fifty or sixty years ago. We all of us were Liberals; we most of us came under the influence of J. S. Mill, and we could not then have found a wiser, a nobler, and, above all, a more public-spirited teacher of the rights and duties of citizens. Under his guidance we favoured every attempt to extend not only the liberty but also the political rights of women. In my own case, my faith in the benefit to be derived from woman suffrage was enhanced by the circumstance, over which I shall always rejoice, that it was my good fortune to take in early manhood a decided though insignificant part in promoting the education of women. In the success of Bedford College, of Newnham College, and of Somerville College, I felt, and I trust shall always feel, the keenest interest. For many years I identified the extension of women's political power with the effort to procure for them every possible opportunity for the development and employment of their natural gifts.
It is never easy to trace the influences which have brought about an honest change in any of one's own beliefs, whether political or religious. These influences are a quite different thing from the reasons by which a change may rightly be justified. They are not so much arguments as the conditions under which reasons which at one time seemed decisive lose their force, whilst reasoning, which at one time seemed to carry little weight, gains for one's own mind a new power and significance.
The considerations which, independently of specific arguments, have in respect of woman suffrage told upon my own judgment may be summed up under a few heads:
First, the movement for the maintenance of the union between England and Ireland brought me for the first time into something like active political life. For nearly a quarter of a century I have joined in resistance to every demand for Home Rule. This circumstance told in several respects upon the way in which I gradually came to look upon the movement in favour of woman suffrage.
My Unionism impressed upon me, as did also my keen sympathy with the Northern States of America in their opposition to secession, the thought that Conservatism may in some instances be an effort to enforce the supremacy of common justice, and to maintain the unity of a great nation. It made me feel that the mere desire of a class, however large, for political power or for national independence affords no conclusive reason why the wish should be granted. It raised in my mind the doubt whether the Liberalism of the day, which I had fully accepted, had not exaggerated the wisdom and the justice of yielding, where possible, to every wish entertained by a large number of our fellow-citizens. Since 1885 I have never doubted that a majority of the inhabitants of Ireland are opposed to the Union with Great Britain. I have also never seen the least reason to doubt that the people of the United Kingdom ought to insist upon the maintenance of the Union. Political action, further, under leaders such as the Duke of Devonshire, John Bright, Chamberlain, and Lord James of Hereford, none of whom showed the least sympathy with the movement for woman suffrage, made me begin to question the strength of the arguments, especially the moral arguments, used in its support. At the same time, Gladstone's appeals to the great heart of the people, to the masses against the classes, and generally to sentiment, showed me how easily emotional politics might produce the palliation of gross injustice. Nor could I fail to perceive with new clearness the danger which lurked under the concession of sovereign power to women, who as a body are more readily influenced than men by the emotions of the moment. I neither assert nor hold that political Unionism is logically inconsistent with the belief that English women ought to receive Parliamentary votes. I merely insist upon the simple fact that the grounds on which most Unionists rest their moral right to maintain the Union against the wishes of the majority of the people of Ireland are opposed to some of the reasons and much of the sentiment which tell in favour of the movement for woman suffrage.
Secondly, thought and also experience convince me that the current maxims of Liberalism (as also of Conservatism), though they may contain a large element of important truth, are never absolutely true principles, from which a wise man can safely draw far-reaching logical deductions. As I hope to show you in a future letter, they may be useful watchwords, but they are nothing more. Hence, as years went by, I came to see that democratic maxims, even when endorsed by Mill, possessed nothing like the authority which, in common with most of my contemporaries at Oxford, I used to ascribe to them. I could no longer accept with something like implicit faith every dogma contained in his treatise 'On Liberty.' Later reflection has, indeed, shown me that, whilst his 'Subjection of Women' contains, side by side with much noble sentiment, some singularly fallacious reasoning, the treatise 'On Liberty,' so far from supporting the claim of women to political authority, really supplies an argument against the moral claim either of woman or of any other class of the community to share in political power if such participation is opposed to the welfare of the State. It was a great relief, at any rate to myself, to discover that I could reconcile my enthusiasm for everything which promotes the personal freedom and the education of women with the strenuous denial to them of any share in sovereign power.
By degrees, too, the admiration for Mill's extraordinary gift of logical exposition, as well as gratitude for much of his teaching, became in my mind compatible with the admission that with him the reality, though not the form, of logic is often sacrificed to the influence of moral emotion, and that this subordination of his reason to the force of generous passion is nowhere more noticeable than in his 'Subjection of Women.' Mill theoretically grounds all knowledge on experience, but throughout this treatise he minimizes the importance of natural and undisputed facts; he in effect inculcates the neglect of the lessons to be derived from historical experience embodied in the general, if not universal, customs of mankind; he bids his disciples prefer to such teaching conclusions drawn logically enough from some general dogmas which are far from possessing absolute truth. Thus, in favour of some a priori assumption as to the essential equality or similarity of human beings, we are counselled to overlook what has curiously been called the 'accident of sex.'
Thirdly, I at last, though slowly, reached the firm conviction that the right to a Parliamentary vote ought not to be considered the private right of the individual who possesses it. It is in reality not a right at all; it is rather a power or function given to a citizen for the benefit not primarily of himself, but of the public. This is assuredly the doctrine of English law, no less than of common sense. It affords the sole, but also the ample, justification for the punishment of both the giving and the receiving of bribes at a Parliamentary election. It justifies the deprivation of whole classes—such, for example, as the Irish forty-shilling freeholders—of their votes, and this, too, without giving them any pecuniary or other compensation. My conviction as to the true nature of a Parliamentary vote led inevitably to the conclusion that the expediency, or what in such a matter is the same thing, the justice, of giving Parliamentary votes to English women depends on the answer to the inquiry, not whether a large number of English women, or English women generally, wish for votes, but whether the establishment of woman suffrage will be a benefit to England?
To this question I am unable to return an affirmative answer. I have become, therefore, of necessity an opponent of woman suffrage.