comprised in previous writings of my own—e.g. in the pamphlet, "The Legal Subjection of Man" (Twentieth Century Press), in the article, "A Creature of Privilege" (Fortnightly Review, November 1911), and elsewhere in the present volume, illustrating the unquestionable fact that though in theory women may have to obey the law as men have, yet in practice they are absolved from all the more serious consequences men have to suffer when they disobey it. The treatment recently accorded to the suffragettes for crimes such as wilful damage and arson, not to speak of their previous prison treatment when convicted for obstruction, disturbance and minor police misdemeanours, is a proof, writ large, of the mendacity of the statement that women no less than men have to obey the laws of the country, so far, that is, as any real meaning is attached to this phrase.
Another suffragist lie which is invariably allowed to pass muster by default, save for an occasional protest by the present writer, is the assumption that the English law draws a distinction as regards prison treatment, etc., as between political and non-political offenders. Everyone with even the most elementary legal knowledge is aware that no such distinction has ever been recognised or suggested by the English law—at least until the prison ordinance made quite recently, expressly to please the suffragettes, by Mr Winston Churchill when Home
