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
