Lecky in his valuable book "Democracy and Liberty" writes on page 547: "It has been gravely alleged that the whole character of the female sex would be revolutionized, or at least seriously impaired, if they were brought by the suffrage into public life. There is perhaps no subject in which exaggerations so enormous and so grotesque may be found in the writings of considerable men. Considered in itself, the process of voting is now merely that of marking once in several years a ballot-paper in a quiet room, and it may be easily accomplished in five minutes. And can it reasonably be said that the time or thought which an average male elector bestows on the formation of his political opinions is such as to interfere in any appreciable degree with the currents of his thoughts, with the tendencies of his character or life? Men wrote on this subject as if public life and interests formed the main occupation of an ordinary voter. It is said that domestic life should be the one sphere of woman. Very many women—especially those to whom the vote would be conceded have no domestic, or but few domestic duties to attend to, and are compelled, if they are not wholly frivolous or wholly apathic, to seek spheres of useful activity beyond their homes. Even a full domestic life is scarcely more absorbing to a woman thai> professional life to a man. Scarcely any woman is so engrossed in it that she cannot bestow on public affairs an amount of time and intelligence equal to that which is bestowed on it by thousands of masculine voters. Nothing can be more fantastic than to argue as if electors were a select body, mainly occupied with political studies and public interests.
"Women form a great section of the community, and they have many special interests. The opening to them of employments, professions and endowments; the regulation of their labor; questions of women's property and succession; the punishment of crimes against women; female education; laws relating to marriage, guardianship, and divorce, may all be cited; and in the great drink question they are even more interested than men, for though they are the more sober sex, they are also the sex which suffers most from the consequences of intemperance. With such a catalogue of special interests it is impossible to say that they have not a claim to representation."—
Among the arguments in favor of woman suffrage the most important are the following: As women are citizens of a Government of the people, by the people, and for the people, and as women are people, who wish to do their civic duty, it is unfair that they should be governed by laws in the making of which they have no voice. As women are equally concerned with men in good and bad government, and equall
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