“ It is bad enough that men can only associate on paper who could once associate in the street; it is bad enough that men have made a vote very much of a fiction. It is much worse that a great class should claim the vote be cause it is a fiction, who would be sickened by it if it were a fact. If votes for women do not mean mobs for women they do not mean what they were meant to mean. ”
G. K. Chesterton, What's Wrong with the World (1910). copy citation
| Author | G. K. Chesterton |
|---|---|
| Source | What's Wrong with the World |
| Topic | vote fiction |
| Date | 1910 |
| Language | English |
| Reference | |
| Note | |
| Weblink | http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1717/1717-h/1717-h.htm |
Context
“If it is really an unwomanly thing to lock up a robber or a tyrant, it ought to be no softening of the situation that the woman does not feel as if she were doing the thing that she certainly is doing. It is bad enough that men can only associate on paper who could once associate in the street; it is bad enough that men have made a vote very much of a fiction. It is much worse that a great class should claim the vote be cause it is a fiction, who would be sickened by it if it were a fact. If votes for women do not mean mobs for women they do not mean what they were meant to mean. A woman can make a cross on a paper as well as a man; a child could do it as well as a woman; and a chimpanzee after a few lessons could do it as well as a child. But nobody ought to regard it merely as making a cross on paper;”
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