John Elliott Cairnes

“ At what particular stage in human history this new social force comes into play, we have no need here to inquire. What I am concerned to point out is that it is a new social force, wholly different in character from any which had hitherto helped to shape human destiny—wholly different, also, from those influences which have guided the unfolding either of the individual animal or of the species. We cannot, by taking thought, add a cubit to our stature. ”

“ On the contrary, is it not matter of common remark that the whole attitude of women towards politics is strikingly different in different countries; that it is one thing in England, another in the United States, something different from either in France and Italy, and something different from all in Turkey and the East? and, not to travel beyond the range of the present controversy, do we not find within the United Kingdom almost every variety of political opinion prevailing amongst women, according to the circumstances of their education and social surroundings? ”

“ Spencer insists very strongly on the analogy of evolution, as exhibited in the animal kingdom, whether in the individual animal or in the species, and evolution in human society—in other words, between the development, individual and specific, of the animal organism, and the development of what he calls "the social organism," meaning, thereby, organized social life. He finds in this analogy not merely a metaphor and an illustration, but a type, and even a clew. Thus he observes a law of development governing the growth of an individual organism from birth to maturity ”

“ Smith seems to think that, if women are only excluded from the suffrage, the harmony of married life can never be endangered by politics; but this is to attribute to the mere right of voting a degree of efficacy which I, for one, am not disposed to allow to it. If women only come to take an interest in politics—it matters not whether they have the suffrage or not—all the danger that can arise from the suffrage to married life will be already incurred. It is not the giving of a vote every four or five years that constitutes the danger, if danger there be ”

“ Some of the worst and crudest wars that have ever been waged have been religious wars; and so notoriously is religion an engenderer of strife, that it is now scarcely good manners to moot a religious question in private society, where politics are quite freely and amicably discussed. If persons of genuine but different religious opinions can contrive to get on together in married life, they would certainly not be likely to be severed by political differences, however strongly their opinions might be held. ”

“ Smith is greatly scandalised at the prospect of a man and his wife taking opposite sides in politics. I cannot see that it would be at all more scandalous than that a man and his wife should take opposite sides in religion—going, for example, every Sunday to different places of worship, where each hears the creed of the other denounced as soul-destroying and damnable. ”

“ Spencer, "which reminds us that, while in individual bodies the welfare of all other parts is rightly subservient to the nervous system, whose pleasurable or painful activities make up the good or evil of life, in bodies politic the same thing does not hold, or holds but to a very slight extent. It is well that the lives of all parts of an animal should be merged in the life of the whole; because the whole has a corporate consciousness capable of happiness or misery. ”

“ Smith concludes that "to give women the franchise is simply to give them the power of putting an end actually and virtually to all franchises together." "It may not be easy," he allows, "to say beforehand what course the demolition of free institutions by Female Suffrage would take." "But," he holds, "there can be little doubt that in all cases, if power were put into the hands of the women, free government, and with it liberty of opinion, would fall." ”

“ Spencer of the process by which society undergoes development is the growth of language:
"Not only has it been natural from the beginning, but it has been spontaneous. No language is a cunningly-devised scheme of a ruler or body of legislators. There is no council of savages to invent the parts of speech, and decide on what principles they should be used. ”

“ It may be true that the interest taken by women in politics has hitherto been in general somewhat languid; that, as a body, they are less alive than men to the advantages of political liberty and of legal government. But is not this precisely what was to be expected, supposing their political opinions to be subject to the same influences which determine the political opinions of men? As a rule they have from the beginning of things been excluded from politics ”

“ Even now this is the case to some extent, and it will no doubt become more and more so as the political education of women advances. Mr. Smith's question, therefore, "Would the harmony of most households bear the strain?" may be answered by saying that in very few households would there be any strain to bear; while in most—at least in those in which politics were intelligently cultivated—home-life, no longer the vapid thing it is so often now, would acquire a new element of interest, and the family would be held together by powerful sympathies that now lie undeveloped. ”

“ Spencer's theory of social evolution can only be regarded, as matters now stand, as an unverified hypothesis, with this presumption against it, that it is at variance with such knowledge as we possess of the past history of mankind; and the doubt as to its soundness, which this circumstance cannot but suggest, will, I think, find confirmation, when we look closely into that analogy between the social and the animal organisms on which the whole speculation is built up. ”

“ Smith's argument—and it is in a logical sense the very heart of his case, in such sort, that, this part failing, the whole collapses—is so utterly—I will not say, weak—but so utterly unlike the sort of argument ordinarily to be found in his political writings, that it is difficult to resist the impression that it does not represent the real grounds of his conviction, but is rather a theory excogitated after conviction to satisfy that intellectual craving which an opinion formed on other grounds than reason invariably produces. ”

“ But it is not so with a society; since its living units do not and cannot lose individual consciousness, and since the community as a whole has no corporate consciousness. And this is an everlasting reason why the welfare of citizens cannot rightly be sacrificed to some supposed benefit of the state, but why, on the other hand, the state is to be maintained solely for the benefit of citizens. The corporate life must here be subservient to the lives of the parts, instead of the lives of the parts being subservient to the corporate life. ”

“ Can it be said that of the women who in this country take an interest in politics the bias of their political sentiments is uniformly in one direction, and this—the direction of personal government and absolutism? I can only say, if this be Mr. Smith's experience, it is singularly different from mine. No doubt there are women in abundance who care nothing for politics, and who would be quite content to live under any government which offered a fair promise of peace and security ”

“ Smith, or to any one, in the firmness of my conviction that the family is at the bottom of our existing civilization, and I should, for my part, regard as dearly purchased any gain in material or political well-being which should introduce a jar or weakness into this pivot of our social system. But I believe that to open political life to women, far from being fraught with the disastrous consequences Mr. Smith anticipates, would, taking things in their entire scope, be productive of quite opposite effects. ”

“ Every one of these, intelligently cultivated, leads inevitably, where faculty is not wanting, to an interest in contemporary politics; and if women are to be shut out from this field of ideas, lest perchance they should adopt opinions which should not be those of their future husbands, their education ought at once to be truncated by this large segment. Mr. Smith indeed suggests that women who are capable of discussing political questions "will find a sphere in the press." ”

“ They are, moreover, absolutely irrelevant to the practical controversy, which should be decided, as Mr. Smith himself in his essay confesses, "on its merits," "the interest of the whole community" being the test, and not by what people may think as to the life and opinions of any individual, however eminent. Further, their discussion cannot but inflict the keenest pain on more than one living person, who, from the nature of the case, are precluded from defending those whom they hold dear. ”

“ It is owing to this that matrimonial engagements are entered into so rarely on the basis of any broad intellectual sympathy, such as might furnish some security for lasting affection, and so often at the bidding of impulses and fancies that do not outlive the honey-moon; and it is owing to the same cause that so very large a proportion of the lives of most husbands and wives are spent practically apart, with little or no knowledge on the part of either of the objects or aims that engross the greater portion of the other's thoughts and energies. ”

“ Probably the more enthusiastic, hopeful of great ameliorations in the state of mankind, to be brought about rapidly by propagating this belief or initiating that reform, will feel that a doctrine negativing their sanguine expectations takes away much of the stimulus to exertion. If large advances in human welfare can come only in the slow process of things, which will inevitably bring them, why should we trouble ourselves?" A very natural question. And what is Mr. Spencer's answer? Simply that on visionary hopes rational criticisms cannot but have a depressing influence. ”

“ Would it not be easy to find men enough, and these by no means amongst the residuum, who take no interest at all in politics, and who, so far as they are concerned, would be willing to hand over the destinies of the human race to-morrow to a Cæsar, or to any one else who, they had reason to believe, would maintain the rights of property, and keep their own precious persons safe? This state of feeling amongst some men is not considered to prove that men in general are unfitted by nature for the functions of citizenship under a free government ”

“ In that primitive stage (as Mr. Darwin has taught us) , while man remains still a savage, and even perhaps for some time after he has emerged from the savage condition, the influences which mould his social development are substantially the same with those which govern the development of a species. It is not strange, therefore, that evolution in the human and in the animal kingdom should, during this period, follow a very similar course. ”

“ Women, it seems, are so constituted by nature as to be incapable of the "love of liberty, and the desire of being governed by law;" and this results from a "sentiment inherent in the female temperament, formed by the normal functions and circumstances of the sex." Now if this be so—if the sentiments of women with regard to government and political institutions are thus determined by physiological causes too powerful to be modified by education and experience, then those sentiments would in all countries and under all conditions of society be essentially the same. ”

“ The unfolding of an organism after its special type has its approximately-uniform course, taking its tolerably-definite time, and no treatment that may be devised will fundamentally change or greatly accelerate these; the best that can be done is to maintain the required favorable conditions. But it is quite easy to adopt a treatment which shall dwarf, or deform, or otherwise injure; the processes of growth and development may be, and very often are, hindered and deranged, though they cannot be artificially bettered. Similarly with the social organism. ”

“ I believe that all the substantial reasons of convenience, natural aptitude, and taste, which, in the division of labour between men and women, make it desirable that women should, as a rule, take charge of the domestic half of the world's work, and men of that which is transacted out of doors, will, whatever laws we may pass, remain in their full force, and will keep the general distribution of occupations between the sexes, even under the freest competition, in the main not very different from what it now is. ”

“ But a time arrives in the progress of social development when societies of men become conscious of a corporate existence, and when the improvement of the conditions of this existence becomes for them an object of conscious and deliberate effort. ”

“ Now it seems to me that this may serve to illustrate for us what will be the practical working of politics in respect to married life when women begin to receive a political education, or at least to learn as much about politics, and take as much or as little interest in them as men do. A number only too large of men and women will probably continue for long enough to take but small interest in public affairs, and these will marry, as they do now, with little reference to each other's political opinions ”

“ If I were asked to name the principal element of weakness in the family as things now stand, I should have no hesitation in pointing to the want of sufficient subjects of common interest between man and woman. ”