Albert Venn Dicey

“ It is at least arguable that the establishment of household suffrage has lowered the legislative capacity of the House of Commons. Bold, indeed, would be the paradox-monger who maintained that in no State belonging to the American Commonwealth has the introduction of universal suffrage lowered the moral or intellectual character of the Legislature. We must always, therefore, in legislation which affects the constitution of Parliament, weigh against one another the different qualities of representativeness and effectiveness. ”

“ My wish is to do the fullest justice to by far the strongest practical reason producible in favour of woman suffrage. It indubitably contains an amount of truth which ought never to be overlooked. Under a representative government any considerable body of persons who are not represented in Parliament is exposed, at best, to neglect. In a country such as England, the views of the unrepresented are overlooked far less through the selfishness than through the stupidity or preoccupation of the voters and their representatives. ”

“ Prove that an Englishwoman has, speaking generally, a rightful claim to the exercise of her natural talents and powers, or even to the education which makes that exercise possible, yet you have not advanced a step towards showing that an English woman has a right to take part by her vote in the government of the 300,000,000 of men and women who are natives of British India.
The more the difference between civil and political rights is considered, the more instructive it becomes. The deprivation of civil rights may amount to slavery. ”

“ In no part of public life is the predominance of a class in general more apparent than in the sphere of taxation. But no woman in modern England is taxed where a man is not taxed. In plain truth, the civil or strictly private rights of an unmarried woman, when not in some way connected with a public function, are, broadly speaking, the same as those of a man. The few exceptions to this rule—e.g., the refusal of degrees to women at Oxford and Cambridge—might be got rid of to-morrow by half the exertion used for obtaining votes for women. ”

“ Civil rights ought, according to Mill, to be governed by his law of liberty. To political rights this law has hardly any application. No art of logic, even when aided by rhetoric, can convert a precept intended to determine the limits of an individual's freedom, in matters which primarily concern himself, into the dogma that a given individual, or a given class, has necessarily a right to the determination of matters which primarily concern the public or the State. A person's claim, in short, to govern himself is a totally different thing from his claim to govern others. ”

“ Difference of sex, just because it is a natural division, not depending upon external circumstances, such as the difference between rich and poor, landlords and tenants, traders and agriculturists, does not—at any rate in a civilized country like England—often give rise to an opposition of interests. This is the important truth contained in the paradox attributed to John Bright—that 'women are not a class.' Where will you find a body of Englishmen who have legislated of set purpose against the interest of their daughters and in favour of their sons? ”

“ It is due to the practical acceptance in Great Britain of Mill's own law of liberty—namely, that 'the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number is self-protection; that the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community against his will is to prevent harm to others. ”

“ Secondly, 'representation,' we are told, 'ought to accompany taxation.' Why, then, deny representation to a woman who pays every tax payable by a man? Thirdly, 'the Court of Parliament,' to use an ancient formula, 'is the great inquest of the nation; its special function is to remove the grievances of the people.' But no one can deny that women, no less than men, have grievances, and grievances which often have not obtained the attention they deserve. Fourthly, 'every class,' it is said, 'ought to be represented in Parliament' ”

“ In 1909 we know, what even down to 1882 might have been open to question, that from a Parliament of men elected by men women can obtain, because in fact they have obtained, relief from every proved wrong. Women, in short, in modem England, exert, through free discussion and the certainty with which it tells on public opinion, a legislative influence which indefinitely diminishes, if it does not absolutely annihilate, the force of the argument that the women of England need Parliamentary representation as a guarantee against probable oppression. ”

“ A recent proposal to exclude thousands of barmaids from a lawful means of earning an honest livelihood may well cause women of every class to feel that legislation passed by a Parliament representing only men may at any moment deal recklessly with the interests of women. Despotism is none the less trying because it may be dictated by philanthropy, and the benevolence of workmen which protects women from overwork is not quite above suspicion when it coincides with the desire of artisans to protect themselves from female competition. ”

“ In no civilized country is it necessary to compel men to make use of and enjoy their private rights. Men of the very highest public spirit have felt again and again that, while civil rights—that is, personal freedom in its widest sense—are to every man of vital importance, the possession of political rights may be, if civil freedom is secured, of comparatively little value. ”

“ Who has not heard it stated in debate that every woman condemned, or, with equal confidence, that every woman desired, the repeal of the law prohibiting marriage with a deceased wife's sister? In all probability feminine opinion was as much divided as the opinion of men. ”

“ In the attempt to solve it an elector will receive little aid from his leaders. The hesitation of the Government and the ambiguous silence of the Opposition are of bad omen; they suggest transactions and intrigues; they foretell that a fundamental change in the constitution of England, to which the world presents no real parallel, may be carried through in obedience, not to the clearly expressed will of the nation, but to those calculations of election agents and wirepullers which guide the action even of honest statesmen who have too fully imbibed the spirit of Parliamentary partisanship. ”

“ But the Married Women's Property Acts, combined with other enactments, such as the Guardianship of Infants Act, 1886, do much more than merely remove acknowledged grievances. They place one fact past a doubt—they demonstrate that a Parliament whereof every member is a man, and every elected member is chosen by men, is ready, at the instance of men advocating the rights of women, to remove every proved defect or unfairness in the laws relating to women. ”

“ It has further been urged, and not without reason, that the present tendency to extend the area of social legislation, which practically restricts the sphere of individual liberty, increases the risk of legislative invasions on the freedom of women. Add to this that on any question which concerns the relation of the sexes—e.g., the law of divorce—a man will constantly assume, in and out of Parliament, that all women agree with him. ”

“ Everyone is well assured that, unless the lawless follies of fighting suffragists excite some untoward reaction, degrees at Oxford and Cambridge will soon be as open to women as the degrees of Edinburgh, St. Andrews, or the University of Dublin. Women already enjoy the municipal franchise; they are Town Councillors; one woman is a Mayor. Nor does public opinion enforce restraints which are not imposed by law. A woman may express her religious or her political convictions with freedom. ”

“ Would any Italian patriot, even though he were a Republican irreconcilable to the Monarchy, admit to the Parliamentary franchise the women of Italy at the risk of handing over the government of the country to priests and reactionists? ”

“ First Argument.—All the ordinary democratic principles or maxims, it is argued, on which English reformers have been accustomed to rely, support in appearance the claim of women to vote for members of Parliament. 'Every citizen,' it is often said, and still more often assumed, 'has a right to a vote.' It is surely hard to prove that a woman does not share this natural right. ”

“ Mill also insisted, and with substantial truth, that the law with regard to women, and notably in regard to married women's property, was one-sided and unjust; and he argued that this state of things gave strong ground for the claim of women to political equality with men. Nor can any impartial critic maintain that, even at the present day, the desires of women, about matters in which they are vitally concerned, obtain from Parliament all the attention they deserve. ”

“ The answer is that the progress which gives satisfaction to every man who notes the increase of human freedom and of human welfare has assuredly not arisen from the attainment by women of political rights. The very complaint of suffragists is that these rights are still denied to English women. The source of the progress which most of us recognize lies in the extension of civil or private rights. ”

“ It is probable that the legislative character of Congress would be raised if no American citizen were allowed a vote until he had given bona fide proof that he could read and write; but it is also certain that the imposition upon the electors, either in the United States or in England, of an educational test would in each country detract from the representative character of the National Legislature, which would clearly cease to represent the most ignorant part of the present electorate. On the other hand, increased representativeness may sometimes mean a decrease in legislative effectiveness. ”

“ The one question which an English reformer need now ask himself is. Whether the zeal to relieve a married woman from unjust disabilities may not, as against her creditors, have bestowed upon her unfair privileges? ”

“ This fundamental canon of individualism—that, in the words of Mill, 'over himself, his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign'—is, as an absolute principle of morals or politics, open to just criticism; but, as a good working rule of political practice, when tempered by the common sense of prudent statesmanship, it has conferred upon English women immense benefits. But this fact tells, if we think the matter out, rather against than in favour of the claim of votes for women—^that is, the claim to a share in sovereignty ”

“ Mill, if now alive, would rejoice with justifiable pride at the change which has come over the spirit of the English world. Few now are the employments unconnected with political power or the rights of the State which are forbidden to a woman.
There exist in the United Kingdom sixteen Universities; most, if not all of them, contain colleges or residential halls for women. In fourteen of these Universities degrees are given to women. Two alone—namely, Oxford and Cambridge—deny to a woman the technical right to a degree ”

“ The reasoner who relies on any of these current maxims of popular government may readily be driven to admit that the principles or formulas dear to all English Liberals sanction, in words at least, the demand of votes for women. ”

“ The non-possession of political rights may, to an individual man, be of the most trifling consequence. There are countries, and free countries (such, I believe, is Belgium) , where the State is forced to impose penalties upon electors who do not give their votes. ”

“ These expressions, because they mean sometimes delivery from bondage and sometimes the acquisition of political rights, suggest the notion that to give English women votes is to give them freedom. They cannot be emancipated, because they are born free, are free, and will remain free, whether they obtain Parliamentary votes or not. ”

“ They are at best maxims, watchwords, catchwords, or shibboleths, which at particular crises of human progress have done good service by summing up ideas sound enough for the practical purposes of the moment. They have never, even as maxims, been rules which any statesman of common sense, even though he may have been the stanchest of democrats, unreservedly applied to the government of mankind. ”

“ This whole line of reasoning is open to at least two criticisms. In the first place, the cases in which the interest of women, as a class, even appears to come into conflict with the interest of men, as a class, are rare. ”

“ The second is that woman suffrage must with us finally lead to its logical result—^that is, the complete political equality of men and women. Neither assumption can be disputed by any clear-headed suffragist. No such person can deny that the idea which underlies the claim of votes for women is fairly summed up in the dogma laid down by Mill: 'That the principle which regulates the existing social relations between the two sexes—the legal subordination of one sex to the other—is wrong in itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to human improvement ”

“ It may to many of us seem a harmful survival of a bygone time. It found its justification in the circumstances of the age when it arose, as an institution which prevented the division of property, and in any case it told nearly as much against younger sons as against daughters. ”

“ Even theological movements, such as the Evangelical revival, which did not make directly for freethought, have stimulated indirectly individual energy and the sense of individual responsibility, and have thus opened new spheres of action for women. ”