Albert Venn Dicey

“ We are the trustees for the future of the Empire. Upon what is done or neglected in Parliament beforehand must depend sooner or later the fate of England and of the British dominions throughout the world. We are bound in this House to look beyond the bawling and the brawling of the day, and to uphold Imperial policy above the clamour of selfish or short-sighted interests. ”

“ Nor must it for a moment be forgotten that the vast majority of the 10,000,000 or more women who under a system of adult suffrage would be admitted to the electorate have never sanctioned the demand for participation in sovereign power; whilst the protest by a large and increasing body of women against the so-called concession to English women of rights which thousands of them regard as the unjust imposition of an unbearable burden becomes every day more and more audible, and must be heard with the most profound respect. ”

“ It is the calm but vigorous action of women who protest against a policy which they hold to be injurious to the nation as a whole, and especially to women themselves. They have already achieved much. They have aroused the attention of the country. They have made it absolutely impossible that a measure far more revolutionary than the introduction of manhood suffrage should pass through Parliament, whilst exciting less attention than a Bill allowing the consolidation or union of two or three great railway companies. ”

“ No soldier, and very few civilians, can assert with confidence that our present army is sufficient for our defence. It is uncertain, as we all now know, whether our navy can of itself guarantee the United Kingdom against invasion. On the Englishmen who, civilians though they remain, must, as high authorities tell us, receive military training, will depend the maintenance of England's independence, and the existence of the British Empire. ”

“ Grant—though the concession is an extravagant one—that the benefits derived from the development of popular government are not only, as they certainly are, great, but have also been unmixed with any evil, it is easy enough to show that they have been obtained, in Great Britain at least, by adherence to the fundamental canon of individualism, 'that over himself, his own body and mind, the individual is, or ought to be, sovereign'—that is, by the extension of the civil rights of individuals, whether men or women. ”

“ At this crisis we are asked to add to our existing dangers and to our heavy political labours a new and doubtful experiment in constitutional government. We are asked to weaken English democracy by far more than doubling the number of English electors; we are asked to place the government of England, nominally at least, in the hands of women. ”

“ Women's votes, we are told, will raise women's wages; but, in the sense in which every overworked woman will understand this assertion, it is false. The current rate of wages cannot be fixed by law. In the only sense in which the assertion may be true, it supplies, as I have pointed out, the strongest of arguments against the extension of electoral rights to a body of persons tempted to use their votes as the means of wringing higher wages from the State. ”

“ Our neighbours are military States, each of which maintains armies larger than we can retain within the bounds of the United Kingdom. These States are armed nations; some of them are governed on military principles. One and all, however, whether they have done much or little for the promotion of popular freedom, the Continental States recognize, with one insignificant exception, the principle that none can have a share in sovereignty who cannot defend the land for which he may be required at any moment to die. ”

“ The pregnant principle or fact that government itself depends at bottom upon force, tells all but fatally against the establishment of woman suffrage in a country, at any rate, such as England, where it would ultimately give predominant power to women. ”

“ Of these the best are ignorant of statesmanship; the least trustworthy are fanatics who, in their passionate desire to obtain a share in the sovereignty which determines the policy of the British Empire (including the fate of millions of inhabitants of dependent countries) , have conclusively shown that they have not yet mastered the most elementary principles of self-government or of loyal obedience to the laws of their native land. ”

“ A petition signed by more than 250,000 women has already told for much. Let the numbers be doubled, and it takes no prophet to predict that the pledges and opinions of candidates for seats in Parliament will undergo a miraculous change. Women can do more than any men to check an agitation which may delay for years the removal, at the instance of moderate reformers, of really injurious restraints upon the free action of women. Moderate reform has everything in its favour. ”

“ To give votes to women is, we are assured, nothing but the final step in that path of democratic progress which, during the last eighty years, has led the men and women of England towards freedom and happiness. ”

“ At this moment Englishmen are engaged in the earnest endeavour to prove that popular government in Great Britain is compatible with the maintenance of Imperial power and Imperial peace. What may be the issue of this effort to combine honest democracy with sane Imperialism no prophet is daring enough to foretell. Yet upon its success may well depend the fate of popular government throughout the civilized world. ”

“ An appeal is made to their common sense and common prudence; they must for once trust themselves rather than their leaders. The most honourable of Parliamentary statesmen, when once engrossed in the game of party warfare, are apt to forget the very elements of statesmanship. They count votes gained or lost in or out of Parliament, and they lose the capacity for understanding the voice of the nation. ”

“ This, then, is the case against woman suffrage. To fair-minded men who have throughout life been zealous to extend the civil rights of English women, it may well seem decisive. They will refuse to sanction a policy which, if it offers some dubious benefits to women, threatens irreparable damage, and great and immediate peril to England. ”

“ The misapprehension both of history and of law which suggests the delusion that English women have been robbed of a suffrage which they never possessed, has, we trust, been finally disposed of by the impressive judgment delivered by the Lord Chancellor in the House of Lords. ”

“ The reasons, on the other hand, against trying a hazardous constitutional experiment on an ancient commonwealth are of immense weight.
Woman suffrage means adult suffrage; and adult suffrage means the transfer of the right to govern the United Kingdom from some 7,000,000 of men to some 20,000,000 or, it may be, 24,000,000 of men and women, whereof women will be the majority. ”

“ It will certainly not commend itself to enthusiasts who believe that they are resisting laws unjust to women, when in reality they are attacking, not human law, but the very nature of things. One circumstance fills me with hope. ”

“ The necessary intricacy and entanglement of our foreign and colonial policy make it more than ever needful that the country should be guided by the cool head, the clear aim, and the tenacious purpose, which are to be found only in the strongest and most sagacious of men. ”

“ But the dogma that an individual, whether man or woman, has a right to determine matters which mainly concern such individual, goes hardly a step towards showing that, from a woman's right to govern herself, you may legitimately infer that she has a right to govern others. ”

“ Their political blindness is shown by the failure to perceive that for women to rely on physical force for the attainment of political authority calls into play the instrument, and creates the condition of opinion, which, should women obtain votes, might deprive them of any real share in sovereignty. ”

“ Every woman imprisoned was convicted of some distinct breach of the law, such, for example, as resisting and obstructing the police in the execution of their duty, or conduct likely to provoke a breach of the peace. ”

“ Meanwhile grave questions are pending in Eastern Europe, whence an armed conflict may arise from which our honour and our interests may make it impossible for us to hold aloof. The very vastness of our Empire, and the envy with which it is regarded by other nations, provoke and expose us to attack. ”

“ Unless we occupy ourselves most earnestly and under a sense of personal trusteeship with the means by which the safety and greatness of our country, continued from age to age, may be maintained in time to come, we cannot justify our existence even against the subversive force challenging this House to-day, and we shall not escape the heavy judgment of history. ”

“ He should note at the same time that the female leaders in the battle for women's rights have for the most part never unreservedly condemned the lawless follies and the hysterical insolence of their followers. ”

“ In Ireland we have resistance to the law which Ministers refuse to put down, and which may any day be transformed into organized sedition. The spirit of nationality is moving in Egypt. From India we hear of widespread conspiracy which might some day make armed revolt a possibility. ”

“ That the women to be admitted to the Parliamentary franchise will often be excellent persons, highly endowed with the virtues of fortitude, personal unselfishness, and self-sacrifice, we are convinced ”