Alice Drysdale Vickery

“ But since it would be completely absurd to restrict to this superior class the rights of citizenship and the power of being entrusted with public functions, why should women be excluded any more than those men who are inferior to a great number of women? Lastly, shall it be said that there exists in the minds and hearts of women certain qualities which ought to exclude them from the enjoyment of their natural rights? ”

“ Are we, then, sons of slaves, and shall we in turn create slaves to hinder the development and lower the morality of our sons? No! we believe that women ought to be free and equal before the law, so that they may become mothers of free and equal sons and daughters, helping in each other's development, ennobling and no longer enslaving each other. ”

“ But, as long as our law-makers are not directly responsible to us for their conduct in Parliament, they may, and do, safely neglect our interests, and pass laws which jeopardise our liberties and subordinate our just rights of person, property, and offspring to the supposed interests of the men whom they represent.
The spirit which animates Parliament pervades the whole of our social life; and women suffer from lack of educational facilities, and from obstacles to success in industrial and professional life, in ways which have no parallel in the case of men. ”

“ The existence of one injustice can never be accepted as a reason for committing another.
There remain, then, only two objections to discuss. And, in truth, these can only oppose motives of expediency against the admission of women to the right of voting; which motives can never be upheld as a bar to the exercise of true justice. The contrary maxim has only too often served as the pretext and excuse of tyrants; it is in the name of expediency that commerce and industry groan in chains ”

“ The equality of rights established between men by our new constitution has brought down upon us eloquent declamations and never-ending pleasantries; but up till now no one has been able to oppose to it one single reason, and this is certainly neither from lack of talent nor lack of zeal. I venture to believe that it will be the same with regard to equality of rights between the two sexes. It is sufficiently curious that, in a great number of countries, women have been judged incapable of all public functions yet worthy of royalty ”

“ Women are superior to men in the gentle and domestic virtues; they, as well as men, know how to love liberty, although they do not participate in all its advantages; and in republics they have been known to sacrifice themselves for it. They have shown that they possess the virtues of citizens whenever chance or civil disasters have brought them upon a scene from which they have been shut out by the pride and the tyranny of men in all nations. ”

“ Whatever form of constitution may be established, it is certain that in the present state of civilisation among European nations there will never be more than a limited number of citizens required to occupy themselves with public affairs. Women will no more be torn from their homes than agricultural labourers from their ploughs, or artisans from their workshops. And, among the richer classes, we nowhere see women giving themselves up so persistently to domestic affairs that we should fear to distract their attention ”

“ Must women then, following the example of men, learn to put sex in the first place and regard all other interests as secondary? Is this really what men wish to force women to do? One would think not. At present women have not adopted any such principle of action. They are divided rather than otherwise, according to the relations they occupy with regard to men. The married woman, on the one hand, seems opposed to the claims of the widowed and single, on the other—and vice versa; and both together combine to ostracise some of their own sex. ”

“ It is necessary, we are warned, to be on guard against the influence exercised by women over men. We reply at once that this, like any other influence, is much more to be feared when not exercised openly; and that, whatever influence may be peculiar to women, if exercised upon more than one individual at a time, will in so far become proportionately lessened. That since, up to this time, women have not been admitted in any country to absolute equality ”

“ The immature, indeed, can scarcely be called exceptions, since maturity succeeds immaturity—the child becomes the adult; and as physical, moral, and intellectual powers are acquired, civil rights must be accorded.
The failures, then, include all those who can with due regard to just principles be entirely excluded; and these are the idiot, who never reaches maturity; the lunatic, who, becoming diseased, loses the mental and moral characteristics of maturity; and the criminal, who is coming more and more to be looked upon as partaking of the character of the idiot and the lunatic. ”

“ It is, then, unjust to allege as an excuse for continuing to refuse to women the enjoyment of all their natural rights motives which have only a kind of reality because women lack the experience which comes from the exercise of these rights. ”

“ It is curious to note that the great point on which the mass of men seem united is their sex. Prejudices of race, of caste, of colour may be overcome; but the pride of sex remains. Rights of citizenship are accorded to the small shopkeeper, artisan, lodger, agricultural labourer, and to the illiterate who knows no difference between one party and the other, either as to tendencies or methods of government. ”

“ Although liable to become mothers of families, and exposed to other passing indispositions, why may they not exercise rights of which it has never been proposed to deprive those persons who periodically suffer from gout, bronchitis, etc.? Admitting for the moment that there exists in men a superiority of mind, which is not the necessary result of a difference of education (which is by no means proved, but which should be, to permit of women being deprived of a natural right without injustice) , this inferiority can only consist in two points. ”

“ To show that this exclusion is not an act of tyranny, it must be proved either that the natural rights of women are not absolutely the same as those of men, or that women are not capable of exercising these rights. ”

“ But in the struggles of the labouring classes, in the societies for reform of evils, for the spread of improvements, in the work of the County Council, etc., we find that women's help is needed, and that it either cannot be given at all, or is miserably curtailed in its power for good and useful work, because it is not accompanied by the electoral powers which back up men's endeavours. ”

“ Is it not probable, on the contrary, that their special empire would diminish if women had less interest in its preservation; if it ceased to be for them their sole means of defence, and of escape from persecution? ”

“ It is said that women, although superior in some respects to man—more gentle, more sensitive, less subject to those vices which proceed from egotism and hardness of heart—yet do not really possess the sentiment of justice; that they obey rather their feelings than their conscience. This observation is more correct, but it proves nothing; it is not nature, it is education, it is social existence which produces this difference.
Neither the one nor the other has habituated women to the idea of what is just, but only to the idea of what is "honnête," or respectable. ”

“ It seems probable, however, that we women will have to learn to drop all such rivalries, and determine to form one vast organisation, which shall include within its ranks all sorts and conditions of women, and shall extend over the whole of the United Kingdom, if we would not see this nineteenth century completed without Woman's Emancipation becoming an accomplished fact. ”

“ If women continue to be excluded from electoral functions, it will be because a majority of men in their secret hearts relegate them to one or other of these classes. But there are, happily, increasing numbers of men who are perfectly aware of, and sympathise with the indignation of women at the affront thus put upon them. These men cannot but feel that the insult thus publicly affixed to all women affects them also. They say: "We are the sons of women, and may in our turn also become fathers of women. ”

“ That it should be within the reach of every individual of the human race to attain to the power of influencing the Government under which he or she lives, follows inevitably to logical minds, and the only exceptions which can fairly be made are those of the immature and the failures. ”

“ Their interests not being the same (as those of men) by the fault of the law, the same things not having the same importance for them as for men, they may, without failing in rational conduct, govern themselves by different principles, and tend towards a different result. It is as reasonable for a woman to concern herself respecting her personal attractions as it was for Demosthenes to cultivate his voice and his gestures. ”

“ I only know of one exception, and that is in favour of the Americans of the United States, who are spread, few in number, over a wide territory. Up to this time, among all nations, legal inequality has existed between men and women ”

“ It could not, indeed, well be otherwise, since the fundamental principle of equal rights, and equal claim to protection in the exercise of these rights, must present itself in the same forcible light to any really intelligent person who is truly anxious to lay down just and fair principles of government. ”

“ And all this despite the admitted fact that the social and economic problems, which are coming more and more into the field of parliamentary labours, are all but incapable of solution without the help of enfranchised women. ”

“ All these things have been urged again and again until we are weary of repeating them; and we ask ourselves, as we mentally review our position, Where shall we find some new argument wherewith to arrest the attention, and compel the action, of those who have the power, but seem to lack the will, to do justice? ”

“ Detained in her home by these cares, and less muscular than the man, it is also natural that she should lead a more retired, a more domestic life. The woman, therefore, as well as the man in a corresponding class of life, would be under the necessity of performing certain duties at certain times according to circumstances. ”