Millicent Garrett Fawcett

“ The politicians' field of vision is entirely filled by those who are represented; the unrepresented are forgotten. So, again, when the Birmingham Liberals let their imagination range over what was to be expected and worked for in the future, no mention was made of anything being done for women. Their ideal seemed rather to be manhood as opposed to universal suffrage; that is, all men not being either paupers or felons to be admitted to political power, no matter how ignorant, how poor, how degraded, in virtue of their manhood; while all women are to be excluded in virtue of their womanhood. ”

“ We want to ask ourselves, and to set others to ask themselves, 'Ought these things to be supported simply because they exist?' 'Could we not come nearer to righteousness if we aimed at a higher ideal of justice?'
It will no doubt be argued by some, that while much yet remains to be done before the balance is adjusted, so as to give perfect justice to women, yet that much has already been done to improve their legal status, and that it is not too much to hope that in time all grievances will be redressed without giving women votes. ”

“ The Married Women's Property Act, it is said, has redressed a great and crying evil; why may not other evils be redressed in the same way? To such as use this argument it may be replied that, in the first place, the Married Women's Property Act would probably never have been introduced or heard of, if it had not been for the wider movement for the parliamentary representation of women. The women's suffrage societies, by constant and untiring efforts actively carried on for sixteen years, have done something to awaken that keener sense of justice to women to which reference has just been made. ”

“ It is sometimes said by those who do not deny the justice of women's claim to representation, that it is necessary to show what practical good will be done to women and to the community at large by giving women votes. The answer is not far to seek. Exactly the same good that is done to other people by self-government and representative government, as opposed to government by an autocracy or an oligarchy. One overwhelming advantage which results from representative government is that it teaches people to take care of themselves ”

“ These are the fruits of tyranny when tyranny is carried to extremes. It is the aim of representative government to avoid these social cankers; and it is the aim of those who favour the representation of women to make representative government in our own country as complete as possible by including all citizens, men and women, who fulfil the legal qualifications, and who have not forfeited their political liberty by crime or pauperism. ”

“ Chamberlain at the Cobden Club dinner will be repeated, that 'full confidence in the people is the only sure foundation on which the government of this country can rest.' And what the advocates of a real representation of the people want to make sure of, is to remind the orators who make use of these telling phrases, that the human race consists of women as well as of men. They wish to remind the Radicals and Liberals, who have done so much to get rid of political disabilities, that the disability of sex is as repugnant to true Liberalism as are the disabilities of race and religion. ”

“ To live in a society whose laws give women 'something less than justice,' is apt to pervert the conscience, and make those whose imagination is not very active acquiesce in injustice as if it were part of the inevitable nature of things. Magistrates, for example, who sometimes punish men less severely for half-killing their wives than for stealing half-a-crown, are partly responsible for this faulty sense of justice, and may be partly regarded as the victims of it. ”

“ We must ask those who have votes to help us, and let Governments know that they wish for justice for women as well as for themselves. All good things must have a beginning, and if this demand on the part of women for representation is good in itself, it is none the worse for being, as compared, say, with tyranny and selfishness, new. ”

“ Here are matters almost universally admitted to involve injustice and wrong, and no one tries to remedy them. Why is this? It is because the motive power is wanting. Representation is the motive power for the redress of legislative grievances. If not what is the use of representation? People would be as well off without it as with it. But all our history shows the practical value of representation. Before the working classes were represented, trades-unions were illegal associations, and consequently an absconding treasurer of one of these societies was liable to no legal punishment. ”

“ Chamberlain said the other day, at Birmingham, that Radicals nearly always had 'to accept a composition,' and the women's suffrage party may have to do the same.
I have said that the sense of justice is not so much wanting as the motive power which will convert a passive recognition of the existence of wrong into an active determination to get that wrong righted. It must not, however, be forgotten, that without being consciously unjust or cruel, there is such a thing as a torpid sense of justice. ”

“ It is not necessary here to dwell at any length on the painful subject of laws that are unjust to women. No one who has ever given even a few minutes' attention to the subject will deny that there are many laws which, to use Mr. Gladstone's expression, give to women 'something less than justice.' [1] If it is necessary to quote examples, the inequality which the law has created between men and women in divorce suits furnishes one. The cruel law which gives a mother no legal guardianship over her children is another. ”

“ It must, however, be remembered that when a politician becomes a political leader, his time is so much engrossed in carrying on the work of practical politics—that is, in one form or another, in obeying the behests of those who have political power—that he very seldom has time to give to other people's wants. ”

“ Mason himself—who are in favour of removing the disability of sex, are not in favour of removing the disability of marriage; whilst others desire the removal of both disabilities. If Parliament should see fit to admit women to the benefits of representation, opportunity would no doubt be afforded, during the passage of a Reform Bill that extended the suffrage to women, for the House of Commons to declare distinctly whether it wishes to give the right of voting to married women who possess the qualification or not. ”

“ This state of things is to be seen very conspicuously in some Catholic countries—such, for instance, as Belgium—where the women influenced by Catholicism, and the men influenced by a revolt against Catholicism, belong, as it were, to two entirely different strata of civilisation; and hence each sex loses a great part of what it might otherwise gain from sympathy and companionship with the other. Every circumstance which widens the education of women—their political, as well as their literary education—renders impossible the building up of that wall of separation. ”

“ The labourers have been apparently as much forgotten as if the land were ploughed and weeded and sown by fairies, and not by men and women, who stand at least as much in need of any good that law-making can do them, as the other classes who are directly interested in the soil. ”

“ If there is a soul of goodness in things evil, may we not observingly distil out of the mistakes of the past something that will strengthen our hopes for the future? No one is wise enough or great enough to be able to set a limit upon the progress of mankind towards knowledge and well-doing. ”

“ Bright has, on more than one occasion—as, for example, on behalf of a bill enabling women to receive medical degrees—lifted his powerful voice in favour of justice being done to women. Matters which affect injuriously, or the reverse, unrepresented classes, lie outside what are called practical politics. ”

“ What better remedy than this can exist against revolution? And what a miserable waste of noble qualities results from the opposite system—the system of repression and autocracy. It is not necessary to look further than to the contemporary history of Russia for examples. ”

“ Christianity was a new thing once; even now—as we were reminded the other day—it is held to be true only by a minority of mankind; the belief in witchcraft was once universal and was shared even by the wisest and most cultivated of men. ”

“ We see there courage, compassion, fidelity, devotion, ingenuity, and patience, turned aside from channels in which they might have made the whole world a better place to live in, into channels which lead to conspiracy, murder, and insatiable longings for revenge. ”

“ They want to remind the Tory party that if a fair representation of property is what they are aiming at, they will be acting very inconsistently if they support a system which gives no kind of representation to property, however vast, which happens to be owned by a woman. ”

“ Their lives will be less separated than they have hitherto been. It is one of the most disastrous things that can happen to a nation to have a great wall of separation, as regards opinion and feeling, grow up between men and women. ”

“ Then came slowly and hesitatingly the beginning of what we have now learned to call 'natural science;' and, little by little, the most cultivated classes began to seek to explain things according to some rational theory of the universe. ”

“ A curious illustration of the absolute neglect so far as politics are concerned, of all who are not represented, or whom, it is expected, will be shortly represented, may be found in the accounts of the recent celebration of the Bright festival at Birmingham. ”