The Future of the Women's MovementSwanwick, Helena M. (Helena Maria)
General
The Future of the Women's Movement
Swanwick, Helena M. (Helena Maria)
Women -- Social and moral questions; Women's rights
of men who were few relatively to the whole population, and, therefore,
by no means represented the physical force of the community, and before
the days of parliamentary government a small oligarchy or even an
autocracy ruled. Democratic government has, in fact, come to birth and
steadily grown with the steady decline of the rule of physical force.
And it will be seen that this must be so, when once we have grasped the
fact that the unmoral use of physical force may here and there profit an
individual but is always bad business for the community.
If we abandon the visions of the Antis, we shall see that, as a matter
of prosaic fact, the vote in England is given to a man not as a reward
of virtue (as the assertion, “woman has disgraced herself,” would seem
to imply), nor as a prize for intellectual ability (as those who speak
slightingly of women’s intellect would suggest), nor as the guerdon of
physical prowess (as the physical force party declare), nor does it
depend upon his being a husband and father. An Englishman who has, by
debauchery, ruined body, mind and spirit, and who has neither wife nor
child, may yet have the necessary qualifications to vote, for these are
a confused and illogical jumble of accretions, but, such as they are,
they depend on the possession of property. It is proposed by Liberals to
abolish these and to enfranchise a man in virtue of his manhood. Once you
see the immorality, the waste and the stupidity of the physical force
argument, there is no possible ground for refusing to enfranchise a woman
in virtue of her womanhood.
CHAPTER VI
VOTES
Who made the law thet hurts, John,
_Heads I win,—ditto tails_?
“J. B.” was on his shirts, John,
Onless my memory fails.
Ole Uncle S., sez he, “I guess
(I’m good at thet),” sez he,
“Thet sauce for goose ain’t _jest_ the juice
For ganders with J. B.,
No more than you or me.”
J. R. LOWELL.
We come now to the question, what is the use of the vote, about which
women are making such a bobbery? Not more bobbery, be it well understood,
than men have made; not nearly as much, if we are to take as a measure
the amount of suffering that men have been willing to inflict and the
crimes they were willing to perpetrate in pursuit of the franchise.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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