There is thus a very positive agreement among political theorists on the principle by which we should determine which members of the State should have the vote. However they approach the problem, and whatever be their general theory, they agree that, when the political power is electoral, incompetence alone should exclude from a share in the election. There is no question in any of them of taxation as a basis of representation, no question of property as such forming a qualification. Until recent times the possession of property gave some presumption of education. In the days when the workers were almost all densely illiterate, when education was almost confined to the leisured and professional classes, it was quite natural to assume that the paying of taxes gave a general presumption of leisure, culture, or capacity. It, therefore, became the "basis of representation," but only in the sense that it was a rough test of competency or education. In the course of time unthinking people came to imagine that taxation carries with it a moral right to the franchise, and thought they could settle in that simple way who should or should not have a vote. I have shown that no political moralist will sanction the idea for a moment, and in point of fact English electoral law has departed from it in two ways: by excluding tax-paying women on the one hand, and by setting up a lodger vote on the other. The general spread of education has wholly altered the situation by giving competence and training to the non-propertied class. The political thinkers we consulted were really more concerned with the limitation of the franchise than with its extension. This serves my purpose well enough, but I should like to draw up a positive principle of enfranchisement in harmony with their conclusions. I venture to formulate it thus: All those who share in the life of the State, are subject to its laws, and gain or suffer by its prosperity or adversity, are entitled to a share in the control of its policy, unless they are disabled by a moral or intellectual inferiority that would make their power a standing prejudice to the community's welfare. This is a positive statement of the basis of enfranchisement that accords entirely with all that has been written about it from Aristotle to Ritchie. On that principle we have to determine, with equity and reason, whether or no there is injustice in the political subordination of one sex to the other.