WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE A SHORT HISTORY OF A GREAT MOVEMENT By MILLICENT GARRETT FAWCETT, LL.D. PRESIDENT OF THE NATIONAL UNION OF WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE SOCIETIES LONDON: T. C. & E. C. JACK 67 LONG ACRE, W.C., AND EDINBURGH NEW YORK: THE DODGE PUBLISHING CO. It is not to be thought of that the flood Of British freedom, which to the open sea Of the world's praise, from dark antiquity Hath flowed "with pomp of waters unwithstood"-- Road by which all might come and go that would, And bear out freights of worth to foreign lands; That this most famous stream in bogs and sands Should perish, and to evil and to good Be lost for ever. In our halls is hung Armoury of the invincible knights of old: We must be free or die, who speak the tongue That Shakespeare spake--the faith and morals hold Which Milton held. In everything we're sprung Of earth's first blood, have titles manifold. --W. Wordsworth. WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE CHAPTER I THE BEGINNINGS We suffragists have no cause to be ashamed of the founders of our movement-- "In everything we're sprung Of earth's first blood, have titles manifold." Mary Wollstonecraft[1] started the demand of women for political liberty in England, Condorcet in France,[2] and the heroic group of anti-slavery agitators in the United States. It is true that Horace Walpole called Mary Wollstonecraft "a hyena in petticoats." But this proves nothing except his profound ignorance of her character and aims. Have we not in our own time heard the ladies who first joined the Primrose League described by an excited politician as "filthy witches"? The epithet of course was as totally removed from any relation to the facts as that which Horace Walpole applied to Mary Wollstonecraft. William Godwin's touching memoir of his wife, Mr. Kegan Paul's _William Godwin: his Friends and Contemporaries_, and Mrs. Pennell's Biography show Mary Wollstonecraft as a woman of exceptionally pure and exalted character. Her sharp wits had been sharpened by every sort of personal misfortune; they enabled her to pierce through all shams and pretences, but they never caused her to lower her high sense of duty; they never embittered her or caused her to waver in her allegiance to the pieties of domestic life. Her husband wrote of her soon after her death, "She was a worshipper of domestic life." If there is anything in appearance, her face in the picture in the National Portrait Gallery speaks for her. Southey wrote of her, that of all the lions of the day whom he had seen "her face was the best, infinitely the best." The torch which was lighted by Mary Wollstonecraft was never afterwards extinguished; there are glimpses of its light in the poems of her son-in-law Shelley. The frequent references to the principle of equality between men and women in the "Revolt of Islam" will occur to every reader.