Women's Suffrage: A Short History of a Great Movement — John Shaqi
Women's Suffrage: A Short History of a Great MovementFawcett, Millicent Garrett, Dame
Philosophy
Women's Suffrage: A Short History of a Great Movement
Fawcett, Millicent Garrett, Dame
Women -- Suffrage -- Great Britain
One other consideration may be deduced from this extraordinary
article--"Arguments for use in Poor Districts." If the anti-suffragists
will put into cold print such "arguments" that women ought not to vote
because they are occupied with the daily tasks of ordinary life and are
not prepared to govern India or manage the Army and Navy, what may not
the anti-suffragists say in private in the cottages which they visit in
order to overcome the reluctance of working women to put their names to
the anti-suffrage petitions?
The women who petition against women's enfranchisement are a type that
we have always with us. Burke held them up to disdain and contempt
in inimitable words in 1772, when Dissenters petitioned against
Dissenters. The Five Mile Act and the Test and Corporation Act were
then in force. The Test Act made the taking of the Sacrament according
to the rites of the Church of England a necessary qualification for
holding public office of any kind. The Five Mile Act forbade the
proscribed Nonconformists from preaching or holding meetings within
five miles of any corporate town. In 1772 these Acts were not often
put into operation, but as long as they were in the Statute Book the
Nonconformist leaders felt that they were doomed to live on sufferance;
their friends in Parliament prepared a Bill for their relief from these
outrageous disabilities. Opposition was, of course, at once awakened;
it proceeded mainly from the King and the "King's friends." Their
hands were strengthened by receiving a petition signed by dissenting
ministers, who entreated Parliament not to surrender a test "imposed
expressly for the maintenance of those essential doctrines upon which
the Reformation was founded." They were for the time successful, but
Burke's oratory has pointed the finger of scorn at them for all
time. "Two bodies of men," he said, "approach our House and prostrate
themselves at our Bar. 'We ask not honours,' say the one. 'We have no
aspiring wishes, no views upon the purple....' 'We, on the contrary,'
say the Dissenters who petition against Dissenters, 'enjoy every
species of indulgence we can wish for; and as we are content, we pray
that others who are not content may meet with no relief.'"[29]
We do not envy the Dissenters who petitioned against Dissenters in the
eighteenth century, and future generations will probably mete out no
very kindly judgment to the women who petitioned against women in 1889
and 1911: "As we are content, we pray that others who are not content
may meet with no relief."
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