would be an absolutely indeterminate quantity. Some specious panacea of the moment which was calculated to touch their sympathies, and which the more stolid but stable political instinct of the man would reject, might be adopted with enthusiasm; and, in such a case, the loudest sounding bellwether would draw the whole flock. Dreamers, fanatics, quacksalvers of every hue, extremists prepared to "throw the whole Constitution into the crucible," would find in female suffrage a perennially happy hunting ground. Herein would be a real present danger.

ever

Apart, then, from the question of its effect on the personality of the woman herself, we are led to conclude that the conferring of the parliamentary franchise on the female sex would not tend to exalt, or even benefit, the legislation of the country.

Coming to our fourth interrogatory, a great point is sought to be made in the leaflets issued by the Central National Society for Women's Suffrage as to the necessity for a mixed electorate of the sexes in order to remove female disabilities. The futility of this contention ought to be palpable. The Primrose League, largely composed of ladies, wields a powerful influence by means of quiet persuasive personal appeals and social intercourse, reinforced by occasional public meetings. "The action of the Primrose League," said Lord Salisbury, recently, "is the action of social influence,... the quiet influence of private life, . . . and it is this private non-public influence, this influence of mind on mind in conversation, and not in speeches or in leaflets, that has largely affected

the constituencies in every part of the country during the recent elections." But, be it remembered, the work of the 1500 or 1600 women, many of them high-placed and distinguished, who form its Ladies' Grand Council, and the work of their female coadjutors throughout the country, in labouring to instil into the masses sound, moderate, and constitutional principles, is all done outside the polling-booth. The male voter can be talked to at home. Then, it seems to be forgotten that women qua women do not form a class. Their class interests are intimately linked with those of the male kind most of

them are associated with, and the male vote properly represents them. The laws affecting woman's property have been amended and placed on a vastly improved footing by the action of men. In civil causes and criminal trials it has been truly observed that with juries women stand a better chance than do men. The divorce and marriage laws have been largely relaxed and modified in favour of women. Quite recently a substantial increase to the female inspectorate of factories was made by Government, without the leverage of any female franchise. In truth, latter-day legislation has been endeavouring to do ample justice to the interests of the female sex; and if the time of Parliament be not frittered away upon vast chimerical schemes for disrupting the body-politic, much more may yet be done by the male mandate of the constituencies. Men in voting or legislating are unlikely to forget the wants of their wives, mothers, sisters, daughters. "No one," remarks Mr Bryce, "who observes America can doubt that whatever is deemed to be for

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the real benefit of women in the social and industrial sphere will be obtained for them from the good will and sympathy of men, without the agency of the political vote" (the italics are mine). Women without the vote can and do bring great pressure to bear on legislation and upon legislators. "They will," says Mr Goldwin Smith, "renounce their present influence in grasping the vote. Let them appear as a separate interest in the political arena, and they will, like every other separate interest, awaken an antagonism which does not now exist."

Our next point for consideration is one of vital importance. Is the asserted claim of woman to full separate citizenship a valid one?

The rights of the citizen to determine by whom and in what manner the State shall be governed imply a corresponding obligation on his part to support the Executive and the State in all conjunctures by his body service, vi et armis if necessary. This has been recognised in all epochs of the world's history as a rootaxiom of political economy; and, though feudalism is dead, the elementary principle remains incontrovertible as ever. Among the Saxons, said Mr Justice Willes in the case already cited re woman suffrage, "it appears that women cannot have been admitted to their councils, where no one took part unless entitled to bear arms and invested with them in the public assembly, which investiture Tacitus likened to the the assumption of toga virilis,' and Selden to being knighted. . . . A woman could

not perform knight's service in person, and when land held by military tenure came to her by descent, she had to perform the duty by deputy."

It may be true, as Mr Bright once said, that "force is no remedy." But force is the basis of all law and social order, the ultimate sanction of legislation and tribunal of appeal-a giant in the background veiled and at times seemingly asleep, but nevertheless, like the fabled watcher of the hundred eyes, never with all closed at once, nor ever relinquishing his vigilant outlook. It is urged by sentimental optimists that things are altered in these days; that civilisation and modern culture have supplanted force; that international arbitration is hereafter to settle the disputes of nations; that a millennium of universal peace is ahead of us, if only the gentle and softening influence of woman can be imported into politics through the medium of female suffrage. On this point it may

be well to hear a recent forecasting writer, whose bold generalisations are not less striking than his profound research. "It is quite conceivable," says Mr Pearson, "that the soldier may be rather less of an obtrusive element in the future than he has been in the past. This, however, is not likely to be because armies will be relatively smaller, but because universal conscription will have become the rule, and military education up to a certain point will be part of the stock-in-trade with which every citizen is equipped when he enters life." 2 "The possibility," says another discriminating writer, "and even the pro

bability, of a war in which England would be opposed both to France and to Russia, has long been perceived." As to the prospects of an abiding peace, this is what an eminent statesman and littérateur, the late M. Barthélemy St Hilaire, said only recently: "I no more believe in disarmament than I do in the maintenance of peace. War is, I am sorry to say, a necessity; it is the law of nature." We shall, he thought, witness in the next century "wars-civil wars as well as foreign wars -far more bitter and intense than those it has been my lot to witness. Do I believe in peace? No. No one believes in peace. We all try to deceive ourselves and cherish illusions on the subject; but in our inmost hearts we are all convinced that war is inevitable." "Do you suppose," said Mr Chamberlain, speaking at Durham, 16th October 1894, "because we have been at peace with all the world since the time of the Crimean war, that the age of peace has come Has the millennium arrived, with the nations armed and arming, with millions of men waiting only for the word, it may be of an individual, at once to begin cutting one another's throats?" "Who can say," was the dictum of an eminently peace-loving authority, the Lord Chief Justice, only a few months since "who can say that these times breathe the spirit of peace? There is war in the air. Nations armed to the teeth prate of peace, but there is no sense of peace." Look at the extraordinary suddenness of the crisis recently developed over the Venezuelan and Transvaal questions,

"2

which threw all the Bourses of the civilised world into panic, and sane Christian folk into consternation. Has that brought the dream of assured international concord any nearer?

It is sometimes argued that women's disqualification to vote by reason of their inability to serve as combatants is no more than that of men in old age or medically unfit. But there is no parity in the two cases, inasmuch as the man's liability to defend his country, or be sworn in to aid the civil power in times of emergency, attaches to him during, at all events, the best part of his life, while to women it never applies at all. At the most the argument would only tell in favour of disfranchising the men when they had become incapable of serving-which would not help the women suffragists much. Not many years ago, indeed, some indications and half-articulate murmurings, on the part of a knot of "advanced women," were heard in a northern town in favour of forming a Female Volunteer Medical Staff Corps, the members of which it was apparently proposed to drill and arm. This initiative was followed up by a meeting held in London on 26th May 1894, under the patronage of Mrs Sarah Grand, Lady Florence Dixie, Miss Ethel Stokes, and others. At this meeting the new movement was explained as being intended "to supplement the work of the hospital nurses by providing a medical Staff Corps of women to deal with the wounded on the battle-field," &c., while it must be able to "take care of itself in war, and be prepared to march, encamp, and per

form all duties incident to a campaign. The meetings for drill have already begun." Then, again, the Radical member for Caithness, Dr Clark, appears to have had peculiar views about the advantages of Amazonian or Dahomeyan regiments; and it is conceivable that if the way were led by such as he, abetted by the more adventurous and untrammelled of the female sex, a following of a few masculine women might even aspire to the rôle of soldier, with modifications. There would not be wanting the precedent of the Lacedæmonian women, who, we are assured, were required by law to be so exercised in the use of arms as to be qualified for battle among men.

Meanwhile, however, as they are precluded by their sex from fulfill ing the primary duty of citizenship, women have no tenable claim to participate in the government or legislation of the Commonwealth. At least they do not at present propose to serve as soldiers, sailors, special constables, or policewomen. It is all very well for the Dean of Durham, late of Winchester, and those who take his views, to desire the weight of the female vote to be "thrown into the scale of peace, temperance, and morality," and to "repudiate the degrading doctrine that only those should vote who can fight for their vote." Degrading or not degrading, the world is backed up by physical power. And as for righteousness and peace, temperance and morality, which, we are told, will be promoted by

woman's advent to the franchise, are we then to infer that the male legislator and a male electorate have no sufficient concern in those virtues? The truth is, if ever by some evil fatuity we should come to be dominated by female politicians, and any great stress, such as of war, invasion, or civil strife, were to arise, the feminine element in the fabric of Government would simply be swept down like a house of cards, and we should hear no more of woman's suffrage.1

But it is (sixth) the ultimate aims of the leaders of this woman's movement and its logical consequences which really underlie the whole matter. Prima facie, there is a show of justice in enfranchising those women who may be said to stand literally in loco viri in respect of payment of rates and headship of households. Certain qualified women are now entitled to vote in municipal, school board, parochial, and other elections of a purely local character. They can also sit on school boards, as well as on district and parish councils, and under certain restrictions act as guardians and overseers of the poor, which seems not unreasonable. They appear, further, to be eligible to fill the offices of churchwarden and sexton, though I never heard of a female acting in the latter capacity.2 And, could we have an assurance that the present extent of the female municipal franchise represented the highwater mark of woman's demand for the parliamentary vote, there might be less to be said against it.

We might even go further, and admit that such demand might be rightly and safely conceded. What is certain, however, is, that if the Woman Suffrage Bills hitherto projected have been restricted to a limited number of ratepaying widows and spinsters, the concession, if granted, would never be allowed to stop there. The lodger franchise must follow; and it would be at once recognised as intolerable that married women should be excluded, "who are not less reflective, intelligent, and virtuous than their unmarried sisters," and even "superior in another great element of fitness -namely, the lifelong habit of responsible action."2 The result The result would be to read in the word "female" wherever "male" was signified for all purposes of the parliamentary electorate. There can be no sort of doubt about this. The next step is obvious. It is scarcely denied that the trend of Radical legislation must land us eventually in manhood suffrage Sir George Trevelyan and the 'Daily News' have advocated as much; and so, womanhood suffrage would ensue. All adult women-according to Mr Herbert Burrows, an exponent of Fabian Socialism as well as all adult men, must have a vote.3 It was made clear in the discussion on Sir Albert Rollit's bill in the session of 1894 that such a change

would be momentous. Even the circumscribed and partial admission of females to the vote proposed by that bill would have added at least a million women to the register; but it was shown that the ulterior result would be, speaking broadly, to raise the electorate from 6,000,000 males to 20,000,000 persons of both sexes, whereof the women would preponderate by something like 10 per cent over the men. Well might Mr Samuel Smith "ask the House to pause before taking this terrible leap in the dark, the most revolutionary proposal of our time."

Again, it is not a question of the fittest women being admitted to the vote. Doubtless there are females exceptionally equipped by training and intellect who might well be trusted with electoral privileges. But this is not a matter which concerns the few; its application would extend to the many. The real point is: Are women collectively as fit to exercise the franchise as men taken collectively? Can it be seriously contended that they are? We may allow that average woman is superior in many ways to average man. even be of Max O'Rell's opinion that there are very few men in the world good enough for women. But, as it has been well put, "it does not follow that woman is political any more than that man

We may