MR. BRIGHT ON WOMEN'S FRANOHISE.
AV. BRIGHT'S very fine speech on Wednesday brought ill out more distinctly than any speech of recent years the fag& character of the assumption on which the agitation for the Women's Franchise has proceeded, and is proceeding. That assumption is that women, instead of permeating and influencing all classes, as a constituent of all, constitute a class amongst themselves, with interests of their own, some- times conflicting with the interests of men of all classes. The Women's franchise Bill, he said, was "based on an assumed hostility between the sexes." Yet "nothing could be more monstrous and absurd than to describe women as a. class." Indeed, it would seem to us almost as true to- say that the distinct constituents of water have hostile interests which require separate consideration, — that the hydrogen or oxygen is ill-used if its qualities as a distinct element are merged in those which it gives to the water of which it is so important a constituent,—as to say that women- are a political class, with distinct political interests, likely to be endangered by leaving their representation to men. Nothing could be more powerful than the way in which Mr. Bright pressed this home,—than, for instance, the fine sen- tence in which he said, in reply to the assertion that women are living in England in a sort of slavery, that nothing struck him- more-than the consideration that "at this moment there were millions of men at work, sacrificing and giving up their leisure to a life of sustained hardship, confronting peril in every shape, for the sake of the sustenance and the comfort and the happiness of women and children." Of course, Mr. Bright would not only admit, he would be even eager to assert, the converse of this,----that there are millions of women sacrificing and giving up their leisure to a life of sus- tained hardship, confronting pain and privation in every shape, for the sake of the sustenance and comfort and happiness of men and children. But this admission, so far from taking any force from his position, really adds greatly to it. Nothing can illustrate better than this double fact the vital difference between a class and a sex. Of what class could it be fairly said that millions of them sacrifice and give up their leisure to a life of sus- tained hardship, and confront pain or peril, for the sustenance, comfort, and happiness of any other class ? No doubt, so closely linked together is human society, that every true econo- mical theory shows that involuntarily and indirectly, though not directly and voluntarily, this is really the case. No class can do its work well without benefiting other classes ; no class can do it badly without imperilling other classes. But that is not to the point. The competitions of political life depend not upon the hidden identity of interests between the classes which seem to have conflicting interests, for it is the very difficulty, the unsolved problem, of political and commercial life, to find out where at any moment that ultimate identity really lies. And it is by conflict and competition, by the " higgling of markets," by the mutual aggression and resistance and counter-attack of commercial and political life, that that line of ultimate identity is at length determined. The labourer's interest appears to be hostile to the capitalist's, and superficially is so ; the true line of identity cannot be fairly, or, indeed, really ascertained without disputes, and some- times even trials of strength and resources. The landowner's interests appear to be in conflict with the farmer's, and cer- tainly in that case, there is no expedient but that of open competition, which will ascertain accurately on what terms the two are to be reconciled. And so in political matters, the towns have different objects in view from the counties, and to some extent the poor from the rich; nor can the best mode of compromising these superficial differences of interest be dis- covered without pitting the strength of the one element in the country in some way or other against the strength of the others, and partly by argument, partly by force of numbers, partly by force of wealth and education, so fighting the matter out as to attain a reasonable compromise. But can any one say that this is true of women and men ? Is it not as much for women that men think in all their conflicts with each other, as for themselves ? Is it not even more for men, that women think in their differences with each other, as for them- selves ? Is there the slightest approach to truth in represent- ing the influence of women over men, or of men over women, as a class-conflict, in which the man is thinking to get an ad- vantage for men, and the woman is thinking to get an advan- tage for women ? No doubt some of the women's advocates say so, and they try to substantiate their assertion by criticising the few cases in which women have been unfairly dealt with. That their education has, hitherto, been neglected, we have always asserted, and assert warmly, but doubtless the reason has been much less in the unfairness of men than in the indifference of women. That their property has been left too much a great deal in the power of men, we are equally forward to maintain. But no one can deny that men have been at least all ready to recognise- this blunder as women, and have already done something, and are very willing to do more towards a remedy. These errors are not, as Mr. Bright says, indications of class-injustice, but rather of too great a confidence that men will very rarely abuse that power over women which, for the most part, they certainly exercise at least as conscientiously as they do their power over other members of their own sex. Take any test you like of class-in- justice, and it fails when applied to the treatment of women in general by men. If labourers are tried by a bench of magis- trates consisting of their employers, no doubt there is a cer- tain presumption that they will get _a somewhat severe measure of justice—a muck severer measure than if one of the magis- trates' own order is brought up for an offence against a labourer. Here you have class against class. But take, as Mr. Bright very skilfully suggested, a test of how sex treats sex in similar circumstances. If a woman is tried for the same offence as a man, is she apt to get & severer or a more lenient sentence? Everybody knows that she gets a more lenient sentence. Or to take Mr. Bright's other illustration of the same familiar fact. If a man is sued for breach of promise of marriage to a woman, he almost always gets condemned to pay a very heavy fine. If a woman is sued for a breach of the same promise to a man, she is almost always let off with a farthing, or the man is nonsuited altogether. Here you have sex against sex. Or try a more striotly political test :—Oan any one read the discussions on Lord Shaftesbury's original Factory Act with- out observing that the interests of the women and of the female children were even more eagerly considered by a Par- hament of men, elected by men, than even those of the young people of the other sex ? Look for a test where you please, you will find nothing but fresh illustrations of Mr. Bright's position that the mistakes which men make about the interests Of women are not the mistakes of a hostile class, but the mis- takes of women themselves, who are often by no means the most numerous or earnest of the critics of those mistakes.
If you care to represent a sex in Parliament at all, at least it must not be on the same principles as those on which you represent a class ; and as Mr. Bright very forcibly observed, it is not representing a sex to allow the handful of unmarried women who happen to be householders to vote so long as they remain unmarried, and no longer. That is indeed making the position of a wife a political disqualification, and what can be more signally fatal to the representation of a sex than that 7 Once admit that women as women need representation, and you cannot deny that women as women, so far as they are properly qualified for electoral privileges, should vote. And it is not simply false, but absurd to say that by marrying they become less qualified than before. Moreover, since, as Mr. Bright says, any elector at present may, if solicited by a constituency, sit as a Member of Parliament, if you make women electors, you cannot refuse them the right to sit without again doing violence to the principle that a sex is a special class. It would be monstrous to exclude the member of any special class from the House of Commons,—to say that a tradesman, or a farmer, or a labourer may not sit there. And so, if women are merely one among the classes which make up the political constituency of the country, it would be monstrous to say that women shall not be eligible to Parliament. The principle of the Women's Dis- abilities Removal Bill implies, as Mr. Bright justly observed, not an extension of our old electoral assumptions, but a complete re- volution, involving one cannot say how many subsidiary revolu- tions. It involves the notion that the interests of women, instead of being interwoven everywhere with the interests of all classes of society, just as feeling mingles with thought, or heat with light, in these mental and physical phenomena respectively, are a distinct class of interests, involving the same sort of need for adjusting them by preliminary trials of strength as the in- terests of the artisans, or the tenant-farmers, or the tradesmen. That appears to us, as to Mr. Bright, to be a very false notion, which would lead to a great deal of subversive social recon- struction,—to the necessity for choosing women on all juries, getting them to sit on all tribunals of justice, putting them into all administrative offices, and summoning them on all assemblies of the people, in equal numbers with men,—lest, perchance, the balance of justice should be overthrown. If that were to be needful,—and no one can deny that many of the modern ideas on the subject really tend to that as the ideal of justice,—is Mr. Bright using too strong a word when he says that what the women's franchise advocates are asking for is, in principle, not reform, but revolution-?
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