Women and the Alphabet Part 18

THE ROB ROY THEORY

"The Sat.u.r.day Review," in an article which denounces all equality in marriage laws and all plans of woman suffrage, admits frankly the practical obstacles in the way of the process of voting. "Possibly the presence of women as voters would tend still further to promote order than has been done by the ballot." It plants itself wholly on one objection, which goes far deeper, thus:--

"If men choose to say that women are not their equals, women have nothing to do but to give in. Physical force, the ultimate basis of all society and all government, must be on the side of the men; and those who have the key of the position will not consent permanently to abandon it."

It is a great pleasure when an opponent of justice is willing to fall back thus frankly upon the Rob Roy theory:--

"The good old rule Sufficeth him, the simple plan That they should take who have the power, And they should keep who can."

It is easy, I think, to show that the theory is utterly false, and that the basis of civilized society is not physical force, but, on the contrary, brains.

In the city where the "Sat.u.r.day Review" is published, there are three regiments of "Guards" which are the boast of the English army, and are believed by their officers to be the finest troops in the world. They have deteriorated in size since the Crimean war; but I believe that the men of one regiment still average six feet two inches in height; and I am sure that n.o.body ever saw them in line without noticing the contrast between these magnificent men and the comparatively puny officers who command them.

These officers are from the highest social rank in England, the governing cla.s.ses; and if it were the whole object of this military organization to give a visible proof of the utter absurdity of the "Sat.u.r.day Review's"

theory, it could not be better done. There is no country in Europe, I suppose, where the hereditary aristocracy is physically equal to that of England, or where the intellectual cla.s.s has so good a physique. But set either the House of Lords or the "Sat.u.r.day Review" contributors upon a hand-to-hand fight against an equal number of "navvies" or "coster-mongers," and the patricians would have about as much chance as a crew of Va.s.sar girls in a boat-race with Yale or Harvard. Take the men of England alone, and it is hardly too much to say that physical force, instead of being the basis of political power in any cla.s.s, is apt to be found in inverse ratio to it. In case of revolution, the strength of the governing cla.s.s in any country is not in its physical, but in its mental power. Rank and money, and the power to influence and organize and command, are merely different modifications of mental training, brought to bear by somebody.

In our country, without cla.s.s distinctions, the same truth can be easily shown. Physical power lies mainly in the hands of the ma.s.ses: wherever a cla.s.s or profession possesses more than its numerical share of power, it has usually less than its proportion of physical vigor. This is easily shown from the vast body of evidence collected during our civil war. In the volume containing the medical statistics of the Provost Marshal General's Bureau, we have the tabulated reports of about 600,000 persons subject to draft, and of about 500,000 recruits, subst.i.tutes, and drafted men; showing the precise physical condition of more than a million men.

It appears that, out of the whole number examined, rather more than 257 in each 1000 were found unfit for military service. It is curious to see how generally the physical power among these men is in inverse ratio to the social and political prominence of the cla.s.s they represent. Out of 1000 unskilled laborers, for instance, only 348 are physically disqualified; among tanners, only 216; among iron-workers, 189. On the other hand, among lawyers, 544 out of 1000 are disqualified; among journalists, 740; among clergymen, 954. Grave divines are horrified at the thought of admitting women to vote, since they cannot fight; though not one in twenty of their own number is fit for military duty, if he volunteered. Of the editors who denounce woman suffrage, only about one in four could himself carry a musket; while of the lawyers who fill Congress, the majority could not be defenders of their country, but could only be defended. If we were to distribute political power with reference to the "physical basis" which the "Sat.u.r.day Review" talks about, it would be a wholly new distribution, and would put things more hopelessly upside down than did the worst phase of the French Commune. If, then, a political theory so utterly breaks down when applied to men, why should we insist on resuscitating it in order to apply it to women? The truth is that as civilization advances the world is governed more and more unequivocally by brains; and whether those brains are deposited in a strong body or a weak one becomes a matter of less and less importance. But it is only in the very first stage of barbarism that mere physical strength makes mastery; and the long head has controlled the long arm since the beginning of recorded time.

And it must be remembered that even these statistics very imperfectly represent the case. They do not apply to the whole male s.e.x, but actually to the picked portion only, to the men presumed to be of military age, excluding the very old and the very young. Were these included, the proportion unfit for military duty would of course be far greater.

Moreover, it takes no account of courage or cowardice, patriotism or zeal.

How much all these considerations tell upon the actual proportion may be seen from the fact that in the town where I am writing, for instance, out of some twelve thousand inhabitants and about three thousand voters, there are only some three hundred who actually served in the civil war,--a number too small to exert a perceptible influence on any local election. When we see the community yielding up its voting power into the hands of those who have actually done military service, it will be time enough to exclude women for not doing such service. If the alleged physical basis operates as an exclusion of all non-combatants, it should surely give a monopoly to the actual combatants.

THE VOTES OF NON-COMBATANTS

The tendency of modern society is not to concentrate power in the hands of the few, but to give a greater and greater share to the many. Read Froissart's Chronicles, and Scott's novels of chivalry, and you will see how thoroughly the difference between patrician and plebeian was then a difference of physical strength. The knight, being better nourished and better trained, was apt to be the bodily superior of the peasant, to begin with; and this strength was reinforced by armor, weapons, horse, castle, and all the resources of feudal warfare. With this greater strength went naturally the a.s.sumption of greater political power. To the heroes of "Ivanhoe," or "The Fair Maid of Perth," it would have seemed as absurd that yeomen and lackeys should have any share in the government, as it would seem to the members in an American legislature that women should have any such share. In a contest of mailed knights, any number of unarmed men were but so many women. As Sir Philip Sidney said, "The wolf asketh not how many the sheep may be."

But time and advancing civilization have tended steadily in one direction.

"He giveth power to the weak, and to them who have no might He increaseth strength." Every step in the extension of political rights has consisted in opening them to a cla.s.s. .h.i.therto humbler. From kings to n.o.bles, from n.o.bles to burghers, from burghers to yeomen; in short, from strong to weak, from high to low, from rich to poor. All this is but the unconscious following out of one sure principle,--that legislation is mainly for the protection of the weak against the strong, and that for this purpose the weak must be directly represented. The strong are already protected by their strength: it is the weak who need all the vantage-ground that votes and legislatures can give them. The feudal chiefs were stronger without laws than with them.

"Take care of yourselves in Sutherland," was the anxious message of the old Highlander: "the law has come as far as Tain." It was the peaceful citizen who needed the guaranty of law against brute force.

But can laws be executed without brute force? Not without a certain amount of it, but that amount under civilization grows less and less. Just in proportion as the ma.s.ses are enfranchised, statutes execute themselves without crossing bayonets. "In a republic," said De Tocqueville, "if laws are not always respectable, they are always respected." If every step in freedom has brought about a more peaceable state of society, why should that process stop at this precise point? Besides, there is no possibility in nature of a political division in which all the men shall be on one side and all the women on the other. The mutual influence of the s.e.xes forbids it. The very persons who hint at such a fear refute themselves at other times, by arguing that "women will always be sufficiently represented by men," or that "every woman will vote as her husband thinks, and it will merely double the numbers." As a matter of fact, the law will prevail in all English-speaking nations: a few men fighting for it will be stronger than many fighting against it; and if those few have both the law and the women on their side, there will be no trouble.

The truth is that in this age _cedant arma togae:_ it is the civilian who rules on the throne or behind it, and who makes the fighting-men his mere agents. Yonder policeman at the corner looks big and formidable: he protects the women and overawes the boys. But away in some corner of the City Hill there is some quiet man, out of uniform, perhaps a consumptive or a dyspeptic or a cripple, who can overawe the burliest policeman by his authority as city marshal or as mayor. So an army is but a larger police; and its official head is that plain man at the White House, who makes or unmakes, not merely brevet-brigadiers, but major-generals in command,--who can by the stroke of the pen convert the most powerful man of the army into the most powerless. Take away the occupant of the position, and put in a woman, and will she become impotent because her name is Elizabeth or Maria Theresa? It is brains that more and more govern the world; and whether those brains be on the throne, or at the ballot-box, they will soon make the owner's s.e.x a subordinate affair. If woman is also strong in the affections, so much the better. "Win the hearts of your subjects," said Lord Burleigh to Queen Elizabeth, "and you will have their hands and purses."

War is the last appeal, and happily in these days the rarest appeal, of statesmanship. In the multifarious other duties that make up statesmanship we cannot spare the brains, the self-devotion, and the enthusiasm of woman.

One of the most important treaties of modern history, the peace of Cambray, in 1529, was negotiated, after previous attempts had failed, by two women,--Margaret, aunt of Charles V., and Louisa, mother of Francis I.

Voltaire said that Christina of Sweden was the only sovereign of her time who maintained the dignity of the throne against Mazarin and Richelieu.

Frederick the Great said that the Seven Years' War was waged against three women,--Elizabeth of Russia, Maria Theresa, and Mme. Pompadour. There is nothing impotent in the statesmanship of women when they are admitted to exercise it: they are only powerless for good when they are obliged to obtain by wheedling and flattery a sway that should be recognized, responsible, and limited.

MANNERS REPEAL LAWS

There is in Boswell's "Life of Johnson" a correspondence which is well worth reading by both advocates and opponents of woman suffrage. Boswell, who was of an old Scotch family, had a difference of opinion with his father about an entailed estate which had descended to them. Boswell wished the t.i.tle so adjusted as to cut off all possibility of female heirship. His father, on the other hand, wished to recognize such a contingency. Boswell wrote to Johnson in 1776 for advice, urging a series of objections, physiological and moral, to the inheritance of a family estate by a woman; though, as he magnanimously admits, "they should be treated with great affection and tenderness, and always partic.i.p.ate of the prosperity of the family."

Dr. Johnson, for a wonder, took the other side, defended female heirship, and finally summed up thus: "It cannot but occur that women have natural and equitable claims as well as men, and these claims are not to be capriciously or lightly superseded or infringed. When fiefs inspired military service, it is easily discerned why females could not inherit them; but the reason is at an end. _As manners make laws, so manners likewise repeal them_."

This admirable statement should be carefully pondered by those who hold that suffrage should be only coextensive with military duty. The position that woman cannot properly vote because she cannot fight for her vote efficiently is precisely like the position of feudalism and of Boswell, that she could not properly hold real estate because she could not fight for it. Each position may have had some plausibility in its day, but the same current of events has made each obsolete. Those who in these days believe in giving woman the ballot argue precisely as Dr. Johnson did in 1776. Times have changed, manners have softened, education has advanced, public opinion now acts more forcibly; and the reference to physical force, though still implied, is implied more and more remotely. The political event of the age, the overthrow of American slavery, would not have been accomplished without the "secular arm" of Grant and Sherman, let us agree: but neither would it have been accomplished without the moral power of Garrison the non-resistant, and Harriet Beecher Stowe the woman. When the work is done, it is unfair to disfranchise any of the partic.i.p.ants. Dr.

Johnson was right: "When fiefs [or votes] implied military service, it is easily discerned why women should not inherit [or possess] them; but the reason is at an end. As manners make laws, so manners likewise repeal them."

Under the feudal system it would have been absurd that women should hold real estate, for the next armed warrior could dispossess her. By Gail Hamilton's reasoning, it is equally absurd now: "One man is stronger than one woman, and ten men are stronger than ten women; and the nineteen millions of men in this country will subdue, capture, and execute or expel the nineteen millions of women just as soon as they set about it." Very well: why, then, do not all the landless men in a town unite, and take away the landed property of all the women? Simply because we now live in civilized society and under a reign of law; because those men's respect for law is greater than their appet.i.te for property; or, if you prefer, because even those landless men know that their own interest lies, in the long-run, on the side of law. It will be precisely the same with voting. When any community is civilized up to the point of enfranchising women, it will be civilized up to the point of sustaining their vote, as it now sustains their property rights, by the whole material force of the community. When the thing is once established, it will no more occur to anybody that a woman's vote is powerless because she cannot fight, than it now occurs to anybody that her t.i.tle to real estate is invalidated by the same circ.u.mstance.

Woman is in the world; she cannot be got rid of: she must be a serf or an equal; there is no middle ground. We have outgrown the theory of serfdom in a thousand ways, and may as well abandon the whole. Women have now a place in society: their influence will be exerted, at any rate, in war and in peace, legally or illegally; and it had better be exerted in direct, legitimate, and responsible methods, than in ways that are dark, and by tricks that have not even the merit of being plain.

DANGEROUS VOTERS

One of the few plausible objections brought against women's voting is this: that it would demoralize the suffrage by letting in very dangerous voters; that virtuous women would not vote, and vicious women would. It is a very unfounded alarm.

For, in the first place, our inst.i.tutions rest--if they have any basis at all--on this principle, that good is stronger than evil, that the majority of men really wish to vote rightly, and that only time and patience are needed to get the worst abuses righted. How any one can doubt this, who watches the course of our politics, I do not see. In spite of the great disadvantage of having ma.s.ses of ignorant foreign voters to deal with,--and of native black voters, who have been purposely kept in ignorance,--we certainly see wrongs gradually righted, and the truth by degrees prevail.

Even the one great, exceptional case of New York city has been reached at last; and the very extent of the evil has brought its own cure. Now, why should this triumph of good over evil be practicable among men, and not apply to women also?

It must be either because women, as a cla.s.s, are worse than men,--which will hardly be a.s.serted,--or because, for some special reason, bad women have an advantage over good women such as has no parallel in the other s.e.x.

But I do not see how this can be. Let us consider.

It is certain that good women are not less faithful and conscientious than good men. It is generally admitted that those most opposed to suffrage will very soon, on being fully enfranchised, feel it their duty to vote. They may at first misuse the right through ignorance, but they certainly will not shirk it. It is this conscientious habit on which I rely without fear.

Never yet, when public duty required, have American women failed to meet the emergency; and I am not afraid of it now. Moreover, when they are once enfranchised and their votes are needed, all the men who now oppose or ridicule the demand for suffrage will begin to help them to exercise it.

When the wives are once enfranchised, you may be sure that the husbands will not neglect those of their own household: they will provide them with ballots, vehicles, and policemen, and will contrive to make the voting-places pleasanter than many parlors, and quieter than some churches.

On the other hand, it seems altogether probable that the very worst women, so far from being ostentatious in their wickedness upon election day, will, on the contrary, so disguise and conceal themselves as to deceive the very elect, and, if it were possible, the very policemen. For whatever party they may vote, they will contribute to make the voting-places as orderly as railway stations. These covert ways are the very habit of their lives, at least by daylight; and the women who have of late done the most conspicuous and open mischief in our community have done it, not in their true character as evil, but, on the contrary, under a mask of elevated purpose.

That women, when they vote, will commit their full share of errors I have always maintained. But that they will collectively misuse their power seems to me out of the question; and that the good women are going to stay at home, and let bad women do the voting, appears quite as incredible. In fact, if they do thus, it is a fair question whether the epithets "good"

and "bad" ought not, politically speaking, to change places. For it naturally occurs to every one, on election day, that the man who votes, even if he votes wrong, is really a better man, so far as political duties go, than the very loftiest saint who stays at home and prays that other people may vote right And it is hard to see why it should be otherwise with women.

HOW WOMEN WILL LEGISLATE

It is often said that when women vote their votes will make no difference in the count, became they will merely duplicate the votes of their husbands and brothers. Then these same objectors go on and predict all sorts of evil things for which women will vote quite apart from their husbands and brothers. Moreover, the evils thus predicted are apt to be diametrically opposite. Thus Goldwin Smith predicts that women will be governed by priests, and then goes on to predict that women will vote to abolish marriage; not seeing that these two predictions destroy each other.

On the other hand, I think that the advocates of woman suffrage often err by claiming too much,--as that all women will vote for peace, for total abstinence, against slavery, and the rest. It seems better to rest the argument on general principles, and not to seek to prophesy too closely.

The only thing which I feel safe in predicting is that woman suffrage will be used, as it should be, for the protection of woman. Self-respect and self-protection,--these are, as has been already said, the two great things for which woman needs the ballot.