EDITOR'S TABLE. 



113 



appeared, by J. E. Cairnes, the distin- 

 guished Professor of Political Economy 

 in University College, London. The 

 article, though a spirited polemic, con- 

 tributes but little to the radical ques- 

 tion, and in our opinion by no means 

 satisfactorily answers Prof. Smith's ob- 

 jections ; while we are far from think- 

 ing that Mr. Smith himself went to the 

 root of the subject in giving the reasons 

 of his positions. He is of opinion that 

 the extension of political suffrage to the 

 female sex would prove destructive to 

 free institutions, which Prof. Cairnes 

 thinks a groundless and absurd appre- 

 hension. But this grave question we 

 believe cannot be determined without 

 going deeper into the subject than 

 either of these writers has done. If the 

 natures of women are the same as those 

 of men, then their enfranchisement 

 might be expected to produce but little 

 change in the course of political affairs ; 

 but if women are profoundly different 

 in mental and emotional constitution 

 from men, then the entrance of this 

 new element into the political sphere, 

 by which the voters would be more 

 than doubled, would certainly alter the 

 composition of political forces and the 

 direction of political movement. It is 

 worthy of remark, in passing, that the 

 leading advocates of woman suffrage, 

 while affirming the equality of the 

 sexes and the essential identity of the 

 masculine and feminine mind, never- 

 theless urge the policy of female en- 

 franchisement on the ground of the 

 numerous new results that would fol- 

 low, and which would be widely dif- 

 ferent from those now realized. 



There are but two ways of ascer- 

 taining what these consequences would 

 be : first, by making the experiment on 

 a national scale and for a lengthened 

 period, because, in the absence of revo- 

 lution, changes in social and civil types 

 proceed slowly. The second method of 

 ' ascertaining the consequences of female 

 enfranchisement, and the only practi- 

 cable method, is, to infer them from 



the nature of political institutions on 

 one hand, and from the female charac- 

 ter on the other. We are here con- 

 fronted with three scientific problems. 

 We have to consider the natural con- 

 stitution of society, and find out what 

 are the laws of social change, and the 

 conditions under which social develop- 

 ment has thus far taken place. This 

 subject is deeper than politics, which 

 deals with conventional arrangements, 

 and what we may call the superficies 

 of society ; and goes down to those re- 

 lations that underlie all political forms, 

 and pertain to tbe essential unfolding 

 of humanity. We have also to con- 

 sider woman in the light of biological 

 soience that is, the physiological na- 

 ture, modifications, and limitations of 

 her sex; and we have again to study 

 her mental and emotional traits as de- 

 termined by her biological constitution 

 and maternal experience. These we 

 hold to be the fundamental problems 

 of the woman question, which must be 

 elucidated before there can be any suf- 

 ficient data for intelligent action ; and, 

 until they are more fully elucidated 

 than at present, all action will be but 

 blind and hap-hazard experiments, and 

 far more likely to produce evil than 

 good. 



We publish that portion of Prof. 

 Cairnes's article the most important 

 part in which he deals with the re- 

 lation of woman suffrage to the fam- 

 ily ; but the argument is unsatisfac- 

 tory. The " element of weakness in 

 the family, as things now stand," he 

 says, is the " want of sufficient subjects 

 of common interest between man and 

 woman ; " certainly a most astound- 

 ing averment. Man and woman in 

 the family mean husband and wife, 

 father and mother, growing children, 

 home-education, the formation of char- 

 acter and the outer social relations that 

 spring from the family circle. The 

 home, by its very constitution, is at 

 the same time the centre of the ten- 

 derest and strongest emotions, and the 



VOL. VI. 8 



