FEMALE SUFFRAGE. 429 



point them actually. Twice the Government has been changed by a 

 plebiscite^ and on the second occasion the budget was submitted to 

 the constituencies as directly as ever it was to the House of Commons. 

 There may be some repugnance, natural or traditional, to be overcome 

 in admitting women to seats in Parliament ; but there is also some 

 repugnance to be overcome in throwing them into the turmoil of con- 

 tested elections, in which, as soon as female suifrage is carried, some 

 ladies will unquestionably claim their part. 



There are members of Parliament who shrink from the step which 

 they are now urged to take, but who fancy that they have no choice 

 left them because the municipal franchise has already been conceded. 

 The municipal franchise was no doubt intended to be the thin end of 

 the wedge. Nevertheless there is a wide step between this and the 

 national franchise ; between allowing female influence to prevail in 

 the disjjosition of school-rates, or other local rates, and allowing it to 

 prevail in the supreme government of the country. To see that it is 

 so, we have only to imagine the foreign policy of England determined 

 by the women, while that of other countries is determined by the men ; 

 and this in the age of Bismarck. 



The writer of this paper himself once signed a petition for female 

 household suffrage got up by Mr. Mill. He has always been for en- 

 larging the number of active citizens as much as possible, and widening 

 the basis of government, in accordance with the maxim, which seems 

 to him the sum of political philosophy, " That is the best form of 

 government which doth most actuate and dispose all parts and mem- 

 bers of the commonwealth to the common good." He had not, when 

 he signed the petition, seen the public life of women in the United 

 States. But he was led to reconsider what he had done, and prevented 

 from going further, by finding that the movement was received with 

 mistrust by some of the best and most sensible women of his acquaint- 

 ance, who feared that their most valuable privileges, and the deepest 

 sources of their happiness, were being jeopardized to gratify the polit- 

 ical aspirations of a few of their sex. For the authority of Mr. Mill, 

 in all cases where his judgment was unclouded, the writer felt and 

 still feels great respect. But, since that time, Mr. Mill's autobiography 

 has appeared, and has revealed the history of his extraordinary and 

 almost portentous education, the singular circumstances of his mar- 

 riage, his hallucination (for it surely can be called nothing less) as to 

 the unparalleled genius of his wife, and peculiarities of character and 

 temperament such as could not fail to prevent him from fully appre- 

 ciating the power of influences which, whatever our philosophy may 

 say, reign and will continue to reign supreme over questions of this 

 kind. To him marriage was a union of two philosophers in the pur- 

 suit of truth ; and, in his work on the position and destiny of women, 

 not only does he scarcely think of children, but sex and its influences 

 seem hardly to be present to his mind. Of the distinctive excellence 



