FEMALE SUFFRAGE, 439 



the Reign of Terror, and in the revolt of the Commune, the women 

 notoriously rivaled the men in fury and atrocity. The same was the 

 case in the late American Civil War. What has been the effect of 

 public life on the character of the women who have thrown them- 

 selves into it in the United States can be doubted by no human 

 being ; and our experience of female agitations in this country seems 

 to tell pretty much the same tale. That party politics require miti- 

 gation, and perhaps something more, may be readily admitted ; but 

 we are not likely to make the caldron boil less fiercely by flinging into 

 it female character and home. 



That home would escape disturbance it is surely difficult to believe. 

 We are told that a difference of religion between man and wife does 

 not produce nnhappiness. The fact may be doubted when the differ- 

 ence is strong. But religion is an affair of the other world ; and it 

 does not, at all events it need not, bring people into direct, much less 

 into public collision in this world. A man and his wife, taking oppo- 

 site sides in politics, would be brought into direct and public collision, 

 especially if they happened to be active politicians, about a subject of 

 the most exciting kind. Would the harmony of most households bear 

 the strain ? Would not a husband who cared for his own happiness 

 be apt to say that if his wife wanted it she might have the vote, but 

 that there should be only one vote between them ? 



Men are not good house-keepers, and there need not be any 

 thing disparaging in saying that women, as a rule, are not likely to be 

 good politicians. Most of them, after all, will be married, and their 

 sphere will be one in which they do not directly feel the effects of good 

 or bad government, which are directly felt by the man who goes forth 

 to labor, and the practical sense of which, more than any thing else, 

 forms the political wisdom, such as it is, of the great mass of mankind. 

 Nor would there be any thing, generally speaking, to balance the judg' 

 ment, as it is balanced in men by the variety of practical needs and con- 

 siderations. Even with male constituencies, particular questions are 

 apt to become too predominant, and to lead to the exaction of tyranni- 

 cal pledges and to narrow ostracism of conscientious public men. But 

 with female suffrage there would probably be always a woman's ques- 

 tion, of a kind appealing to sentiment, such as the question of the con- 

 tagious diseases act, which demagogues would take care to provide, 

 and which would swallow up every other question, and make a clean 

 sweep of all public men who might refuse to take the woman's pledge. 

 With female suffrage, the question of the contagious diseases act 

 would probably have made a clean sweep, at the last general election, 

 of all the best servants of the state. 



Mr. Mill had persuaded himself that great capacity for government 

 had been displayed by women, and that there was urgent necessity for 

 bringing them into the management of the state. But he can hardly 

 be serious when he cites as an instance of female rule a constitutional 



