THE FRUITS OF EDUCATION 323 



The improved education of women must in time 

 earn them the right to vote. That it is to the interest 

 of any community to grant its women this privilege 

 seems hardly a question for discussion. In most 

 families the responsibility of rearing the children is 

 left mainly to the mothers, and it is not consistent 

 to maintain that women who are fitted to rear the 

 future citizens of a country are unfit for its elective 

 franchise. A country can ill afford to be without 

 the political interest of its educated women, for 

 there is no good reason to think that, once emanci- 

 pated from the largely artificial state of permanent 

 intellectual childhood in which they are now kept, 

 they would not exert as beneficial an influence in 

 political life as men. That their sex should give 

 them a somewhat different point of view from that 

 of men can hardly be regarded as an objection, but 

 is rather an advantage, as it would tend to introduce 

 new elements of human feeling and thought and 

 aspiration. There should, however, be a moderately 

 high educational qualification for the franchise and 

 possibly a small property qualification, though this 

 is really equally necessary in the case of men. A 

 nation that has sacrificed a million lives in the course 

 of a struggle resulting in the emancipation of the 

 negro, and that allows its most debauched, semi- 

 criminal classes to vote, cannot deny its vote to its 

 best women without being guilty of an unpardonable 

 thoughtlessness. 



The world looks with dislike and distrust at the 



