DEMOCRACY AND VOTING 319 



vision of a mob howling at the gates of a palace or 

 senate-house. This is true if we take into account 

 the gradual emancipation of particular classes 

 the securing of privileges by crafts or trades 

 guilds, of charters by the principal residents of 

 a town, of parliamentary assemblages of their 

 own by the clergy, or by such of the well-to-do 

 classes as lay just below the ranks of the aris- 

 tocracy. These have been obtained by many 

 expedients, by the granting or withholding of 

 money, by the influence of religion, and by the use 

 of armed force. But these communities were all of 

 the nature of aristocracies. Their privileges were 

 peculiar, and were maintained by a jealous con- 

 servatism. There is, indeed, little analogy between 

 the protection of a craft, or of a class, from arbi- 

 trary interference, and the concession of manhood 

 suffrage to the people as a whole. The one was 

 desired for definite practical objects and was 

 appreciated by reason of its fruits : the other 

 fulfilled aspirations which were indefinite and 

 emotional, representing conceptions, not of 

 material improvement, but of human dignity. 

 We should, then, readily understand why women 

 who can emancipate themselves from the chains 

 of habit are now clamorously demanding the 

 suffrage. They share men's confident ideas of 

 personal importance, and they conceive that, if 

 these ideas are gratified for one sex, they may 

 reasonably be gratified for the other sex also. 



The suffrage having been won by the stimula- 

 ting effect of an appeal to self-conscious vanity, 

 the possession of a vote is of value in itself, quite 

 apart from the political opportunities which it 

 affords. It has, consequently, been a striking 

 feature of democracy that the people, having 

 secured the right to vote, can with difficulty be 

 persuaded to exercise it. A political issue, of how- 



