238 



The Ideal State 



can. They have not the faculty of legislating just as 

 they have not that of soldiering, sailoring, engineering, 

 policing, and a thousand and other one things. The 

 cry about voting and payment of rates being corollaries 

 is an absurdity ; they are not ; many men pay rates 

 who are unable to exercise the franchise through being 

 abroad at election times, or suffering from illness at 

 home. Men pay rates in return for policing and 

 defending of person and property. Moreover, at this 

 stage a property vote can never be given to women : 

 it can only be a universal franchise, and the 

 Labour party are demanding this now, for the 

 very excellent reason in their own interest that 

 it will double the Socialist vote, and in all proba- 

 bility double their parliamentary power. But no 

 measure ought to be advocated for such a motive only ; 

 no measure ought ever to be supported, however great 

 the material advantage to any party, which is not 

 sincerely believed in as of benefit to the State as a 

 whole. Women's suffrage is so potential of danger 

 that no party should light-heartedly advocate it. 

 Woman's influence in society is greater than that of 

 man. By her maternal faculty, and the ethical teaching 

 with which she environs the mind and thought of the 

 child, she does far more to raise the standard of human 

 conduct and promote the spiritual evolution moulding 

 our legislation than all the powers of universal franchise 

 could confer upon her. Her sphere is in a higher, holier 

 plane, but the rough-and-tumble of the political arena 

 is not for her. The love of man for woman and woman 

 for man is a sacred thing, and ought to be kept apart 

 from the contaminating influence of an effort foreign 

 to her nature and degenerating to her faculties, 

 which ought to be fostered so as to be exercised 

 to the full extent in the discharge of her maternal 

 duties, 



