Page:Letters to a friend on votes for women.djvu/25

 Few, indeed, have been in England the reformers of any kind who could seriously believe in the absolute right of every person to a vote. Faith in this dogma would at this moment dictate the duty of providing at once for British India a Parliament elected by adult suffrage. The whole of the creed which leads to this reductio ad absurdum has, indeed, been formally repudiated by the ablest thinker who has advocated the rights of women to an equal share with men in the government of Great Britain.

'I forego,' writes Mill, any advantage which could be derived to my argument from the idea of abstract right as a thing independent of utility. I regard utility as the ultimate appeal on all ethical questions; but it must be utility in the largest sense, grounded on the permanent interests of man as a progressive being.'

These words form part of Mill's noble apology for individual freedom. They apply with the utmost force to the far more dubious claim of every man or woman to an equal share in sovereign power.