Page:Letters to a friend on votes for women.djvu/65

 LETTER IV

OBJECTIONS TO WOMAN SUFFRAGE

,

One of our friends, to whom you have shown the preceding letters, tells me that I have done nothing except render a service to the suffragists by placing their side of the question at issue in so masterly and conclusive a manner as nearly to convince him that they have the best of the argument. If this is the case, it is certainly time for me to press upon you the objections which lie against any proposal for the admission of English women at the present day to the Parliamentary franchise.

.—Woman suffrage must ultimately, and probably in no long time, lead to adult suffrage, and will increase all the admitted defects of so-called universal, or in strictness manhood, suffrage.

The close connection between woman suffrage and adult suffrage, though occasionally 65