Page:Letters to a friend on votes for women.djvu/68

 persons, are best qualified to exercise the franchise without disadvantage to the nation. Woman suffrage, moreover, combined with household suffrage as it actually exists, would lead to the creation of 'faggot votes,' but 'faggot votes' constitute an anomaly, harmless in itself, which Liberals out of office denounce, and even when in office promise to remove. But if it be difficult to combine household suffrage with woman suffrage, the feat of giving political equality to women could be performed with the greatest ease under a scheme of adult suffrage which should give a vote to every citizen, male or female, who has attained the age of twenty-one years.

Woman suffrage, then, I repeat, assuredly means, if not to-day, yet within a short time, the introduction of adult suffrage, and, independently of the new electors being women, must add to the defects of manhood suffrage. A huge constituency is, just because of its size, a bad electoral body. As the number of electors is increased, the power and the responsibility of each man are diminished. Authority passes into the hands of persons who possess neither the independence due to