Page:Letters to a friend on votes for women.djvu/69

 the possession of property nor the intelligence due to education. Our electorate now consists of some 7,000,000 men. Adult suffrage would create an electorate of, say roundly, at least 20,000,000 individuals, of whom considerably over 10,000,000 would be women. This mere increase in numbers is no slight evil. That more than half the new electors should be absolutely devoid of political training and traditions creates of itself a national peril; but common sense forbids any fair reasoner to stop at this point. This uneducated majority of the electorate would be women. The very advocates of woman suffrage make it part of their case that the civic virtues of women have never as yet been fully developed. Assuredly the most ordinary prudence warns us against admitting to a full share of sovereignty persons who have lacked all experience of its exercise.

Grant, for the sake of argument—though the concession is not justified by our knowledge of human nature—that possession of power invariably teaches its possessors to use