Page:Letters to a friend on votes for women.djvu/76

 country should try the new experiment of woman suffrage. No serious reasoner will try to escape this conclusion by the idle retort that a woman who does not desire a vote need not use it. The very essence of her objection is that a vote imposes upon her a duty which may be an intolerable burden, and subjects her to the rule of a class—namely, women—which she deems incompetent to exercise sovereign power.

.—The basis of all government is force, which means in the last resort physical strength. But predominant force lies in the hands of men. Now these facts, whether one likes them or not, tell in more ways than people often realize against giving a share in sovereignty to English women. The matter well deserves consideration.

There is, in the first place, a grave danger that the nominally sovereign body may not be in reality able to enforce the law of the land. In this country the legal or constitutional sovereign is Parliament—i.e., the King, the House of Lords, and the House of Commons acting together; but the 'political