Page:Letters to a friend on votes for women.djvu/79

 law, the body possessed of predominant strength would be strongly opposed to the law. Rarely indeed could it happen that anything like the whole body of female electors would be opposed to anything like the whole body of male electors. It is not necessary for our argument to imagine so portentous a state of affairs. But it is certainly possible under a system of adult suffrage, and in a country where, as in England, women constitute the greater part of the population, that a body composed of a large majority of female electors acting together with a minority of male electors, might force upon the country a law or a policy opposed to the deliberate will and judgment of the majority of Englishmen. Is it certain that in such circumstances Englishmen would obey and enforce a law that punished as a crime conduct which they in general held ought to be treated as an offence, not against law, but against morality? Can we, again, feel assured that Englishmen might not forbid the making of an ignominious peace, even though the majority of the electorate, consisting for the most part of women, held that the horrors of war must be