Page:Letters to a friend on votes for women.djvu/92

 to govern the United Kingdom from some 7,000,000 of men to some 20,000,000 or, it may be, 24,000,000 of men and women, whereof women will be the majority.

That the women to be admitted to the Parliamentary franchise will often be excellent persons, highly endowed with the virtues of fortitude, personal unselfishness, and self-sacrifice, we are convinced; but the conviction that English women will exhibit in the highest degree the virtues of women is not the contradiction, but the complement of the belief, entertained by nearly every man, that women of pre-eminent goodness are often lacking in the virtues, such as active courage, firmness of judgment, self-control, steadiness of conduct, and, above all, a certain sense of justice maintained even in the heat of party conflict, which are often to be found in Englishmen, even of an ordinary type. Whoever asks for the vindication of this belief should study the deeds and the words of the fighting suffragists. He should note at the same time that the female leaders in the battle for women's rights have for the most part never unreservedly condemned the lawless follies and