Page:Letters to a friend on votes for women.djvu/94

 have been sent to prison only for asking for votes is, in itself, hardly more deserving of confutation than would be the statement that a convicted burglar had got five years' penal servitude 'only because he called on a householder late at night, and entered by the back rather than by the front door of the house.'

The pregnant principle or fact that government itself depends at bottom upon force, tells all but fatally against the establishment of woman suffrage in a country, at any rate, such as England, where it would ultimately give predominant power to women. Nothing, I may add, is more noteworthy or characteristic than the incapacity of suffragists to recognize this unwelcome truth. Their political blindness is shown by the failure to perceive that for women to rely on physical force for the attainment of political authority calls into play the instrument, and creates the condition of opinion, which, should women obtain votes, might deprive them of any real share in sovereignty. The folly displayed by a class which, knowing itself to be deficient in paramount physical strength, relies upon lawless violence for the attainment of its ends,