Page:Letters to a friend on votes for women.djvu/95

 excites derision. But it reminds a thoughtful observer of the anarchy or tyranny which would be possible under any constitution that dissevered legal right from physical power, and left open the chance that a Government supported by a majority of the electorate, consisting mainly of women, should come into conflict with the vast majority of the male electors who commanded the sympathy of, or (as in Switzerland) had come to coincide with, the national army.

Nor must it for a moment be forgotten that the vast majority of the 10,000,000 or more women who under a system of adult suffrage would be admitted to the electorate have never sanctioned the demand for participation in sovereign power; whilst the protest by a large and increasing body of women against the so-called concession to English women of rights which thousands of them regard as the unjust imposition of an unbearable burden becomes every day more and more audible, and must be heard with the most profound respect.

This, then, is the case against woman suffrage. To fair-minded men who have