Page:The Enfranchisement of Women, the law of the land.pdf/4

4 doctrine that the State can only tax and govern us by consent of our representatives—to millions who can neither read nor write, of whom indeed we cannot so much as ask the question—to many who, like the men of Nineveh, know not their right hand from the left. Outlaws, convicted felons—even these may elect, nay, may be elected—but there is no room at the polling-booth or in "The House" for Mary Somerville, Harriet Martineau Florence Nightingale, Elizabeth Browning, or Rosa Bonheur. We set their sex to reap our fields, to fill our factories; they are clerks in our Government offices, merchants, shopkeepers, manufacturers, tradeswomen, saleswomen, skilled mechanics, inn, lodging, stable keepers; they take degrees at our universities, and practise as physicians, but they have not, it seems, capacity to judge of the qualifications of a member of Parliament. It is quite a sufficing reason for giving Hodge a vote, that Tom, the cobbler over the way, has one; but there the logic of analogy halts. The successful farmer of five hundred acres, the dairywoman who keeps as many cows, and who, each by her skill, energy, and forethought, not only realises an ample income, but finds the money for the employment and maintenance of hundreds of families—these, it seems, have not the requisite ability to make a cross at a polling-booth, although the man who carries swill to their pigs, or delivers the milk on their milk-walk, is, we are assured, an independent and competent elector. If the latter are not very fit, "the schoolmaster is abroad;" give them, the right now, and they may learn how to use it by and by. But no such experimental enfranchisement is conceded to their female employers.

We make women large landholders, ladies of manors, fundholders, householders, burgesses of our cities. Baroness Coutts is free of the city of London, and a member of a livery company—"anything but to the purpose." They may keep the post and money-order office; by express law they may be, and have been, sextons to bury us, constables to protect us, overseers of the poor, high-chamberlain, high-constable, marshal; they may be, and have personally served the office of, high-sheriff; nay, they have repeatedly exercised the function of returning officer of members to serve in Parliament; but yet we are told that they are unfit to choose their own representatives. To cap the climax of this dialectic farce, our law and