Page:The Feminist Movement - Snowden - 1912.djvu/174

 They are never weary of pointing out that the opposition of the class it is proposed to enfranchise is the unique feature of the present campaign which warrants the withholding of the vote. The argument is not a good one. It might be admitted that a very large proportion of women are either against the suffrage or entirely indifferent about it. But the question is not whether women are against the suffrage for themselves or not: it is, rather, why should women be against their own enfranchisement.

It is probably true that, in the past, no men of any class it was sought to enfranchise organised themselves to defeat this object. This may be accounted for by the fact that they were invited to do what had been done by men, in smaller or larger numbers, from the days of Simon de Montfort. It was no new idea to them, but simply the application to a larger number of people of an established principle, the right of men to govern themselves. It is false to say that those who were not free have never fought against their own enfranchisement. Thousands of black men fought against the North in the American Civil War, preferring a life of pampered slavery to the unknown joys and terrors of freedom. The analogy, unflattering though it may appear, is not to be drawn between the men and the women of Great Britain, but between