Page:The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage.djvu/129

 system of the Greeks, which was the creation of a popular assembly—and it was a popular assembly which was quite ideally intelligent.

Upon the Roman Law has been built the law of the greater part of the civilised world. The Greek is a by-word for inconsequence.

How can one, then, without cold shudders think of that legal system which the female amateur legal reformer would bring to the birth?

Let us consider her qualifications. Let us first take cognisance of the fact that the reforming woman will neither stand to the principle that man may, where this gives a balance of advantage, inflict on his fellow-man, and a fortiori upon animals, death and physical suffering; nor yet will she stand to the principle that it is ethically unlawful to do deeds of violence.

She spends her life halting between these two opinions, eternally shilly-shallying.

She will, for instance, begin by announcing