Page:The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage.djvu/38

 first requirement in connexion with any word or phrase which conveys a moral exhortation is, therefore, to analyse it and find out its true signification. For all such concepts as justice, rights, freedom, chivalry—and it is with these that we shall be specially concerned—are, when properly defined and understood beacon-lights, but when ill understood and undefined, stumbling-blocks in the path of humanity.

We may appropriately begin by analysing the term "Woman's Rights" and the correlative formula "Woman has a right to the suffrage."

Our attention here immediately focuses upon the term right. It is one of the most important of the verbal agents by which the suffragist hopes to bring moral pressure to bear upon man.

Now, the term right denotes in its juridical sense a debt which is owed to us by the State. A right is created when the community binds itself to us, its individual members, to intervene by force to restrain any one from interfering