Page:The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage.djvu/67

 and how unreal are the wrongs which she resents.

Quite marvelously has the woman suffragist in this connexion misapprehended; or would she have us say misrepresented?

The woman suffragist misapprehends—it will be better to assume that she "misapprehends"—when she suggests that we, the male electors, have framed the laws.

In reality the law which we live under—and the law in those States which have adopted either the English, or the Roman law—descends from the past. It has been evolved precedent, by precedent, by the decisions of generation upon generation of judges, and it has for centuries been purged by amending statutes. Moreover we, the present male electors—the electors who are savagely attacked by the suffragist for our asserted iniquities in connexion with the laws which regulate sexual relations—have never in our capacity as electors had any power to alter an old, or to suggest a new law; except only in so far as by