Page:The Woman Socialist - Snowden - 1907.djvu/115

 want to swamp the Diet. We want only a few good women there. We wish to purify the political atmosphere. We have no special women’s Parties, but we have a special programme of our own. We shall demand in the Diet the abolition of the Liquor Trade and the prohibition of prostitution, the revision of marriage laws and the status of illegitimate children; and the recognition of the economic independence of women.”

This is precisely what is prophesied in these pages. In these words of a cultured Finnish woman is the strongest justification of the action of the Finnish people, and the finest recommendation to the people of this country to show the same wisdom and courage. In results, not seen merely at election times, but which will appear in manifold ways in the future, will be the rich reward which their confidence, and ours, deserves. Not the gain of a party, nor the enrichment of a class, should be the motive for granting an obvious right; but its object should be the raising of a sex out of the accursed slavery of custom, tradition, and conventionality into the “sweetness and light” of a perfect liberty; through which