Page:Woman suffrage; a reply.djvu/11

5 Smith demurs, and contends that the "lot of the woman has not been determined by the will of the man, at least in any considerable degree." According to him it had its origin in those circumstances which made it expedient, on public grounds, that in the early stages of civilization the family should be socially, legally, and politically a unit. Into this portion of the controversy, however, I cannot see that there would be any advantage in entering. Whether Mr. Mill was right or wrong in his view of the historical question, he was at all events eminently successful in the purpose for which he introduced the discussion. He has secured a hearing for the cause of woman, so effectually, that we may now at least feel confident that it will not be ultimately decided on other grounds than those of reason and justice. Nor does it in truth matter whether in approaching the question of Woman Suffrage we adopt Mr. Mill's or Mr. Smith's theory. Both alike regard the existing disabilities of women as "survivals"—Mr. Mill, as survivals from a very early period in which physical force was supreme; Mr. Smith as survivals from the state of things which produced the peculiar constitution of the patriarchal family; but both as survivals, and therefore as belonging to a condition of life which has passed away. The point is thus of purely archæological interest, while the real question now before the public is, not as to the origin of woman's disabilities, but as to their present expediency; "the interest of the whole community," to borrow once more Mr. Smith's language, being "the test."

In the Bill lately before Parliament the intention of the framers, as the reader is aware, was to confer the suffrage on widows and spinsters only; married women having been expressly excluded from its operation. Mr. Smith, in entering on the discussion, is naturally anxious to deal with the question in its broadest form, and accordingly declines to be bound by this limited conception of it. He may be perfectly justified in this course; but the reasons given by him for extending the scope of the controversy are by no means convincing. To say that "marriage could hardly be treated as