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LORD CURZON, LORD CROMER AND…

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LORD CURZON, LORD CROMER AND THE SUFFRAGE. By W. N. EWER. The two great champions chosen by the Anti-Suffrage Societies to expound and defend their case are Lord Cromer and Lord Curzon. That in itself is a fact in which one may discover a certain significance. The cry for enfranchisement goes up from women of all classes and it is a cry based as much upon social needs as upon political theories. The women are asking for the vote because they wish to use the vote. It is their interest in all the vast complex of the social organis- ation of which they are part which makes them demand a share in the government of the state; they see that government more and more closely affects every aspect of their lives; that politics is not a thing apart from ordinary life, a game to be played by statesmen, aided on occasion by soldiers, but that it is actually an aspect of the national life itself, an aspect in which both sexes must have part, if that national life is not to be incomplete and one-sided. Now both Lord Curzon and Lord Cromer are men concerned primarily with a particular branch of the art of government, and their political ideals are reflective of their political activities. It is not too much perhaps to say that their whole conception of the functions of the State, the whole foundation of their political theories is radically and entirely different from that of those who are demand- ing the vote for the women of this country. It is to fundamentals that we must descend if we would understand the gulf that separates us from our opponents. Much of the surface argument can be passed lightly by. When one reads in an Anti-Suffrage Campaign leaflet that Lord Cromer objects to the granting of the vote to women because it flies in the face of Nature, which has clearly indicated the spheres of action respectively assigned to the two sexes," one feels amazed that such a man should make so extra- ordinary a statement, but one does not turn to discuss it. Lordly "arguments." And so running through Lord Cromer's six, and Lord Curzon's fifteen, "sound, valid and incontrovertible arguments against the granting of Female Suffrage," one finds it possible to eliminate them one by one, until one is left face to face with the real basic difference between us. That is the only process by which one can appreciate the real issues which are at stake, or understand the principles which underlie disputes which often appear foolish and trivial. The first thing needful to the process we propose is a classification of these incon- trovertible arguments which in the pamphlets containing them jostle each other in an order or disorder in which one fails to discover reason or method, and classification gives us the arguments somewhat in this order. Firstly, there is that grotesque and ignoble one already quoted. And with it may be classed perhaps that other one of "no precedent" in a great country. Typical of Lord Curzon is the implied sneer at Norway, a country contemptible to the Imperialist mind, yet capable, perhaps, of teaching many things even to a British Empire. But a necessary protest made on that point, the "no precedent" plea-argument one can scarcely call it-need detain us no more it will affect only those who hate change because it is change, who recoil from a new idea as from physical pain. Were it true, and one doubts it, that the large majority both of men and women. are opposed to woman suffrage, that were a fact making it difficult at the moment to secure such a reform, more than that it would in no way prove. And what of the other statement bearing rather on method than on abstract principles touching the sex relations. There is no permanent or practicable halting-stage before Adult Suffrage." The inevitable result of Votes for Women is Votes for all Women. To that the Liberal can but reply What of it ? It is precisely what I want." Not half measures. Manhood Suffrage was the favourite bogey of those who opposed Reform Bills in the past. The Tory Suffragist is now to be frightened from his feminism by the cry of Adult Suffrage." And to the party who last December were rapt in enthusiastic admiration of their own trust in the people," it is an appalling thing that the people-all the people-should have the right of the vote. Manhood suffrage is bad enough. I have never been to a country or a colony where manhood suffrage prevails, in which I did not find that the most thoughtful and representative opinion deplored the loss of tone and morale that had thereby been introduced into the public life of the nation. But if that be true of manhood suffrage, how much more true would it be of adult suffrage." Thus Lord Curzon; and else- where The Adult Suffrage Bill proposed that all the ladies' maids and the shop- keepers' girls and the charwomen should be among the future rulers of the British Empire." Might, one seems to catch the unspoken thought, claim to participate in the work once sacred to the well-born, now grudgingly shared with the lower order of the male sex. But these smooth inso- lences (Lord Curzon is, I believe, of those who fear the influence of class-hatred) affect us not at all. It is precisely for ladies' maids as well as for ladies, for shopkeepers' girls as for shopkeepers that the vote is needed. They are citizens with interests in the State, a stake in the country," if you will, with a point of view which needs to be studied and understood, not to be passed by with disdainful sneer. Let there be no mistake, Lord Curzon is right, "Votes for Women must become finally Votes for all women." But that is an argument not against but for the granting of the vote it is the only condition upon which Liberal support can conscientiously be given to any more limited measure. What it would mean. A further picture of a future when women shall sit in Parliament, in the Cabinet, on the Bench (had we a Salic law, doubless a Queen Regnant would have been added as a yet more dreadful possibility !) and we pass on with nerves tolerably unshaken to some serious argument deserving of attention, dealing with an important point-the effect of the franchise upon women themselves. And it is significant that neither Lord Cromer nor Lord Curzon seems to appreciate the importance of this phase of the question. One feels as one reads that the bitter epigram which Meredith placed in the mouth of Diana Warwick is only too true to-day. Men have doubled Seraglio Point: they have not yet rounded Cape Turk." Scarcely a word is there of the woman as an individual with a personality worthy of development for its own sake. Only a brief statement that between the intellectual emancipation of women and the political franchise there is no necessary connection, and that the first will proceed despite the absence of the second. Is Lord Curzon entirely without appreciation of the influence which the granting of the vote to the working man has had in enlarging his horizon, in expanding his interests, in awakening a desire for education ? He is Chancellor of Oxford University: he must know more than a little of the new intellectual life seething among the workers of this country. Cannot he realise the extent to which it has been begotten by the possession of the vote ? Few things have been more closely connected than the franchise and the progress of the working man in "intellectual emancipa- tion will not the same hold of the women ? The proper sphere of woman. Little attention need be paid to the threat that the granting of the vote would involve the passing of chivalry. That is a threat which has been made too often to hold further terrors. We pass to the statement that Political activity will tend to take away woman from her proper sphere and highest duty, which is maternity." A Frenchman," says Lord Curzon elsewhere, rather wittily and characteristically put the point when he said 'One female politician the more, one mother the less.' Witty and characteristic the remark may be one feels, however, that it had been of more value had it been either true or relevant to the issue. On the one hand, political activity is by no means inconsistent with mother- hood or with the highest conception of the duties which it imposes what need to labour argument when instances abound ? And on the other hand, to withhold the vote is not to prohibit political activity. One may rest assured that if women exist in whom political extincts are so strong that, when possessed of the power to vote, they would evade maternity in order to give themselves more wholly to politics, those hypertrophied in- stincts will not be kept in subjection by mere votelessness. And of the home-of the woman as wife rather than as mother ? Here the turban shows more clearly, and one feels that even the bowstring is a thing not impossibly re- mote. For we are bidden to deny to our womenfolk the rights of citizenship, because to grant them the vote will be subversive of peace in our home the phrase is Lord Cromer's. Lord Curzon paraphrases the sentiment and says, It will tend by the divisions which it will introduce to break up the harmony of the home." A political chameleon." Now, reading these word's, one's mind runs back to Lord James of Hereford's speech at the dinner last May, when Lord Curzon's fifteen arguments first saw the light. Thus Lord James: If you are going to give votes to women as well as to men, are you going to enfranchise indepen- dent voters? See on one day the daughter wearing the colours of her father's political faith. She marries and at once the colours change. Her husband's are enthusi- astically worn." Which is right. Is woman a mere political chameleon responsive to the dominant tone of the household in which she lives or will she maintain her own colour, risking destruction of harmony. The anti- suffragist cannot use both arguments. For my part I believe the truth to lie rather with Lord Curzon than with Lord James. I do not believe that a woman's views are any more a mere reflex of her husband's or her father's, whether they be on politics, on art, or on religion. Then I accept the subversion of peace and the destruction of harmony in the home? Well, in a sense I do. I do not believe that the happiness of married life depends upon the submersion of the woman's individuality in that of her husband that is an opinion which experience refutes and ideals condemn. If it were true that differences of opinion and of belief were fatal to the peace of the home, the mere denial of the vote were a- grotesquely insufficient preservation of that peace. \Ve must proceed in defence of that