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It may be, that such women would not care to use the franchise, if they had it. That is their concern, not ours. Voters who do not care to vote may be counted by thousands among men; some of them, perhaps, are wiser than their fellows, and not more foolish; and take that method of showing their wisdom. Be that as it may, we are no more justified in refusing a human being a right, because he may not choose to exercise it, than we are in refusing to pay him his due, because he may probably hoard the money.

The objection that such women are better without a vote, because a vote would interest them in politics, and so interfere with their domestic duties, seems slender enough. What domestic duties have they, of which the State can take cognisance, save their duty to those to whom they may owe money, and their duty to keep the peace? Their other and nobler duties are voluntary and self-imposed; and, most usually, are fulfilled as secretly as possible. The State commits an injustice in debarring a woman from the rights of a citizen because she chooses, over and above them, to perform the good works of a saint.

And, after all, will it be the worse for these women, or for the society in which they live, if they do interest themselves in politics? Might not (as Mr. Boyd Kinnear urges in an article as sober and rational as it is earnest and chivalrous) their purity and earnestness help to make what is now called politics somewhat more pure, somewhat more earnest? Might not the presence of the voting power of a few virtuous, experienced, well- educated women, keep candidates, for very shame, from saying and doing things from which they do not shrink, before a crowd of men who are, on the average, neither virtuous, experienced, or well-educated, by wholesome dread of that most terrible of all earthly punishments–at least in the eyes of a manly man–the fine scorn of a noble woman? Might not the intervention of a few women who are living according to the eternal laws of God, help to infuse some slightly stronger tincture of those eternal laws into our legislators and their legislation? What women have done for the social reforms of the last forty years is known, or ought to be known, to all. Might not they have done far more, and might not they do far more hereafter, if they, who generally know far more than men do of human suffering, and of the consequences of human folly, were able to ask for further social reforms, not merely as a boon to be begged from the physically stronger sex, but as their will, which they, as citizens, have a right to see fulfilled, if just and possible? Woman has played for too many centuries the part which Lady Godiva plays in the old legend. It is time that she should not be content with mitigating by her entreaties or her charities the cruelty and greed of men, but exercise her right, as a member of the State, and (as I believe) a member of Christ and a child of God, to forbid them.

As for any specific difference between the intellect of women and that of men, which should preclude the former meddling in politics, I must confess that the subtle distinctions drawn, even by those who uphold the intellectual equality of women, have almost, if not altogether, escaped me. The only important difference, I think, is, that men are generally duller and more conceited than women. The dulness is natural enough, on the broad ground that the males of all animals (being more sensual and selfish) are duller than the females. The conceit is easily accounted for. The English boy is told from childhood, as the negro boy is, that men are superior to women. The negro boy shows his assent to the proposition by beating his mother, the English one by talking down his sisters. That is all.