Feminism - Women and Memory Forum

WOMAN SUFFRAGE ARGUMENTS 269
of nature, has given up into the hands of the society, and therein
to the governors." ^^ Therefore, when this principle was appealed
to by our ancestors, who, to repeat, knew the meaning of
their principles, it was clearly understood that women, children,
and idiots — all but sane men — would be excepted. So evident
was this to them, that they did not deem it necessary to express
it. Yet Jefferson himself later showed that he so understood
what he wrote. In fact, nobody has put the matter more concisely
than he did in this one pregnant sentence : " However
nature may by mental or physical disqualifications have marked
infants and the weaker sex for the protection, rather than the
direction, of government, yet among the men who either pay or
fight for their country, no line of right can be drawn." ^^
To-day the women themselves still allow, and must allow (for
the principle taken absolutely would lead to all sorts of absurdities
^*), that children and idiots are to be excepted, and claim that
they themselves are not to be, and some men admit their claim.
Further reason is therefore needed to show why some human beings
are to come under it and some not, and mere appeal to such
an exceptionable principle proves nothing.^^ The principle itself,
in the mouths of its supporters, did not claim to be absolutely,
but only generally, true ;
or else the government of men by God
would not be just unless God first got men's consent. Evidently
it is within the range of possibility that a government even by a
few men over most men without their previous consent, may be
just; only such a government is not likely to be just. The
92 Of Civil Government, § 171.
QZ Works, Ford's ed., x. 303. Cf. above, p. 2$gn. Further may be quoted: "Our
good ladies [in America], I trust, have been too wise to wrinkle their foreheads with
politics," ib., V. 9 (from Paris, where he saw women meddling with public affairs),
* Man, the first moment he is at his ease, allots the internal employment to his female
partner, and takes the external on himself," Washington ed., ix. 396. Ten years before
his death he added another reason for excluding women — " who, to prevent
depravation of morals, and ambiguity of issue, could not mix promiscuously in the
political meetings of men," ib., vii. z^: cf. Bentham, above p. ion.
64 For some of them see Wright's Unexpurgated Case, 42.
95 Lincoln, whose authority is often cjuoted by the woman suffragists, employed a
slightly different form of the principle with equal inconsistency. Thus in an announcement
of his political views, J^une 13, 1836, published in the Sangamon Journal, he wrote:
** I go for all sharing the privileges of the government who assist in bearing its burdens.
Consequently, I go for admitting all whites to the right of suffrage who i)ay taxes or
bear arms (by no means excluding females)," Works, Tandy-Thomas ed., i. 15, Why
did he exclude negro men, some of whom bore the burdens of government, when he
admitted those fat that time very few) white women who at best paid taxes on property
given them by men? The added clause, however, has every appearance of being a
bit of humour, and as such may be capped by his verses on Adam and Eve, ending:
*' The Woman sh« was taken
From under Adam's arm,
So she must be protected
From injuries and harm." Ib., 290.
"No one ever thought more deeply on the subject [of woman suffrage! than Lincoln
did," writes a woman suffragist, Th, W. Hotchkiss, in The New York Times, Feb. 14,
191$. On the contrary, Lincoln's collected utterances, among which nothing else on the
subject has been discovered, show that he never thought on this subject at all. He was
occupied with much more important matters.