--to them
at least this demand must seem both just and modest.

Meanwhile, many women, and some men also, think the social status of
women is just now in special peril. The late extension of the franchise
has admitted to a share in framing our laws many thousands of men of that
class which--whatever be their other virtues, and they are many--is most
given to spending their wives' earnings in drink, and personally
maltreating them; and least likely--to judge from the actions of certain
trades--to admit women to free competition for employment. Further
extension of the suffrage will, perhaps, in a very few years, admit many
thousands more. And it is no wonder if refined and educated women, in an
age which is disposed to see in the possession of a vote the best means
of self-defence, should ask for votes, for the defence, not merely of
themselves, but of their lowlier sisters, from the tyranny of men who are
as yet--to the shame of the State--most of them altogether uneducated.

As for the reasonableness of such a demand, I can only say--what has been
said elsewhere--that the present state of things, 'in which the franchise
is considered as something so important and so sacred that the most
virtuous, the most pious, the most learned, the most wealthy, the most
benevolent, the most justly powerful woman, is refused it, as something
too precious for her; and yet it is entrusted, freely and hopefully, to
any illiterate, drunken, wife-beating ruffian who can contrive to keep a
home over his head,' is equally unjust and absurd.

There may be some sufficient answer to the conclusion which conscience
and common sense, left to themselves, would draw from this statement of
the case as it now stands: but none has occurred to me which is not
contrary to the first principle of a free government.

This I presume to be: that every citizen has a right to share in choosing
those who make the laws; in order to prevent, as far as he can, laws
being made which are unjust and injurious to him, to his family, or to
his class; and that all are to be considered as 'active' citizens, save
the criminal, the insane, or those unable to support themselves. The
best rough test of a man's being able to support himself is, I doubt not,
his being able to keep a house over his head, or, at least, a permanent
lodging; and that, I presume, will be in a few years the one and
universal test of active citizenship, unless we should meanwhile obtain
the b