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 mer