ning their faculties. I mean the suffrage, both
parliamentary and municipal. The right to share in the choice of
those who are to exercise a public trust, is altogether a distinct
thing from that of competing for the trust itself. If no one could
vote for a member of parliament who was not fit to be a candidate,
the government would be a narrow oligarchy indeed. To have a voice in
choosing those by whom one is to be governed, is a means of
self-protection due to every one, though he were to remain for ever
excluded from the function of governing: and that women are
considered fit to have such a choice, may be presumed from the fact,
that the law already gives it to women in the most important of all
cases to themselves: for the choice of the man who is to govern a
woman to the end of life, is always supposed to be voluntarily made
by herself. In the case of election to public trusts, it is the
business of constitutional law to surround the right of suffrage with
all needful securities and limitations; but whatever securities are
sufficient in the case of the male sex, no others need be required in
the case of women. Under whatever conditions, and within whatever
limits, men are admitted to the suffrage, there is not a shadow of
justification for not admitting women under the same. The majority of
the women of any class are not likely to differ in political opinion
from the majority of the men of the same class, unless the question
be one in which the interests of women, as such, are in some way
involved; and if they are so, women require the suffrage, as their
guarantee of just and equal consideration. This ought to be obvious
even to those who coincide in no other of the doctrines for which I
contend. Even if every woman were a wife, and if every wife ought to
be a slave, all the more would these slaves stand in need of legal
protection: and we know what legal protection the slaves have, where
the laws are made by their masters.

With regard to the fitness of women, not only to participate in
elections, but themselves to hold offices or practise professions
involving important public responsibilities; I have already observed
that this consideration is not essential to the practical question in
dispute: since any woman, who succeeds in an open profession, proves
by that very fact that she is qualified for it. And in the case of
public offices, if the political system of the country is such as to
exclude unfit men, it w