sources of feudal warfare. With this greater strength went
naturally the assumption of greater political power. To the heroes of
"Ivanhoe," or "The Fair Maid of Perth," it would have seemed as absurd that
yeomen and lackeys should have any share in the government, as it would
seem to the members in an American legislature that women should have any
such share. In a contest of mailed knights, any number of unarmed men were
but so many women. As Sir Philip Sidney said, "The wolf asketh not how many
the sheep may be."

But time and advancing civilization have tended steadily in one direction.
"He giveth power to the weak, and to them who have no might He increaseth
strength." Every step in the extension of political rights has consisted in
opening them to a class hitherto humbler. From kings to nobles, from nobles
to burghers, from burghers to yeomen; in short, from strong to weak, from
high to low, from rich to poor. All this is but the unconscious following
out of one sure principle,--that legislation is mainly for the protection
of the weak against the strong, and that for this purpose the weak must be
directly represented. The strong are already protected by their strength:
it is the weak who need all the vantage-ground that votes and legislatures
can give them. The feudal chiefs were stronger without laws than with them.
"Take care of yourselves in Sutherland," was the anxious message of the old
Highlander: "the law has come as far as Tain." It was the peaceful citizen
who needed the guaranty of law against brute force.

But can laws be executed without brute force? Not without a certain amount
of it, but that amount under civilization grows less and less. Just in
proportion as the masses are enfranchised, statutes execute themselves
without crossing bayonets. "In a republic," said De Tocqueville, "if laws
are not always respectable, they are always respected." If every step in
freedom has brought about a more peaceable state of society, why should
that process stop at this precise point? Besides, there is no possibility
in nature of a political division in which all the men shall be on one side
and all the women on the other. The mutual influence of the sexes forbids
it. The very persons who hint at such a fear refute themselves at other
times, by arguing that "women will always be sufficiently represented by
men," or that "every woman will vote as her husband thinks, and it will
merely double the numbers." As a matte