[[p. 103]] The following paper contains a few remarks suggested by the interview with Mr. Walter Besant in last week's Woman's Signal:

     Two points are touched upon--the capacity of women for various kinds of intellectual work as compared with that of men, and the propriety of allowing them any share in choosing those who make the laws under which they live. To my mind these two things have no rational connection. Mr. Besant thinks that in music, in mathematics, in the faculty of governing large bodies of their fellow citizens, and in literary work, women are, on the average, inferior to men. Perhaps he is right; but at all events the difference is not great; and now that they are having the opportunity of devoting themselves to real study, women are showing that they do possess very considerable intellectual powers in almost every department of knowledge. But even if their capacity in all these respects were much less than it has been proved to be, I fail to see how the fact would afford a shadow of a reason for refusing them a voice in choosing those who make the laws which they, as well as men, have to obey, and which often affect them not as citizens only but as wives and mothers. To give the voting powers to the most weak and foolish of sane men, to absolute illiterates, to gamblers and to confirmed inebriates, and then to refuse it to women on the ground of their alleged intellectual inferiority, is simply ludicrous in its illogicality.

     This, however, is evidently not Mr. Besant's argument, which appears to be that, as "men have to do the conquering, and defending, working, and providing, theirs naturally should be the governing." This again seems to me almost as illogical as the argument from inferiority of intellect. What proportion of male voters have ever "defended" or "conquered" any portion of the empire, except indirectly by paying taxes for the support of an army and navy? And this women do as well as men.

     There remains the "providing;" but surely this is not, nor ever has been, exclusively a male function. Nearly four millions of women and girls work for a livelihood--half as many as there are men, while the other half keep house and bring up children, besides doing much necessary domestic work, so that it may fairly be said that as regards "providing," among the whole body of manual workers women are as fully employed as men, though perhaps not so well paid. But even if men were the exclusive providers, what claim does that give to be exclusive legislators, and, further, to be alone the choosers of these who make the laws which affect women as well as men, and often seriously affect them in their domestic relations as well as in their character as citizens?

     All these tyrannical restrictions are but survivals from the bad old times when might was right, when women were practically slaves, and when men used their superior physical strength to monopolise all wealth and all power. But the day of such restrictions has passed away. In this age of enlightenment and ever-growing liberty we can no longer deny to one-half of the citizens of a free country the political privileges conceded to the weakest and most ignorant of the other half. The idea that women will rush in to do work for which they are not fitted, and which they ought not to be permitted to try, is the plea of the tyrant who claims to know what is good for others better than they know themselves. Such arguments imply a distrust in humanity itself. The inherent diversity in the physical and mental natures of men and women will assuredly assert itself more fully under freedom than under repression; and it is only by [[p. 104]] allowing them equal political rights and equal freedom to cultivate and employ all their faculties, that we shall reap the full benefit which we are now beginning to see will be the result of the unfettered co-operation of women with men in the great task of the coming century, that of social regeneration and advancement.