It
is allowed to unmarried, and wants but little of being conceded to
married women, to hold property, and have pecuniary and business
interests, in the same manner as men. It is considered suitable and
proper that women should think and write, and be teachers. As soon
as these things are admitted, the political disqualification has no
principle to rest on. The whole mode of thought of the modern world is
with increasing emphasis pronouncing against the claim of society to
decide for individuals what they are and are not fit for, and what
they shall and shall not be allowed to attempt. If the principles of
modern politics and political economy are good for anything, it is for
proving that these points can only be rightly judged of by the
individuals themselves and that, under complete freedom of choice,
wherever there are real diversities of aptitude, the great number will
apply themselves to the things for which they are on the average
fittest, and the exceptional course will only be taken by the
exceptions. Either the whole tendency of modern social improvements
has been wrong, or it ought to be carried out to the total abolition
of all exclusions and disabilities which close any honest employment
to a human being.
But it is not even necessary to maintain so much in order to prove
that women should have the suffrage. Were it as right, as it is wrong,
that they should be a subordinate class, confined to domestic
occupations and subject to domestic authority, they would not the less
require the protection of the suffrage to secure them from the abuse
of that authority.
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