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LORD CURZON, LORD CROMER AND…

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LORD CURZON, LORD CROMER AND THE SUFFRAGE. By W. N. EWER. (II) The arguments, with which I dealt in my last article, were those which form the stock- in-trade of every an ti-suffragist. To find them held worthy of a place among the reasons which Lords Curzon and Cromer advance in justification of their opposition to Woman Suffrage should be surprising for their weakness their inherent inconsistency proved strangely easy of demonstration. Yet one is not unused to this phenomenon time and again one is driven to marvel at the weakness of arguments upon which oppo- nents who command one's respect appear to base their case. One's opponents, it may be conjectured, undergo the same experience, and the reason is this: Rarely indeed in controversy does one dwell upon the real factors which have determined one's position. The most frequent arguments are not those which are of greatest importance, but those which are easy to handle and which seem at first glance effective weapons of debate. So one finds employed freely by men to whom they can be of little import indeed. They are the conventional weapons, and as such they are used. Often they are in reality valueless, self-destructive, palpably absurd yet they continue in use, though productive of no permanent effect, save to distract atten- tion from the real issues at stake. Those real issues are rarely discussed we waste our time in attacking the men of straw whom our opponents put in the forefront of of the battle we win our victories, but they are barren we make our points, and drive home our arguments, but the discussion is fruitless, for the ground on which we are fighting is not that which is really in dispute. Why they oppose Women Suffrage. And so I want to leave these old threadbare arguments as to the peace of the home and the like: I want to deal with a far more important question. Why in reality are Lord Curzon and Lord Cromer opposed to Woman Suffrage? Their printed reasons do not satisfy me: I find them, or such of them as I have already considered purely conventional, scarcely meriting discussion. They can have had little or no effect upon the minds of such men. We pass them by. It is astonishing indeed how little appre- ciation there is of the fundamental impor- tance of the real meaning of the division of opinion over the enfranchisement of women. Its most ardent supporters, its most enthusi- astic opponents speak as if it were a thing removed from, irrelevant to, all other politics. It is, we are told, a non-party question. Now that, as I see matters, is a fallacy and a fallacy of no little importance. The question of woman suffrage cannot be a non-party matter in any country where party divisions correspond to real differences of political ideal The question who shall constitute the State is, in the nature of things, one of the most important which our politicil philosophy must answer; and the answer must be determined, not by such comparatively superficial reasonings as those which we have previously considered, but by our whole conception of the nature and pur- pose of the State. Now, the great cleavage of parties in British politics is more and more broming coincident with a divergence of opinion on the objects for which a State exists. And any question which is ulti- mately reducible to this great one of the purpose of government must of necessity be or become a party question. The Party question of the future. That the suffrage question is so reducible is to me clear. I am convinced that in the near future, as it becomes more and more a practical question, it will become more and more a Party question. The confusion of the moment is temporary and traceable to quite evident causes. In the Liberal ranks there is an influential anti-suffrage minority it will be a decreasing minority, for its ex- istence is due to that natural dread of inno- vation, that natural repugnance to the assimilation of new ideas which is innate in us all and which the passage of time suffices to remove. More interesting is the division in the Tory ranks, for it corresponds to a real division of ideals. In the Unionist Party of to-day two schools of thought are represented. There is the old Conservatism, chiefly concerned to safeguard the rights of property and the privileges of class there is the newer school, the school of Disraeli and Chamberlain, whose creed is not Con- servatism but Imperialism. And on the question of Woman Suffrage these two schools come naturally and inevitably to opposite conclusions. To the upholder of class privilege it is a prime article of political faith that power should be given to pro- perty, hence it is but natural that he should favour the granting of the franchise to the propertied woman as well as to the pro- pertied man. Rank and wealth are to him the true tests by which the right to a share in the government should be determined. To emphasise class distinction by a partial removal of the sex distinction is a step entirely in accord with his philosophy. Imperialism and the Suffrage. But it is with the newer school, with the Imperialists, that the future of their party lies and for them opposition to woman suffrage is as inevitable as its support is in the long run to the Liberal Party. And of their views Lord Ourzon is perhaps the greatest effective exponent. The underlying principle of the Imperial- ist creed is this: that the people exist for the State, just as the underlying principle of modern Liberalism is that the State is the instrument by means of which the people who compose it express their will and strive to promote their welfare. The conflict of these two ideals runs through every contro- versy of the day: more and more it domi- nates our political life, and determines the attitude of parties towards each question as it arises. And the suffrage question, now that it has become a matter of practical importance, has very direct reference to this conflict, and must therefore take its place among those matters upon which opinion divides upon party lines not for any fac- titious reasons, but because those party lines are coincident with definite and divergent lines of thought. The Jingo cry. Consider for a moment the position of an Imperialist of the type of Lord Curzon, con- fronted with a proposal to enfranchise women —ultimately to enfranchise all women as well as all men. What are the questions which he asks himself ?-Not whether a State so constituted will be more representa- tive of its subjects; not whether it will be in a better position to understand the needs and to meet the wants of those subjects. It is rather this-How would the change affect the State as a unit in its rivalry with other similar units, for the relations of States are regarded by the Imperialist always as rivalries. Peace is a state of preparation for war; even commercial intercourse is regarded as hostile in its nature and intent. Clearly there will be no advantage gained. An addition to the electorate will in no way increase our power among the nations and to augment that power is the main purpose of politics. Turn, if you wish an example, to Lord Curzon's speech at the Hotel Cecil last year. Suppose," he said, that a large number of women were added to the register. I ask you this question: Would this country stand higher or would it stand lower in the estimation of foreign Powers ? Would that particular foreign Power which is supposed to send mysterious vessels at night to the mouth of the Humber and which is said to menace our roof-trees by strange nocturnal volitations of aerial fleets, feel it was any nearer to or any farther from the attainment of its alleged designs ? Would the hands of our Foreign Minister be strengthened or weakened in its strenuous and arduous duties which daily lie before him in his contact with representatives of foreign Powers ? Woman not fit for Empire. There is the whole thing. I pass by the discreditable attempt to make capital out of the particular scare which was exercising the imagination of the Tory Press at the moment. The point I wish to emphasise is this—Lord Curzon, thinking over the effects of the grant of the vote to women, pays not the least consideration to any matter of domestic politics. Whether England would be a better or a worse country for English- men or Englishwomen seems to have no interest whatever for him. He is only con- cerned to know whether the Empire will be stronger. That to the Imperialist is the beginning and the end of politics power, strength, dominion. If such be the purpose of the State, then, indeed, there can be no argument for the extension of the suffrage worth considering. A fuller democracy will not make us more powerful on the sea, will not give us added weight in the councils of Europe nor, indeed, does democracy at all strengthen us for this purpose. One may even grant that it weakens us; that for such functions as those which Lord Curzon has alone in mind, an efficient bureaucracy is far better adapted. If the purpose of the State is strife with its fellow States, a woman electorate is superfluous, possibly mis- chievous but so is any electorate. The Imperialist, to be consistent, should de- mocracy itself. But for the most part he is afraid. Lord Curzon is one of the few who has the courage of his convictions. He opposes the claim of the women to represen- tation, but he makes no secret of his dislike to representative government itself. And from his own point of view, which one feels sure is shared by Lord Cromer, he is right. The Imperialist ideal has no place for a feminine electorate—logically it has no place for an electorate at all. The dominant wing of the Unionist Party must oppose the feminist movement because ultimately that movement is based upon the ideals of democracy, which are diametrically opposed to those of Imperialism. Democracy demands it. For that reason, too, the Liberal Party, carrying out its own ideals, must in due course, come to a united support of the women's claim not of the claim of pro- perty, but of the claim of the woman as a citizen. The Liberal, which is the demo- cratic conception of the State, requires the enfranchisement of every sane adult citizen. The Imperialist conception has no need of a democratic organisation for its State. In so far as democracy is established it may be tolerated so long as it is duly controlled," but any further extension of democratic