Part 15 (2/2)
MRS. WARD AND THE SUFFRAGE QUESTION
Mrs. Ward, as is well known, did not believe in Women's Suffrage. She had heard the subject discussed from her earliest days at Oxford, ever since the time when the first Women's Pet.i.tion for the vote was brought to the House of Commons by Miss Garrett and Miss Emily Davies in 1866, and John Stuart Mill moved his amendment to the Reform Bill of 1867. But it did not greatly interest her. Her mind was set in other directions, responding to the intellectual stimulus of Oxford rather in the field of historical and religious inquiry and leading her on, as we have seen, to her memorable ”revolt from awe” in the matter of the Interpretation of the Scriptures. Her group of friends at Oxford were hardly touched by the Suffrage agitation; the movement for the Higher Education of Women, in which Mrs. Ward bore so distinguished a part, was wholly unconnected with it. Indeed it was the very success of this movement that helped to convince Mrs. Ward that the right lines for women's advance lay, not in the political agitation for the Suffrage, but in the broadening of education, so as to fit her s.e.x for the many tasks which were opening out before it. But she had also an inborn dislike and distaste for the type of agitation which, even in those early days, the Suffragists carried on; for the ”anti-Man” feeling that ran through it, and for the type of woman--the ”New Woman” as she was called in the eighties--who gravitated towards its ranks. Her scholarly mind rejected many of the Suffragist arguments as shallow and unproven, especially those which concerned the economic condition of women, while the practical co-operation between men and women that she saw all round her, both in Oxford and afterwards in London, gave her the conviction that the remaining disabilities of women might and would be removed in due course by this road, rather than by a political turmoil which would only serve to embitter the relations between them. In her eyes women were neither better nor worse than men, but different; so different that neither they nor the State would really be served by this attempt to press them into a political machine which owed its development solely to the male s.e.x.
In later years she had many close friends in the Suffrage camp, nor did she ever lose those of her earlier days who were converted, but to the end there remained a profound antipathy between her and the ”feminist”
type of mind, with its crudities and extravagances--the type that was to manifest itself so disastrously in later years among the ”Suffragettes.”
It was not that she wished her s.e.x to remain aloof from the toil and dust of the world, as her Positivist friends would have liked; rather she felt it to be the duty of all educated women to work themselves to the bone for the uplifting of women and children less fortunate than themselves, and so to repay their debt to the community; but clamour for their own ”rights” was a different thing: ugly in itself, and likely to lead, in her opinion, to a s.e.x-war of very dubious outcome.
The first time that Mrs. Ward was drawn into the battle of the Suffrage was on the occasion, early in 1889, of Lord Salisbury's much-trumpeted conversion to it, when a Private Member's Bill[30] of the usual limited type was before Parliament, and the Prime Minister's att.i.tude appeared to make it probable that the Bill might pa.s.s. Mrs. Creighton--then also opposed to the Suffrage, though on somewhat different grounds from Mrs.
Ward's--Mr. Frederic Harrison, Mr. Knowles, and Mrs. Ward united in organizing a movement of protest. It was decided at a meeting held at Mr. Harrison's house in May that the signatures of women eminent in the world of education, literature and public service should be invited to a ”Protest against the extension of the Parliamentary Franchise to Women,”
which Mrs. Ward had drawn up (with some a.s.sistance from Mrs. Creighton), and which Mr. Knowles undertook to publish in the next month's _Nineteenth Century_.
The arguments advanced in this _Protest_ are interesting as showing the position from which Mrs. Ward hardly moved in the next thirty years, though many of her original allies who signed it fell away and joined the Suffrage camp. There is first the emphasis on the essentially different functions of men and women:
”While desiring the fullest possible development of the powers, energies and education of women, we believe that their work for the State, and their responsibilities towards it, must always differ essentially from those of men, and that therefore their share in the working of the State machinery should be different from that a.s.signed to men.” Women can never share in such labours as ”the working of the Army and Navy, all the heavy, laborious, fundamental industries of the State, such as those of mines, metals and railways, the management of commerce and finance, the service of that merchant fleet on which our food supply depends.... Therefore it is not just to give to women direct power of deciding questions of Parliamentary policy, of war, of foreign or colonial affairs, of commerce and finance equal to that possessed by men. We hold that they already possess an influence on political matters fully proportioned to the possible share of women in the political activities of England.”
At the same time the recent extensions of women's responsibilities, such as their admission to the munic.i.p.al vote and to members.h.i.+p of School Boards, Boards of Guardians, etc., is warmly welcomed, ”since here it is possible for them not only to decide but to help in carrying out, and judgment is therefore weighted by a true responsibility.” Then comes a denial of any widespread demand among women themselves for the franchise, ”as is always the case if a grievance is real and reform necessary,” and finally an argument on which Mrs. Ward continued to lay much stress in after years, that of the steady removal of the reasonable grievances of women by the existing machinery of a male Parliament.
”It is often urged that certain injustices of the law towards women would be easily and quickly remedied were the political power of the vote conceded to them; and that there are many wants, especially among working women, which are now neglected, but which the suffrage would enable them to press on public attention. We reply that during the past half-century all the princ.i.p.al injustices of the law towards women have been amended by means of the existing const.i.tutional machinery; and with regard to those that remain, we see no signs of any unwillingness on the part of Parliament to deal with them. On the contrary, we remark a growing sensitiveness to the claims of women, and the rise of a new spirit of justice and sympathy among men, answering to those advances made by women in education, and the best kind of social influence, which we have already noticed and welcomed. With regard to the business or trade interests of women--here, again, we think it safer and wiser to trust to organization and self-help on their own part, and to the growth of a better public opinion among the men workers, than to the exercise of a political right which may easily bring women into direct and hasty conflict with men.”
This feeling was evidently uppermost in her thoughts at that time, for she wrote as early as January, 1889, to her sister-in-law, Miss Agnes Ward:
”What _are_ these tremendous grievances women are still labouring under, and for which the present Parliament is not likely to give them redress? I believe in them as little as I believe now in the grievances of the Irish tenant. There _were_ grievances, but by the action of the parties concerned and their friends under the existing system they have been practically removed. No doubt much might be done to improve the condition of certain cla.s.ses of women, just as much might be done for that of certain cla.s.ses of men, but the world is indefinitely improveable, and I believe there is little more chance of quickening the pace--wisely--with women's suffrage than without it.... There is a great deal of championing of women's suffrage going on which is not really serious. Mr.
Haldane, a Gladstonian member, said to me the other day, 'Oh, I shall vote for it of course!--with this amendment, that it be extended to married women, and in the intention of leading through it to manhood suffrage.' But if many people treat it from this point of view and avow it, the struggle is likely to be a good deal hotter and tougher before we have done with it than it has ever been yet.
”I should like to know John Morley's mind on the matter. He began as an enthusiast and has now decided strongly against. So have several other people whose opinion means a good deal to me. And as to women, whether their lives have been hard or soft, I imagine that when the danger _really_ comes, we shall be able to raise a protest which will be a surprise to the other side.”
In spite of the fact that the organizers of the _Protest_ were handicapped by the natural reluctance of many of their warmest supporters to take part in what seemed to them a ”political agitation,”
and so to let their names appear in print,[31] they worked to such purpose during the ten days that elapsed between the meeting at Mr.
Frederic Harrison's house and the going to press of the _Nineteenth Century_ that 104 signatures were secured. They were regarded by their contemporaries as the signatures either of ”eminent women” or of ”superior persons,” according to the bias of those who contemplated the list. Posterity may be interested to know that they included such future supporters of the Suffrage as Miss Beatrice Potter (Mrs. Sidney Webb), Mrs. Creighton and Mrs. T. H. Green, while among women distinguished either through their own work or their husbands' in many fields occur the names of Mrs. Goschen, Lady Stanley of Alderley, Lady Frederick Cavendish, Mrs. T. H. Huxley, Mrs. J. R. Green, Mrs. Max Muller, Mrs. W.
E. Forster, and Mrs. Arnold Toynbee.
Naturally the _Protest_ drew the Suffrage forces into the field. The July number of the _Nineteenth Century_ contained two ”Replies,” from Mrs. Fawcett and Mrs. Ashton Dilke, to which Mrs. Creighton in her turn supplied a ”Rejoinder.” Meanwhile a form of signature to the _Protest_ had been circulated with the Review, and was supplied in large numbers on demand, so that in the August number Mr. Knowles was enabled to print twenty-seven pages of signatures to the statement that ”The enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of women would be a measure distasteful to the great majority of women of the country--unnecessary--and mischievous both to themselves and to the State.” Mrs. Creighton's ”Rejoinder” was regarded on the Anti-Suffrage side as a dignified and worthy close to the discussion. ”The question has been laid to rest,” wrote Mr. Harrison to her, ”for this generation, I feel sure.” Nearly thirty years were indeed to pa.s.s before the question was ”laid to rest,” though in a different sense from Mr. Harrison's.
During the earlier part of that long period Mrs. Ward concerned herself no further, in any public capacity, with the task of opposing the Suffrage forces. Her own opinions were known and respected by her friends of whatever party, while her growing interest in and knowledge of social questions gave her an ever-increasing right to advocate them.
At Grosvenor Place the talk at luncheon or dinner-table would often play round the dread subject in the freest manner, with a frequent appeal, in those happy days, to ridicule as the deciding factor. Mrs. Ward was particularly pleased with a dictum of John Morley's, ”For Heaven's sake, don't let us be the first to make ourselves ridiculous in the eyes of Europe!” which I remember hearing her quote from time to time; but on this subject, as on all others, the atmosphere of the house was one of liberty to all comers to air and express their opinions. Most of her own family were of the Suffrage persuasion, especially her two sisters, Julia and Ethel, but her children followed her lead--save one who, being a member of a youthful debating society where the wisdom of nineteen ran riot in speech and counter-speech, was told off one day to get up the arguments in favour of Women's Suffrage and to open the debate; she got them up with the energy of that terrible age, and remained a convert ever afterwards.
The question, in fact, did not enter the region of practical politics until the advent to power of the Liberal Government in December, 1905.
It was on the occasion of Campbell-Bannerman's great meeting at the Albert Hall, before the election, that the portent of the Suffragette first manifested itself in the form of a young woman who put inconvenient questions to ”C.-B.,” in a strident voice, from the orchestra, and was unmercifully hustled out by indignant stewards. It was the beginning of eight years of tribulation. Mrs. Ward watched through 1906 and 1907 the growing violences of these women with mingled horror and satisfaction: horror at the unloveliness of their proceedings and satisfaction at the feeling that an outraged public would never yield to such clamour what they had refused to yield to argument. She did not yet know the uses of democracy. But the const.i.tutional agitation was also making way during these years, especially since it was known that Campbell-Bannerman himself was a Suffragist, and even after his death Mr. Asquith announced to a deputation of Liberal M.P.'s, in May, 1908, that if when the Government's proposed Reform Bill was introduced, an amendment for the extension of the franchise to women on democratic lines were moved to it, his Government as a Government would not oppose such an amendment.
This announcement brought Women's Suffrage very definitely within the bounds of practical politics, so that those who believed that the change would be disastrous felt bound to exert themselves in rallying the forces of opposition. Mrs. Ward had hardly returned from America before Lord Cromer and other prominent Anti-Suffragists approached her with regard to the starting of a society pledged to oppose the movement. They knew well enough that no such counter-movement had any chance of success without her active support, and they shrewdly augured that, once captured, she would become the life and soul of it. Mrs. Ward groaned but acquiesced, and thus in July of this year (1908) was born the ”Women's National Anti-Suffrage League,” inaugurated at a meeting held at the Westminster Palace Hotel on July 21.
In the long struggle that now opened it is easy to see that Mrs. Ward was not really at her ease in conducting a movement of mere opposition and denial. She did not enjoy it as she enjoyed her battles with the L.C.C. for the pus.h.i.+ng forward of her schemes for the children, yet she felt that it was ”laid upon her” and that there was no escape. ”As Gertrude says, it is all fiendish, but we feel we must do it,” she wrote after the inaugural meeting; but this feeling explains her imperative desire to give a positive side to the movement by dwelling on the great need for women's work on local bodies--a line of argument which was mistrusted by many of her male supporters, one of whom, Lord James of Hereford, had spoken pa.s.sionately in the House of Lords against the Act of 1907 for enabling women to sit on County or Borough Councils. But Mrs. Ward had her way, so that when the programme of the Anti-Suffrage League came out it was found to contain twin ”Objects”:
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