31. The Crowning Victory

It is my sincere hope that nothing I have here exhibited will be
mistaken by the nobility and gentry for moral indignation. No such
feeling, in truth, is in my heart. Moral judgments, as old Friedrich
used to say, are foreign to my nature. Setting aside the vast herd which
shows no definable character at all, it seems to me that the minority
distinguished by what is commonly regarded as an excess of sin is very
much more admirable than the minority distinguished by an excess of
virtue. My experience of the world has taught me that the average
wine-bibber is a far better fellow than the average prohibitionist, and
that the average rogue is better company than the average poor drudge,
and that the worst white, slave trader of my acquaintance is a decenter
man than the best vice crusader. In the same way I am convinced that
the average woman, whatever her deficiencies, is greatly superior to
the average man. The very ease with which she defies and swindles him
in several capital situations of life is the clearest of proofs of her
general superiority. She did not obtain her present high immunities as a
gift from the gods, but only after a long and often bitter fight, and
in that fight she exhibited forensic and tactical talents of a truly
admirable order. There was no weakness of man that she did not penetrate
and take advantage of. There was no trick that she did not put to
effective use. There was no device so bold and inordinate that it
daunted her.

The latest and greatest fruit of this feminine talent for combat is the
extension of the suffrage, now universal in the Protestant countries,
and even advancing in those of the Greek and Latin rites. This fruit
was garnered, not by an attack en masse, but by a mere foray. I believe
that the majority of women, for reasons that I shall presently expose,
were not eager for the extension, and regard it as of small value today.
They know that they can get what they want without going to the actual
polls for it; moreover, they are out of sympathy with most of the
brummagem reforms advocated by the professional suffragists, male and
female. The mere statement of the current suffragist platform, with
its long list of quack sure-cures for all the sorrows of the world, is
enough to make them smile sadly. In particular, they are sceptical
of all reforms that depend upon the mass action of immense numbers of
voters, large sections of whom are who