to elevate the
standard of the representative both for ability and manly
character. Macaulay in one of his speeches on the Reform bill
refers to the quality of the men who had for half a century been
members for the five most numerous constituencies in
England--Westminster, Southwark, Liverpool, Bristol and Norwich.
Among them were Burke, Fox, Sheridan, Romilly, Windham, Tierney,
Canning, Huskisson. Eight of the nine greatest men who had sat in
parliament for forty years sat for the five largest represented
towns. To increase the numbers of constituencies diminishes the
opportunity for corruption. Size is itself a conservative force
in a republic. As a permanent general rule the people will desire
their own best interest. Disturbing forces, evil and selfish
passions, personal ambitions, are necessarily restricted in their
operation. The larger the field of operation, the more likely are
such influences to neutralize each other.

The objection of inexperience in public affairs applies, of
course, alike to every voter when he first votes. If it be valid,
it would have prevented any extension of the suffrage, and would
exclude from the franchise a very large number of masculine
voters of all ages.

That women are quite generally dependent on the other sex is
true. So it is true that men are quite generally dependent on the
other sex. It is impossible so to measure this dependence as to
declare that man is more dependent on woman or woman upon man. It
is by no means true that the dependence of either on the other
affects the right to the suffrage.

Capacity for military duty has no connection with capacity for
suffrage. The former is wholly physical. It will scarcely be
proposed to disfranchise men who are unfit to be soldiers by
reason of age or bodily infirmity. The suggestion that the
country may be plunged into wars by a majority of women who are
secure from military dangers is not founded in experience. Men of
the military profession, and men of the military age are commonly
quite as eager for war as non-combatants, and will hereafter be
quite as indifferent to its risks and hardships as their mothers
and wives.

The argument that women are without the power to enforce the laws
which their numerical strength may enable them to