Autocratic Russia and its Asiatic colonies have more woman suffrage than England. Finland, a constitutional monarchy, was ceded to the Emperor of Russia in 1809. Women there have all except the parliamentary suffrage. The Governor-General of the Senate is nominated by the Emperor, and is chief of the military force. The National Assembly is convoked by the Emperor whenever he sees fit. The duties of that Assembly are to consider laws proposed by the Emperor and elaborated by the Committee of Affairs and four members nominated by the Emperor, who sit in St. Petersburg. The Emperor has the veto power over any act of theirs. That National Assembly consists of representatives of the nobility, the clergy, the burghers, and the peasantry, the consent of all of whom must be obtained to any measure that makes a change in the constitution or imposes taxes. But the royal veto can set aside any decision.
Iceland, a dependency of Denmark, has municipal woman suffrage, and women are eligible to municipal office. It has its own legislature, which governs jointly with the King, the executive power being in the hands of the King alone.
In the great extensions of suffrage in England in 1848, an amendment for the extension of suffrage to women was introduced in Parliament by Mr. Disraeli. Lord Northcote, Lord John Manners, and other conservatives, upheld it; but the liberal leaders opposed it, Gladstone and John Bright among them. John Blight's family were strenuous for the movement, and he had fancied himself its friend until the issue came; then the old champion of freedom, proved true to the instinct that guards it in the nation. In the constantly increasing liberty of the lower classes of England, an essential principle which excludes women from the parliamentary vote has been maintained. Lady Spencer Churchill and other Suffrage leaders look to Viscount Templeton and Lord Salisbury for support to-day.
A woman-suffrage bill of many years' standing and absurd provisions, has just passed to a second reading in the House of Commons. Although it was treated as a joke by all parties, it served to emphasize the fact that Sir Vernon Harcourt and the Liberals are opposed to any advance in this direction.
In the late extension of suffrage in Canada, the movement for woman suffrage had conservative support, while every liberal leader opposed it. No South American Republic has woman suffrage. With the deposition of Liliuokalani, woman's directs political power in the Hawaiian Islands died. In France only the Anarchists "admit women" to public council, and that party in Germany has here and there inscribed woman suffrage upon its banners.
Not only England, Scotland and Wales, but Canada, definitely excepts the vote for members of parliament in giving suffrage to woman, and only widows and spinsters are admitted to the minor forms of franchise. As to the other British colonies, what is the situation? Much stress has been laid on what has been termed the progress of the Suffrage movement in Australasia. There is but one Australian colony in which the legislative assembly is elected; in the others it is appointed for life, or for short terms. Where it is thus appointed, women vote on various matters. In Victoria, which contains the capital city, Melbourne, and which is the most progressive and democratic colony in Australia, the Legislative Assembly is elected, and that body is chosen by unrestricted male suffrage only, while, as with the House of Commons in the mother country, clergymen are not allowed to sit in it. In West Australia, the newest colony, the voting is done by men alone. In Cape Colony women have restricted municipal suffrage; but the Assembly is elected by the vote of men who own a certain amount of property.
In the Orange Free State every adult white male is a full burgher, having a vote for the President, who is chosen for five years. The Transvaal Republic has no woman suffrage amid its hand-to-hand struggles.
To comprehend the condition of European governmental affairs, one must follow the condition of things produced by the struggle of socialistic and anarchistic elements. Between the King on the one hand, and these forces on the other, the true Liberal parties are slowly progressing toward free institutions; both aristocratic and anarchistic movements being more favorable than liberalism to woman-suffrage aspirations.
The countries where woman has full suffrage (save in the United States) are all dependencies of royalty. They are: The Isle of Man, Pitcairn's Island, New Zealand, and South Australia. The most important of these, New Zealand, was once a promising colony, but it has been declining for a quarter of a century. The men outnumber the women by forty thousand. The act conferring the parliamentary franchise on both European and Maori women received the royal sanction in 1892. At the session of Parliament that passed the act a tax was put upon incomes and one upon land, so that a desperate civilization seemed to be trying all the experiments at once. Certainly, woman suffrage in New Zealand was not adopted because the Government was so stable, so strong, so democratic, that these conditions must thus find fit expression. [Footnote: The Australasian colonies are taking steps toward the formation of a Federal Union. While this book is in press news comes that the Federal Convention, by a vote of 23 to 12, has refused to allow women to vote for members of the House of Representatives.]
South Australia not only gives women full suffrage, but makes them eligible to a seat in Parliament. The colony is a vast, mountainous, largely unsettled region, with a high proportion of native and Chinese, and, in 1894, had but 73,000 voters, including the women. The Socialistic Labor movement, which has played a large part in Australasian politics, here succeeded in dominating the government. There was an attempt to establish communistic villages with public money, a proposal to divide the public money pro rata, and one to build up a system of state life- insurance; and taxes were to be levied on salaries, and on all incomes above a certain point. It was found that the sixty thousand women who were authorized to vote throughout Australia assisted the socialistic schemes that are hindering progress and that tend to anarchy and not to republicanism. There is a royal Governor, and suffrage is based on household and property qualifications. It is an aristocratic and social combination, not a triumph of democratic ideas or principles. Dr. Jacobi, in her "Common Sense applied to Woman Suffrage," says: "The refusal to extend parliamentary suffrage to women who are possessed of municipal suffrage, does not mean, as Americans are apt to suppose, that women are counted able to judge about the small concerns of a town, but not about imperial issues. It means that women are still not counted able to exercise independent judgment at all, and, therefore, are to remain counted out when this is called for; but that the property to which they happen to belong, and which requires representation, must not be deprived of this on account of an entangling female alliance. This is the very antipodes of the democratic doctrine, perhaps also somewhat excessive, that a man requires representation so much that he must not be deprived of it on account of the accident of not being able to read or write!"
With Dr. Jacobi's interpretation, I will deal later. What I wish now to do is, to call attention to her admission of the fact that woman suffrage in England and in her colonies is not democratic, and to connect it with the other fact that no republic, from that of Greece to our own, has introduced it, although manhood suffrage has been universal in Switzerland for many years, and in France since 1848.
So it would seem that under a monarchical system, with a standing army and a hereditary nobility to support the throne, the royal mandate could be issued by a woman. Any Queen, as well as the one that Alice met in Wonderland, could say, "Off with his head!" But when freedom grew, and the democratic idea began to prevail, and each individual man became a king, and each home a castle, the law given by God and not by man came into exercise, and upon each man was laid the duty of defending liberty and those who were physically unfitted to defend themselves.
Let us turn now to our own country. Technically, at least, women possessed the suffrage in our first settlements. In New England, in the early days, when church-membership as the basis of the franchise excluded three- fourths of the male inhabitants from its exercise, women could vote. Under the old Provincial charters, from 1691 to 1780, they could vote for all elective offices. From 1780 to 1785, under the Articles of Confederation, they could vote for all elective offices except the Governor, the Council, and the Legislature. The comment made upon this by the Suffrage writers is, that "the fact that woman exercised the right of suffrage amid so many restrictions, is very significant of the belief