ABSTRACT
THE opponents of Women's Suffrage have by no means given up the battle, they have enlisted two new advocates in defence of female decornm -Mrs. Lynn Linton in the National Review against the concession of the franchise to women, and "Onida" in the North American Review. Mrs. Lynn Linton's line of argument has been already frequently commented upon. "Ouida" would disfranchise all women on the ground of inherent mental and moral incapacity, and she would, if she could, disfranchise all men but "the fittest." " Whether women voted or not would not change by a hair's breadth the existing, and to many thinkers the deplorable, fact, that under the present electoral system throughout the. world, the sage has no more electoral power than the dunce, that Plato's voice counts for no more than a fool's," and "H women be admitted at all to the exercise of the franchise, they must be admitted wholesale down to the lowest dregs of humanity as men are now admitted." A lady, according to "Ouida," must be indifferent to the vote for the reason that her coachman and footman have it. Her special objection to ·women, however, is·'' that they would construct their laws on purpose to make people virtuous whether they chose or not," and she tell8 .a,. tale of a dog-law passed in a state in America (where . because Pomeranian dogs were said to bite people, all · the Pomeranian dogs, to the number of about 2,000, were killed), to illustrate the kind of legislation which women would make in their moments of panic, "the disregard of individual rights, the injustice to innocent animals and their owners, the invasion of private property under the doctrinaire's plea of the general good, would all commend themselves to women in their hysterical hours, for women are mor~ tyrannical and more self-absorbed." (It is hard to see how an Act which, if
