Puslapio vaizdai
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that both should retain what they had captured up to date. According to a letter of de Lionne, Charles refused "Non qu'il ne souhaitat interieurement la paix, mais parcequ'il avait ses peuples à menager et qu'il voulait encore en tirer de l'argent sur la pretext de la declaration du roi."10 Meanwhile Holles had fallen foul of the French authorities about the transport of the "corpse", as he always calls his late wife; but at length he was able to set out, and on May 25/15 reached Rouen, whence he writes his last letter; on May 28 (O.S.) he arrived in Whitehall.

His credit does not seem to have suffered by the ill success of his embassy, for Clarendon recommended him to the King as a very suitable ambassador to the Peace conference at Breda in the following year; to which Charles replied that he was "very fit, and that he would think of no other." This angered Arlington, who had wished to go. Perhaps it was thought that the stiffness which had hindered his success as an ambassador would be no bad fault in a negotiator. At the Conference he did not do badly, though d'Estrades says that both he and his colleague, Henry Coventry, showed their inexperience: "Nous voyons bien qu'ils ont peu d'expérience en ces matières de traités."

The rest of Holles's long life may be read in the Dictionary of National Biography. He became the leader of the Puritan side of the Opposition, and was much respected even by his opponents, for his stainless probity in a venal age. His embassy at Paris is perhaps the least successful portion of his career, and shows rather his impracticability than his virtue. Yet even here, if often wrong-headed, he is never contemptible. He was honest, fearless and patriotic, and if his attempts to uphold the honour of England against the encroachments of France were pushed out of season as well as in season, if he showed sad lack of tact, and was often unable to discern when to press a quarrel and when to let it alone, he at least comes out of a trying situation with honour unsmirched; it is after all better to be punctilious than to be a pensioner. Holles was the former; it was reserved for his royal master to become the latter. W. L. GRANT.

10Quoted in Mignet: Négotiations relatives à la succession d'Espagne, i. 481.

SHOULD CANADIAN WOMEN HAVE THE PARLIA

MENTARY VOTE?

HATEVER opinion we may hold on the subject of this article, it is impossible to deny that it has become a live question now that women have been enfranchised in all the states of our sister Dominion of Australia, and in New Zealand, as well as in ten states of the Union, while in, at least, seven other states of the Union the cause is evidently far advanced on the road to victory. My present object is to deal with it in the way which appeals most strongly to my own mind, in the hope that others may be thereby induced to take the same view. I do not then intend to argue upon the basis of any supposed rights or wrongs,-the right of woman to be pars reipublicae as well as pars domus-her right to have a hand in the making of the laws which govern her;-the wrong of taxation without representation. Because when we get into the region of 'rights', we are on very debateable ground; and as Pilate asked, "What is truth?" so we, with just as much reason, may ask, "What is a right?" Nor again shall I refer to the 'militancy' of certain English suffragettes, except to observe that if their militant tactics are a good argument for denying the vote to the great body of respectable, law-abiding English women, abstinence from militant methods is, quantum valeat, an argument in favour of enfranchising Canadian women. I intend to place the matter entirely upon the ground of expediency, and, if in the result we favour votes for women, we shall, at least, be in harmony with the expressed opinions of men of the calibre of Lord Chancellor Haldane, Sir Edward Grey, Mr. Balfour, the late Lord Salisbury, the late George Meredith, and the present Bishop of Oxford. We shall have no reason to be ashamed of the company we shall find ourselves in.

To develop my argument I must first call attention to certain organizations of women in Canada, the objects they have in hand, the tendencies they show, the work they are doing, and the causes they are advocating. I refer, of course, to the National Council of Women in Canada, and the various affili

ated Local Councils which have been formed in practically all cities and towns of any importance in each province. Let us first see what are the basal objects of these organizations as expressed in their Constitutions. That of the National Council is thus expressed in the preamble:

"We, Women of Canada, sincerely believing that the best good of our homes and nation will be advanced by our own greater unity of thought, sympathy and purpose, and that an organized movement of Women will best conserve the highest good of the Family and the State, do hereby band ourselves together to further the application of the Golden Rule to society, custom, and law."

In like manner the fundamental objects of the Local Councils are thus expressed in the preamble of their Constitutions:

"Believing that the more intimate knowledge of one another's work will result in larger mutual sympathy and greater unity of thought, and, therefore, in more effective action, certain Associations of Women interested in philanthropy, religion, education, literature, art, and social reform have determined to organize Local Councils."

Now these organizations have been working persistently and patiently for many years-the National Council was founded 21 years ago, the Toronto Council, 19 years ago-but so far as their efforts have merely advanced the general cause of philanthropy and charity, and splendid as their record is in that respect, they are not relevant to my argument. I am not even concerned with the work they have done in the direction. of improving the government of cities or other municipalities. What is to my purpose is to indicate the nature of their efforts in the direction of general law reform: and for that purpose I shall refer only to their Reports for 1912. We there find the National Council of Women urging upon the Dominion parliament legislation raising the age of consent from 16 to 18, and for the more stringent suppression of the white slave traffic, and other provisions directed against the social evil, and for the protection of women; while the Local Councils are seeking from the provincial legislatures such reforms as the following: separate trials for women in the Police Courts to which the male outside public shall not be admitted; the compulsory

establishment of Juvenile Courts in all parts of the province; the introduction of a system of state pensions for the benefit of destitute minors who have lost their fathers, and whose mothers do not possess separate estate; the prohibition of employment after 8 p.m. of children under 14 years of age, in trades and conditions which are not covered by the Factory Acts applying to the employment of minors; that insane paupers and poor people shall not be admitted to jail whether accused of crimes or not, but shall be received in institutions where proper treatment can be extended to them; state provision for the aged and infirm poor of the province; that separate classes for defective children shall be made compulsory in connection with public schools; that medical inspection of school children shall be extended to the rural districts of Ontario, and be made compulsory.

Now here is a notable thing. Here is a class in the community, to wit, the women, who are willing to interest themselves in public affairs, with sustained energy and enthusiasm-not to gain anything for themselves, not with any axes of their own to grind, not even to gratify personal ambition, but in order to protect the ignorant, to support the weak, and to assist those who have no helper. The mother soul is strong in women. Men, if they are honest to the truth, must admit, especially in such a business community as we have in Canada, that the yare, almost all of them, absorbed (and very properly so, it may be) in their own businesses and professions-a few piling up wealth, the most well content if by strenuous toil they can keep the domestic pot boiling, and that they have not the surplus time or the surplus energy to search for and slay the hydra-headed brood of abuses ever lurking in secret places in the body politic; nor is this sort of thing good business for the practical party politician, or at least it doesn't seem so to him. It is mere matter of history that, even in England, where there are any number of men of leisure, it is only when some phenomenal man of abnormal sympathy and imagination comes to the front-a Howard, a Plimsoll, or a Lord Shaftesbury-and, perhaps the next generation will be willing to add, a Lloyd George, that legislative reforms of a purely altruistic and philanthropic character have found their way on to the Statute book.

But now see the irony of things. When these organized bodies of large-hearted women approach the Government of the day they have to do so in the character of suppliants, as though they were seeking some favour for themselves. When a deputation of men wait upon Ministers, the latter, whether they accede to their demands or not, have to assume the attitude of public servants, only anxious to give effect to the public will. To women, unsupported by male voters, Governments, even in this so-called democratic country, are autocrats and despots. Women have no more direct leverage against them than the Russian or Turkish peasant has-or had until very recently-against Czar or Sultan. Shall we not give them at least the leverage of the vote of themselves, and such of their sister women as they can carry with them in support of their platform?

But my subtle and ingenious critic will immediately say: 'Because a few women are active in pursuing these altruistic efforts for reforms-most, or all of which we are bound to say, we cordially support-is that any reason for such a revolutionary proceeding as to give votes to women in general on the same terms as man?'

Let me, then, fairly face this fearful prospect. First, in its private aspect, we are told that to give women the vote will cause serious deterioration in the female character and destroy domestic happiness. I am convinced that the spirit of Use and Wont never conjured up a more absurd bogey to block the path of progress. How far is the character of the ordinary man affected by the right he possesses to put a piece of paper in a ballot box every few years? How innumerable are the men who very seldom exercise this right though they do possess it; and who never dream of attending public meetings, or taking any part whatever in active politics? And if this is so with men, it will assuredly be still more the case with women. We may depend upon it, after women have the vote, both parties to the marriage contract will in the great majority of cases feel so little interest one way or the other in public affairs that domestic felicity will continue to find destruction through the usual channels.

But many men talk as if the immediate effect of women having the parliamentary vote would be that all men would at

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