Those who
succeed in obtaining power, no matter by what means, will, with rare
exceptions, use it for their exclusive benefit. Often, perhaps
generally, this is done in the honest belief that such use is for the
best good of all who are affected by it. A wrong, however, to those upon
whom it is inflicted, is none the less a wrong by reason of the good
motives of the party by whom it is inflicted.
The condition of subjection in which women have been held is the result
of this principle; the result of superior strength, not of superior
rights, on the part of men. Superior strength, combined with ignorance
and selfishness, but not with malice. It is a relic of the barbarism in
the shadow of which nations have grown up. Precisely as nations have
receded from barbarism the severity of that subjection has been relaxed.
So long as merely physical power governed in the affairs of the world,
the wrongs done to women were without the possibility of redress or
relief; but since nations have come to be governed by laws, there is
room to hope, though the process may still be a slow one, that injustice
in all its forms, or at least political injustice, may be extinguished.
No injustice can be greater than to deny to any class of citizens not
guilty of crime, all share in the political power of a state, that is,
all share in the choice of rulers, and in the making and administration
of the laws.
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