A Translation of Condorcet’s Essay “Sur l’admission
des femmes au droit de Cité” (On the Admission
of Women to the Rights of Citizenship).
—Collected Writings, 1789.
(WITH PREFACE AND REMARKS.)
LETCHWORTH:
GARDEN CITY PRESS LIMITED.
Price Twopence.
More than one hundred years have passed awaysince, in 1789, the Marquis de Condorcet wrotehis “Esquisse sur l’Admission des Femmes auDroit de Cité,” and yet the problem of women’senfranchisement still awaits an equitable solution.Those of us who are old enough to remember theinauguration of the popular movement for theextension of the franchise to women (which maybe dated from the day in which our late nobleleader, John Stuart Mill, addressed the Houseof Commons on this subject, in May, 1867), feelthat our lives are passing away while wearilyawaiting the dilatory educational development ofmankind in this question.
The essential principles of our claim have beenreiterated again and again. We form one-halfof the human race, and need recognition by thelaw as much as the other half of the race. But,as long as our law-makers are not directly responsibleto us for their conduct in Parliament, theymay, and do, safely neglect our interests, andpass laws which jeopardise our liberties and subordinateour just rights of person, property, andoffspring to the supposed interests of the menwhom they represent.
The spirit which animates Parliament pervadesthe whole of our social life; and women sufferfrom lack of educational facilities, and fromobstacles to success in industrial and professionallife, in ways which have no parallel in the caseof men. All these things have been urged againand again until we are weary of repeating them;and we ask ourselves, as we mentally review ourposition, Where shall we find some new argumentwherewith to arrest the attention, and compel theaction, of those who have the power, but seem tolack the will, to do justice? It is curious to notethat the great point on which the mass of menseem united is their sex. Prejudices of race, ofcaste, of colour may be overcome; but the prideof sex remains. Rights of citizenship are[4]accorded to the small shopkeeper, artisan, lodger,agricultural labourer, and to the illiterate whoknows no difference between one party and theother, either as to tendencies or methods ofgovernment. The Anglo-Saxon confers rights ofcitizenship upon the foreigner, upon the negro(as in the United States), upon the Maori (as inNew Zealand)—the last of whom, sitting in theNew Zealand House of Representatives, helpedto maintain this glorious prerogative of sex bygiving their casting-votes against a measure intendedto meet the claims of the Anglo-Saxonwomen in New Zealand.[1]
And all this despite the admitted fact that thesocial and economic problems, which are comingmore and more into the field of parliamentarylabours, are all but incapable of solution withoutthe help of enfranchised women.
Must women, then, following the example ofmen, learn to put sex in the first place and regardall other interests as secondary? Is this reallywhat men wish to force women to do? Onewould think not. At present wo