prejudices, it would be a mind which had learned absolutely nothing
from experience.

But I hear the reader interpose, "Is there not a grave danger that
generalisations may be erroneous?"

And I can hear the woman suffragist interject, "Is there not a grave
danger that unflattering generalisations about woman may be
erroneous?"

The answer to the general question is that there is of course always
the risk that our generalisations may be erroneous. But when a
generalisation finds wide acceptance among the thoughtful, we have
come as close to truth as it is possible for humanity to come.

To the question put by the suffragist the reply is that experience
with regard to the capacity of woman has been accumulating in all
climes, and through all times; and that the belief of men in the
inherent inferiority of women in the matter of intellectual morality,
and in the power of adjudication, has never varied.

I pass now to the two most familiar grievances of the suffragist; the
grievance that the virtuous and intelligent woman has no vote, while
the male drunkard has; and the grievance that the woman of property
has no vote, while her male underlings have.

All that is worth while saying on these points is that the suffragist
is here manufacturing grievances for herself, _first_, by reasoning
from the false premiss that every legal distinction which happens to
press hardly upon a few individuals ought for that to be abrogated;