the past. It has been evolved precedent, by precedent, by the
decisions of generation upon generation of judges, and it has for
centuries been purged by amending statutes. Moreover we, the present
male electors--the electors who are savagely attacked by the
suffragist for our asserted iniquities in connexion with the laws
which regulate sexual relations--have never in our capacity as
electors had any power to alter an old, or to suggest a new law;
except only in so far as by voting Conservative or Liberal we may
indirectly have remotely influenced the general trend of legislation.

"Well but"--the suffragist will here rejoin--"is it not at any rate
true that in the drafting of statutes and the framing of judicial
decisions man has always nefariously discriminated against woman?"

The question really supplies its own answer. It will be obvious to
every one who considers that the drafting of statutes and the
formulating of legal decisions is almost as impersonal a procedure as
that of drawing up the rules to govern a game; and it offers hardly
more opportunity for discriminating between man and woman.

There are, however, three questions in connexion with which the law
can and does make a distinction between man and woman.

The _first_ is that of sexual relations: rape, divorce, bastardy, and
the age of consent. In connexion with _rape_, it has never been
alleged that the law is not sufficiently severe. It is, or has been,
under colonial conditions, severe up to the point of ferocity. In the
matter of _divorce_ the law of a minority of man-governed States
differentiates in favour of man. It does so influenced by tradition,
by what are held to be the natural equities, and by the fact that a