achieved. Only vanity and folly would counsel amateurs to try to draw
up rules or laws for themselves.

Again, the woman suffragist takes it as a matter of course that she
would herself be able to construct a system of workable laws. In point
of fact, the framing of a really useful law is a question of divining
something which will apply to an infinite number of different cases
and individuals. It is an intellectual feat on a par with the framing
of a great generalisation. And would woman--that being of such short
sight, whose mind is always so taken up with whatever instances lie
nearest to her--be capable of framing anything that could pass muster
as a great generalisation?

Lastly, the suffragist fails to see that the function of framing the
laws is not an essential function of citizenship.

The essential functions of citizenship are the shaping of public
policy, and the control of the administrative Acts of Government.

Such directive control is in a state of political freedom exercised
through two quite different agencies.

It is exercised--and it is of the very essence of political freedom
that this should be the normal method of control--in the first place,
through expressed public opinion. By this are continuously regulated
not only momentous matters of State, such as declarations of war and
the introduction of constitutional changes, but also smaller and more
individual matters, such as the commutation of a capital sentence, or
the forcible feeding of militant suffragists.