November 19, 1911 To the Editor of The Sunday Times and November 26, 1911, To the

Editor of The Sunday Times

These two letters represent Davison’s frustration at the notion of the primacy of the male

sex in the political realm. In the first she repeats her previous charge against Asquith that

he has drawn a line between the citizen who is of full age and competent understanding and

all women. Asquith made it clear that women were not included in the concept of citizen.

The Liberal anxiety that women would vote Conservative, or, would vote as their husbands

tell them to appears in the reference to Asquith’s contention that a man “ought not to be

entitled to more than one” vote. But the second paragraph of the first letter, typical of

Davison’s arguments, goes more fully to the issue as she sees it. A transition at the end of the

first paragraph asserts that to be opposed to woman suffrage means that one accepts the

notion that women are not fully human. Such thinking is evidence of a radically dangerous

political situation, a tyranny of autocracy in which the male sex is “the” ruler, and because

this “autocrat” is an entire sex–a large number of people, unlike a single autocrat–it cannot

be swayed. Such “glorification of the male” threatens the stability of the British state. Citing

New Zealand, which granted women suffrage in 1893, and Australia, which granted women

suffrage in 1894, as examples of progressive nations whose democracy is real, she invokes

Abraham Lincoln’s concluding words in his Gettysburg Address delivered at the dedication of

the Union Cemetery created at the site of the Gettysburg battlefield, site of a signal victory for

the Union and for the principle that the American government is “of the people, by the people,

and for the people.”

In the second letter Davison acknowledges that she may have misinterpreted Mr.

Mullins’ intent in pointing out that the vote, when not valued, can lead to disastrous

consequences. In citing the examples of a string of American cities, Mullins provides Davison

with an excellent opportunity to point out that the corruption and political chicanery he

instances occurs in cities where women do not have the vote. She concludes with pointing

out that the male voters of San Francisco, whose politics were notoriously corrupt in the early

twentieth century, voted against woman suffrage, but were overcome by the votes of men

outside the city, a victory for woman suffrage and a victory over corruption.

November 19, 1911, To the Editor of The Sunday Times

Sir, will you allow me to point out that the letter from your correspondent, C.F. Mullins,

which you head ‘Universal Suffrage,’ and which encourages the heading by the use of the

term in the letter, is a contradiction in terms? Universal Suffrage, of course, means or

should mean that every woman as well as every man of adult age should have a vote or

voice in the State, and that thus the doctrine of Government by consent of the governed

should be fulfilled. That Mr. Mullins does not mean this is clear from his description of the

present Government proposition as one ‘to give a vote to every male aged twenty-one and

upwards,’ and his further statement that ‘a long experience as resident in a country where

Universal Suffrage exists has taught me that a large proportion of people value at nothing

a vote that costs them nothing and they part with it freely for reasons often based upon

anything but their country’s good.’ Such a statement as this, taken in conjunction with Mr.

Asquith’s own words, as to what constitutes a citizen, shows clearly that these spurious

democrats simply do not include the word ‘woman’ in that of citizen. Mr. Asquith said on

November 7, as on February 8, that ‘a man’s right to vote depends on his being a citizen,

and, prima facie, a man who is a citizen of full age and competent understanding ought to

be entitled to a vote, but he ought not to be entitled to more than one.’ He then proceeded

to assert that in his opinion the term ‘man’ did not include ‘woman.’ In plain English Mr.

Asquith asserted that women could not be citizens or of competent understanding. It is the

old reassertion of the Anti-that women are not ‘people’ or ‘human’ but of some lower order

or ‘sub-human.’

This consideration leads me to see the damaging fallacy which takes all value from

Mr. Asquith’s or Mr. Mullins’s definition of democracy. They are not democrats at all, but

demagogues, and as such far more dangerous upholders of tyranny than any unscrupulous

autocrat. The autocracy of sex is far worse than the autocracy of a single person. For one

single person can be influenced or driven, but a sex cannot. It would create too abstract a

danger to overcome. The ‘glorification of the male’ (as Miss Pankhurst expressed it) can

only end in disaster for the nation and the women. And there lies the explanation of the

failure of ‘Universal Suffrage’ (sic !) in other countries, which Mr. Mullins deplores.

There is ample justification in this theory in the genuinely Universal Suffrage of New

Zealand and Australia. Compare the genuinely progressive state of those commonwealths

with the still spurious Republic of the United States, or even with that of France. These

latter fail because they are not genuine Republics, countries where the public welfare is the

desideratum. Why? Because one half of the Republic is excluded from direct participation

in public affairs, and as a result there is no voice ‘of the people, by the people, and for the

people,’ which ‘people,’ however much Mr. Asquith and his like may deny it, consists of

women as well as of men.—

Yours, etc.,

EMILY WILDING DAVISON

31 Coram-Street, W.C., November 16 [1911]