Other formats

    Adobe Portable Document Format file (facsimile images)   TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 74

V

V.

The proposal to introduce women into the Legislative Council is an insult to Parliament and to womanhood.

We are sure we are only giving expression to the thought of [unclear: all] intelligent people in the Colony when we say that the proposal [unclear: to] lift women into the Legislative Council, when it was first suggested, was taken to be a joke, a poor, silly joke, which half-disguised what was meant to be an insult to that branch of the Legislature. If the early supporters of this proposal had simply contended that Parliment should be opened equally to men and to women, the rest of us in time might have accustomed ourselves to its wildness and [unclear: ludi]crousness, and have come to treat it with some degree of seriousness and respect. But when it comes to us in its present shape, that women should be raised into the elevated condition of being members of the Upper House, the proposal is instinctively and instantaneously felt to be an insult both to the Upper House and to Womanhood. It is a mean insult to the Members of the Upper House, for it proclaims them to be old wives and the fitting associates of old wives. It is a coarse insult to women in general, for it is an emphatic declaration that, though they might do for our House of Lords, they are too low, too vulgar, too ignorant to keep company with Messrs Seddon and Reeves and Ward, and the representative items who follow them like sheep.

Those who have any full and correct knowledge of the doing of our Parliament know what a big debt of gratitude we owe to the Legislative Council. Were it not for our Honourable Councillors the stupid and contradictory bills passed by the Lower House would long ere now have made New Zealand the laughing-stock of the world. Our elected representatives, in wooing the sweet voices of the constituencies, often make promises and pledges, which, as they afterwards find, would ruin their reputation as politicians and seriously damage the Colony. These representatives, falsely true, keep their promises and vote accordingly, knowing the mischievousness of their vote, but knowing at the same time that the Councillors, better and braver men than themselves, will save the Colony from damage by rejecting these measures, and thereby incurring considerable popular odium. The chosen of the People who can thus page 11 [unclear: dirk] their duty and equivocate with their consciences, and maintain [unclear: their] contemptible popularity by throwing responsibility and blame [unclear: are] those who are infinitely worthier than themselves—if these representatives of the people were photographed by X Ray process, there would he found the six capital letters Coward written upon their white livers.

By faithfully discharging their duties to the country, by rectifying the mistakes and blunders committed by the elect of universal [unclear: suffrage], by protecting liberty and property, by modifying and remedying the infatuation and fads of the passing hour, Upper Chambers are everywhere unpopular. What a howling there was a year or two ago in the United Kingdom against the House of Lords for preserving the union and the integrity of the Empire! And in France the other day there was an amount of sacre-bleu-ing against the Upper Chamber there sufficient to sink the biggest warship in the navy. When a class or an institution is unpopular, how easy and natural is it for a certain kind of people to give it a kick in the by-going. The Premier and his adhesive items are continually adminiserting kicks of this character to the Council. And we have only to recall to mind certain recent communications which passed betweeen the Premier and His Excellency the Governor about new Labour Members being hoisted up into the Council, and the wisdom and courage lately displayed by Council in modifying or rejecting some very objectionable Bills—we have only to recall such matters to be convinced that the threat to introduce women into the Higher Chamber can scarcely be regarded in any other light than an insult, a proclamation that the Councillors are old wives, and fit only to associate with old wives.

The proposal is equally insulting to women. The proposal, we repeat, amounts to this, that women are fit and proper persons to be members of the Upper House, but not to be members of the Lower House. Why should there be drawn such a line of demarcation as this? Why shut against women the door of the House of Representatives, while you open wide to them the door of the Legislative Council? The only possible reason for making such a distinction must be that women are qualified for the one place, and not for the other; that they are fit to keep company with such antiquated fogeys as our Councillors, but not with the People's Own Elect Representatives. Hitherto it has been generally believed that the duties of an Upper House were as important, and as onerous, and as honourable as those which devolved upon the Lower. Our Councillors, as has page 12 already been said, have to revise the legislation of the People's representatives, to rectify their mistakes and blunders, to guard [unclear: or] liberties against collectivist assailants, to protect property, [unclear: landed] and other, against legalised confiscation and Henry-[unclear: Georgeanished] and to help in guiding Master Demos safely through the [unclear: infatuational] and fevers, and lunacies, to which he is occasionally liable. [unclear: Function] of this high kind are exceedingly difficult to discharge, and [unclear: required] not cleverer people, but cooler heads and sounder judgments [unclear: that] are usually found in the Lower House. If women are really [unclear: fitted] to occupy seats in the Council on account of their high intellectual and moral qualities, and their cooler heads and sounder judgments how much better must they be fitted to hold seats in the Lower House, where these great qualities are not found in over-abundance. And yet women are declared by our Ministerial Solons or Solans—we forget the correct spelling of this word—not to be qualified to sit side by side, and shoulder to shoulder, with the members of the present Cabinet and their docile supporters.

In conclusion, we have only to add that we can scarcly believe that the proposal to admit women into Parliament, or into one of its two chambers, can be seriously meant. It seems incredible that people of average intelligence can be in sober earnest in promising or threatening—we know not which of the words is the more appropriate-to legislate in this wild style. Surely they must be intellectually or morally blind if they do not see that the suggested elevation of women is in reality a downright degradation and affront. After all, the proposal may only he a coarse electioneering dodge, by which Ministers fancy they can gull the gullible, and wheedle them out of their votes next month.

James Wallis.

Note. All communications In connection with "The New Zealander" to be addressed to Dr. Wallis, care of the "Observer " Office, Wyndham-street, Auckland.

Printed by Geddls and Blomfield, at the Observer Office, Wyndham-street. Auckland for the proprietor. Dr. Wallis—auckland, Nov. 14, 1896.