Had these remarks been made with an eye single to the "woman question," they could not have been more exactly descriptive of the facts in the case; but with Irishmen only on his mind he continued thus: "The persistent distrust of the Irish people, despite all they can do, comes simply to this, that they are to be pressed below the level of civilized mankind. When the boon of self government is given to the British colonies is Ireland alone to be excepted from its blessings? To deny Ireland home rule is to say that she lacks the ordinary faculties of humanity."
He said "Irish people," but he meant Irish men only. But see to what his argument leads. He says it is "pressing them below the level of civilized mankind" to deny them the right to stand erect, to use their own brains and wills in their own government; and a great party in his own country and a great party in this country echo with mad enthusiasm his opinions--for men! They call it "mankind." They mean one-half of mankind only, for not even Mr. Gladstone is able to rise high enough above his sex bias to see that the denial of all self-government, all representation in the making of the laws she is to obey "presses woman below the level of civilized mankind." Words cease to have a par value even with the stickler for verbal accuracy the instant their own arguments are applied to the other sex. Eloquently men can and do portray the wrongs, the outrages, the abuses which always have arisen, which always must arise from class legislation--from that condition which makes it impossible for one class or condition of citizens of a country to make their needs, desires, preferences and opinions felt in the organic law of their country on an equal and level footing with their fellows. Men have needed no great ability to enable them to prove that tyranny unspeakable always did and always will follow unlimited power over others so long as their arguments applied between man and man, but the instant the identical arguments are used to apply between man and woman that instant their whole attitude changes.
That instant words lose all par value. That instant all men, including those who have but just waxed eloquent over the injustice and the real danger of permitting inequality before the law, become aristocrats. Claiming to be the logical sex, man throws logic to the winds. Claiming to have fought and bled to enthrone "liberty," he forgets its very name! Asserting that in his own hand alone can the scales of justice be held level, he makes of justice, of liberty and of equality a mockery and a pretense! He has so far read all of those words in the masculine gender only. He has not yet learned to think them in a universal language. He stultifies his every utterance and makes of his mind a jailer, and of his laws slave drivers, for all who cannot by physical force wrench from him the right to their own liberty and to their human status of equality of opportunity.