S.A.Register 11 Aug. 1891 p3 h

Mary Lee and female suffrage

TO THE EDITOR

Sir — If there is anything really terrifying in female clatter I am sure my hon. friend, Mr. W. Copley, Commissioner of Crown Lands, must have been terrified indeed when he read Mary Lee's lecture on his action in Parliament re female suffrage, but I am so satisfied of that gentleman's sound common sense that if he saw the peppery effusion at all he must have enjoyed a good hearty laugh over it. Poor Mary Lee! How she does fret, and foam and stew, and scold. I wonder if she manages her household in the same feverish style. If so, I fear it would not greatly resemble "a little heaven below". If Mary Lee is a typical example of what we may expect if females generally attain to "universal suffrage" I am afraid the world would not be much improved by the change. I have always looked upon a true woman as one of the loveliest things in creation, chaste, gentle, shy, retiring unobtrusive, not given to clamour or wrangle, confiding and consequently most loveable withal. But
When lovely woman stoops to vulgar airs
Her charms depart, and ugliness she wears."
An old adage runs : —
A whistling woman and a crowing hen
Is neither fit for God nor men.
In other words, when women persist in descending from the high and holy position assigned to them by nature and by Providence, and they seek to perform the sterner and more masculine functions of public preachers, lecturers, debators and legislators and join the "clamorous and contentious throng", they forsake the refined sphere of feminine character and influence and forfeit their claim to the honour, respect, and esteem of the sterner sex. On the principle that there should be "no taxation without representation" I have always contended that female taxpayers should have a voice or vote in the expenditure of those taxes, as women now have by our local government laws if they choose to exercise such power; and as the greater should always include the less, I am of the opinion that every elector, whether male or female, having a vote for the Upper should certainly have a vote for the Lower House also. Mary Lee says that " Industry and intelligence are more valuable to the progress and posterity of a young State than the seizing and holding large tracts of the State lands, &c." Now, although I am strongly adverse to land monopoly I must remind your fair correspondent that it was industry and intelligence alone, in most cases, that enabled the holders of lands to acquire them, many of them having come to the colony in the early days as comparatively poor men. And will Mary Lee contend that the "honest toilers" who, as she says, "are bound to the soil," (but who, I presume, have not exercised that "industry and intelligence" which has proved successful in the others' cases,) would decline to accept a few thousand acres of these lands if such were in their power? Let Mary Lee follow the noble example of many of her sex who are too modest and refined to wrangle publicly in the Press and on the platform on questions of political expediency, but who are at present exerting, and have in the past exerted, their powerful influence in privately visiting and instructing these poor but "honest toilers" in habits of thrift and frugality, by which alone they too may acquire property, and generally improve their condition physically, mentally, socially, and financially.

I am Sir &c

C.H. HUSSEY

(Also published in the OBSERVER 15 Aug. 1891p8 e)