Chesterton once objected to suffrage for women on the grounds that most women did not seem to want suffrage, and that therefore on the very principle of democracy which some women seemed to want, they ought not to have suffrage.
There are several obvious objections to this attempt at reasoning. The first is that a straw poll of public opinion conducted, presumably, by asking friends and reading newspaper reports is not actually a democratic vote. And insofar as one could even begin to consider it so, even then, that such a thing was conducted at all must presumably be disregarded once the results are known. When someone says, “You shouldn't have done that!”, you take it back if you can. If the women of the period were saying by majority opinion that their views do not matter, well then you should obviously disregard their idea that their views do not matter; and so on ad nauseum in the manner of Epimenides.
But the second, stronger, objection makes the first one moot. The second objection is that democracy is not something which one can vote on. Democracy is a primitive, like being allowed to love, or being allowed to speak your mind. These days we call such primitives human rights. One can debate which things are human rights and which aren't; one can debate the extent of their remits. But it would be very difficult to debate the obvious fact that if democracy is to exist at all, it must be regarded as a right and not as an option.
Of course we all know the commonplace that democracy is a terrible system. As Churchill said, “democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” But there you go: we have tried those other forms, and they have proven worse, though democracy is, on the face of it, the worst. If we are to experiment with different forms of governance, we should have to do so with the utmost care, because such experimentation cannot be conducted in a laboratory.
Inasmuch as democracy can be considered a human right, therefore, perhaps we should consider it a fluid right. It is a right which may be replaced with a better right, but only if we can be sure that such a better right—that a better form of governance—really is better. Chesterton knew this, and he was as much of a real democrat in his days as Tony Benn is in ours. I do not know why Chesterton came to the strange conclusion that he did, and perhaps I simply have a lot to learn about suffrage or about Chesterton; or, more than likely, about both. But he did make the mistake, and he was wrong. One wonders whether his suffragette friends were able to forgive him. I hope so!
by Sean B. Palmer