Editor, “The Thin End of the Wedge”, The Bulletin, Vol. 11 No. 588 (23 May 1891, p.8)
Premier Munro, in his compound capacity as a capitalist, a friend and worshipper of every description of Property, and an advanced Liberal, has undertaken that in the next session of the Victorian Parliament he will introduce the thin end of the wedge in the matter of female suffrage. He admits frankly that woman has as much right as man to run the State, and that the alleged “Shrieking Sisterhood,” which demands the enfranchisement of woman, is no more an object of derision than the Shrieking Brotherhood, which includes such names as Washington, Hampden, Bolivar and Rienzi, and which put forward exactly the same demands on the part of man. The dismal picture of the whole feminine race abandoning cookery and other household duties, and leaving the dishes unwashed and the neglected infant in the sink, in order to rush after politics, he freely acknowledges to be as irrational as the picture of the entire male population dropping its shovel and its pickaxe, and flying en masse from its engines and shops and banks and counting-houses for the same purpose. So far as the present system is concerned, he has committed himself to the policy of One-Man-One-Vote, and he openly avers that the policy of One-Woman-One-Vote is equally reasonable. Therefore, when a deputation waited upon him the other day and invited him, as the head and front of a knock-kneed Cabinet, to put his principles into effect, a good deal was expected of him, and yet very little was realised. He promised, indeed, to insert the thin end of the wedge by extending the franchise to all female ratepayers—in other words, to all women with property; but when he was pressed to do more than this, he took refuge in that old, time-worn gag about the necessity of avoiding precipitate action; and amid much hazy drivel of this sort, the deputation grasped its umbrella and left. And as it retired, there floated out behind it the accents of a persuasive though husky voice, like that of an individual who was parched with the drought or a long line of teetotal ancestors, which besought the deputation to beware of undue haste, and to move gradually, and to insert the thin end of the wedge, and to keep an eye on the old landmarks of the constitution generally.
Premier Munro, in his compound capacity as a capitalist, a friend and worshipper of every description of Property, and an advanced Liberal, has undertaken that in the next session of the Victorian Parliament he will introduce the thin end of the wedge in the matter of female suffrage. He admits frankly that woman has as much right as man to run the State, and that the alleged “Shrieking Sisterhood,” which demands the enfranchisement of woman, is no more an object of derision than the Shrieking Brotherhood, which includes such names as Washington, Hampden, Bolivar and Rienzi, and which put forward exactly the same demands on the part of man. The dismal picture of the whole feminine race abandoning cookery and other household duties, and leaving the dishes unwashed and the neglected infant in the sink, in order to rush after politics, he freely acknowledges to be as irrational as the picture of the entire male population dropping its shovel and its pickaxe, and flying en masse from its engines and shops and banks and counting-houses for the same purpose. So far as the present system is concerned, he has committed himself to the policy of One-Man-One-Vote, and he openly avers that the policy of One-Woman-One-Vote is equally reasonable. Therefore, when a deputation waited upon him the other day and invited him, as the head and front of a knock-kneed Cabinet, to put his principles into effect, a good deal was expected of him, and yet very little was realised. He promised, indeed, to insert the thin end of the wedge by extending the franchise to all female ratepayers—in other words, to all women with property; but when he was pressed to do more than this, he took refuge in that old, time-worn gag about the necessity of avoiding precipitate action; and amid much hazy drivel of this sort, the deputation grasped its umbrella and left. And as it retired, there floated out behind it the accents of a persuasive though husky voice, like that of an individual who was parched with the drought or a long line of teetotal ancestors, which besought the deputation to beware of undue haste, and to move gradually, and to insert the thin end of the wedge, and to keep an eye on the old landmarks of the constitution generally.
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It is of old, second-hand drivel like this that Munro’s Liberalism is constructed, and, considering the results arrived at, it would be better for the women, as well as the men of Victoria, if he were only a common, beastly Conservative after all. As a conservative he might have refused even to consider the subject of feminine suffrage, and the struggle between Property and humanity, for supremacy in the Legislature, would have continued on a comparatively even basis. As a Conservative, also, he would have refused his support to the One-Man-One-Vote principle, but by-and-bye, the workers of Victoria would have walked over his battered political carcase, and gained their purpose without his aid or interference. If once, and only once, Labour would prove true to itself, and would cease to vote for the array of lawyers, landlords, and capitalists who lie to it at every election, and it at all other times, there would be so little left of Munro, Gillies, and their supporters in the next Parliament, that it would matter not one cent to any single citizen whether these old red sandstone politicians entertained Liberal opinions, or any other opinions whatever. The contest lies great mass of the nation on one the one side, and on the other, money, political influence, the multiplied votes of Property, and any small advantages that are to be gained ny faking electoral rolls and other swindles. The <p9> party of Capital is woefully deficient in numbers, but it has prospered and run the State by hard lying and newspaper influence and business organisation, and that species of cow-like ignorance which has always induced the masses to vote as somebody told them to; yet there was always an uneasy feeling abroad that one vigorous movement on the part of Labour might upset its supremacy at any moment. If Premier Munro’s promised Bill should pass, however, and the multiplied vote of Property is reinforced by the multiplied vote of Property’s aged grandmother, and its sister, and its wife, and its eleven maiden aunts, the position of the ruling class becomes almost unassailable. And the unspeakable irony of the situation is that the ancient water-drinker, while thus giving Capital the biggest lift it has got in nearly half a century, does it solely because he is an advanced Liberal, and a vociferous friend of Labour! He will travel on it at elections, and howl about it at democratic gatherings, and on the strength of it he will rally up the fragments of the Liberal party which Deakin led to such unspeakable smash, and unless he spoils the situation by some enormous blunder, the nation in general will whoop for him as the statesman who inserted the thin end of the wedge, and who first recognised the true meaning of equality. The Bulletin admits frankly that it has hitherto underrated Munro. It has cheerfully recognised his narrow-mindedness, and the conspicuous woodenness which seemed to make him such fit material for lighting the office fire; and it has done full justice to the elephantine clumsiness with which he crashes down every object that comes in his way; but beyond these he has never before developed any qualities worth mentioning, and this paper saw no reason to believe that he ever would.* * *
If the promised Female Suffrage Bill is passed next session, and the One-Man-One-Vote Bill can be talked out, or postponed, or judiciously lost in the Upper House, where its grave is even now yawning to receive it, the prospects of the latter measure are not likely to amount to much for some considerable time to come. For at the ensuing’ election the rolls will be crowded with the names of all the capitalistic female relatives, and the plural vote of the man of property being reinforced by the plural vote of the woman of property, Labour may readily find itself in an actual minority. The land-owner, who now counts as six or sixteen or thirty-six separate human beings at the poll, can easily multiply his wife and daughter till they become equally numerous, and the gain by this process will be enormous. And when this alleged reform is accomplished the principle of Female Suffrage, in the democratic sense, will probably be further from recognition than ever. The feminine plutocrat no more desires to extend any share of political power to her poorer sisters than the male plutocrat desires to share his authority on equitable terms with the individual who has no property and no bank account. The average pastoralist is still as unable to comprehend why the shearer should have a vote as he is to understand why the cow should be similarly endowed, and his wife and daughter are equally obtuse. The extension of the franchise to the female with coin means the creation of so many thousand votes which will be used almost unanimously against the extension of the franchise to the woman without coin; and both the male and female plural voter will vote en masse against the abolition of plural voting. If, out of the two measures on which Premier Munro’s reputation for Liberalism is based, the Female Suffrage Bill is the first to become law, the end of the Labour party in Victoria will be incalculably worse than the beginning. And, on the other hand, if the One-Man-One-Vote measure should, by any chance, get in ahead, it ‘will be practically neutralised, and there will be hardly any appreciable gain whatever. In the one case Munro has given the cause of Capital a gigantic lift; in the other case he has saved it from a gigantic loss; and in both cases he has secured the unbounded gratitude of the mass of the nation, and has gained a reputation as an enlightened democrat, on which any man, not endowed with the most phenomenal stupidity, should be able to travel for ten years, at the very lowest estimate.* * *
There is no term in all the bright lexicon drivel which has done better service than that which concerns the “thin end of the wedge.” There is no sense in it, and no meaning, but it sounds solemn and plaintive and mysterious, like the bray of an ass beard afar off at midnight, and in a general in seems to fill the bill. On the strength expression it has come to be assumed what when a great reform is urgently demanded, true wisdom consists in doing it by slow instalments and in shreds and patches, just as a truly wise man might build up his new coat in a gradual way by joining together fragments, one fragment at a time, in order that the coat might dawn upon him gradually and not upset the public intellect by its too great suddenness. The purpose of this is to “accustom the public mind to the change,” which is eminently superfluous, because it is only when public mind has accepted the change, and the public intelligence is showing violently from behind, that the insertion of c thin end of the wedge first begins. It is also done to avoid the “obliteration of the landmarks of the Constitution,” which is entirely superfluous, for the landmarks of the constitution are always being obliterated, and besides very few know what these landmarks are, and a great many people have hardly begun to realise that there is a constitution at all, and, anyhow, the country lives on victuals, not on landmarks; and, in addition to all this, most of the landmarks are of a kind that the nation would gladly get rid of. A dead horse or eight tons of bad eggs might be a very good landmark in the centre of a crowded city, and many a stranger would probably find them convenient as a means of letting him know his whereabouts, but an individual who wanted them removed very gradually on that account would be set down as a lunatic all the same. The fact that Munro advocates the granting of the suffrage to women is a distinct admission on his part that the withholding of that privilege is an injustice, and consequently a public danger, and the idea of retaining three quarters of a danger in order to create safety is as imbecile as the idea of retaining the largest part of an infection in order to promote health. Yet this is ostensibly what Munro proposes to do, and as almost every other politician does exactly the same thing the proceeding will doubtless pass for profound wisdom. When an alleged statesman recognises the existence of a great evil it is for some unexplained reason, supposed to be an evidence of deep sagacity, to remove a fraction of it, and leave the rest standing for fear the public should wake up and cry for it in the night. Yet if the same alleged statesman were assaulted and kicked by four men, and a policeman removed one of them by way of inserting the thin end of the wedge, and left the other three to continue kicking, on the principle that the landmarks of the constitution shouldn’t be removed hurriedly, and for fear the mind of the victim might be unsettled if he were rescued too suddenly, the matter would probably be regarded in a somewhat different light. And, in like manner, if a physician declined to cure Munro or any other patient, on the ground that his disease was one of the principal landmarks in his constitution, and therefore ought only to be shifted by small instalments, there would doubtless be a row very shortly afterwards. Possibly, if Munro’s principle had been applied a little earlier to Munro himself, that gentleman might have appreciated the full beauty of it more effectually. If the thin end of him had been inserted in the Legislature instead of recklessly putting the whole of him in there at once, and the thick end—which in his case is undoubtedly the end with the head on it—had been left outside, and the door had slammed while he was in this precarious position, the full significance of his own policy might undoubtedly have been brought, home to him for once, in all its comprehensive absurdity.