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ESSAYS IN PERSUASION

PART

terested; few which are the subject of widerdiscussion. They are of the utmost social im-portance; they cannot help but provoke realand sincere differences of opinion. Some ofthem are deeply involved in the solution ofcertain economic questions. I cannot doubtthat Sex Questions are about to enter the poli-tical arena. The very crude beginnings repre-sented by the Suffrage Movement were onlysymptoms of deeper and more important issuesbelow the surface.

Birth Control and the use of Contraceptives ,Marriage Laws , the treatment of sexual offencesand abnormalities, the economic position ofwomen, the economic position of the family,—in all these matters the existing state of the Lawand of orthodoxy is still mediaeval—altogetherout of touch with civilised opinion and civilisedpractice and with what individuals, educatedand uneducated alike, say to one another inprivate. Let no one deceive himself with theidea that the change of opinion on these mattersis one which only affects a small educated classon the crust of the human boiling. Let no onesuppose that it is the working women who aregoing to be shocked by ideas of Birth Control or of Divorce Reform. For them these thingssuggest new liberty, emancipation from the mostintolerable of tyrannies. A party which woulddiscuss these things openly and wisely at itsmeetings would discover a new and living in-terest in the electorate—because politics wouldbe dealing once more with matters about which