^ 
 
 .- -. - -.- '-
 
 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 BY THE LATE 
 
 EMMA HOSKEN WOODWARD, 
 
 AUTHOR OK ' MARRIED FOR MONET,' 'BITTER TO SWEET END.' 
 
 ETC., ETC. 
 
 Fiat Justitia, mat ccelum. 
 
 LONDON : 
 DULAU AND CO., 37 SOHO SQUARE. 
 
 1885. 
 I All Riyltts Reserced.}
 
 TO HER TWO DAUGHTERS, 
 
 AGNES EMILY AND GWENDOLINE MARY, 
 
 &fn0 saHorfc ia Detiicateti bp fyt (EBUitor, 
 
 WITH THE SINCERE HOPE 
 
 THAT IT MAY PROVE AN INCENTIVE TO THEM 
 TO FOLLOW THEIR MOTHER'S EXAMPLE, 
 
 AND EVER BE READY 
 TO AID THE WEAK AND HELPLESS.
 
 PREFACE BY THE EDITOR. 
 
 THE following work was the result of the diligent labour 
 and earnest study of the closing years in the life of a 
 brilliant and very active mind ; and regret will be general 
 that the writer was called hence before it appeared, and 
 that those finishing touches so necessary to the completion 
 of any book were destined never to be given. As it is, it 
 was felt that to do more than correct those small errors 
 that creep into every manuscript, however carefully re- 
 vised, would be trifling with a sacred trust. 
 
 The book deals with the '"Woman Question,' which, 
 under some one of its aspects, enters into every detail of 
 social life. 
 
 Its object is earnestly to advocate certain much- 
 needed reforms, and at the same time to give, as far as 
 possible, every argument both for and against the various 
 points treated of. 
 
 This the author considered could best be done in the 
 form, already familiarised to us by many well-known 
 works, of a series of conversations or discussions ; whilst 
 unity was sought to be imparted to the whole by the 
 undercurrent of a story, which runs through the volume. 
 
 Since it was finished in June last, some few changes,
 
 VI PREFACE. 
 
 as readers will see for themselves, have taken place ; these, 
 however, do not affect the main points in the book. 
 
 It will also, doubtless, be noticed that some of the 
 arguments, and a few of the illustrative anecdotes, . are 
 repeated, when emphasis required or the argument justi- 
 fied it. 
 
 The little party depicted at Crag's Nest is, of course, 
 intended to be composed of typical individuals, and, con- 
 sequently, the personal views of the author will not be 
 found in any isolated member of the group. 
 
 B. B. W. 
 
 February 7th, 1885.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 i. WOMEN'S RIGHTS AND MEN'S WRONGS .-'-.' 1 
 
 II. A STRONG-MINDED WOMAN . .15 
 
 III. THE EDUCATION OF WOMEN . . ., . . 27 
 
 IV. THE EDUCATION OF WOMEN (CONTINUED) . . .49 
 
 V. THE EMPLOYMENT OF WOMEN . . . . . 77 
 
 VI. THE EMPLOYMENT OF WOMEN (CONTINUED) . . 117 
 
 vii. WOMAN'S 'SPHERE' . . . . . .143 
 
 VIII. THE EQUALITY OF THE SEXES ; . ... .165 
 IX. SOME SOCIAL PROBLEMS . . ... 199 
 
 x. WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE ... . . 223 
 
 xi. WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE (CONTINUED) i . . .265 
 
 XII. LEGAL DISABILITIES . . ; . . . 297 
 
 XIII. A MISTAKE ... . 333 
 
 XIV. WOMEN AND EVOLUTION . . * . . 349 
 XV. CONCLUSION 379
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 ' IT yet remains, 
 
 Women, for you to cast aside the chains 
 Of false traditions, marring womanhood ; 
 Men ! be it yours to help them on to good ! 
 The race is in its manhood, leave behind 
 The jealousies of childhood ; strive to find 
 Each an ideal truer and more grand ; 
 Fear not that women, gaining their demand, 
 Will cast their dower gentleness away, 
 Or love the less because they understand, 
 But rise and say, " Henceforth we woo perfection hand in hand." 
 
 Ode on the Opening of the New Hall in Alexandria 
 College, Dublin, 1879. 
 
 ' Man was the problem of the eighteenth century, woman is the 
 problem of the nineteenth. No. I shall never cease to say it, the 
 problem is laid down and it must be solved ; she who bears half the 
 burden ought to have half the right. Half of the human race is deprived 
 of equality, it must be given to them.' VICTOB HDGO. 
 
 ' Laugh as we may, put it aside as a jest if we will, keep it out of con- 
 gress or political campaigns, still the woman question is rising in our 
 horizon, larger than the size of a man's hand, and some solution ere long 
 that question must find.' 
 
 PRESIDENT GAKFIELD'S Address at Washington Business College. 
 
 ' I feel confident that a general discussion of the subject of women's 
 rights will result in a more general recognition and cheerful performance 
 of her appropriate duties.' 
 
 HOKACE GKEELEY, Letter to Rev. S. J. May, 1856.
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 WOMEN'S RIGHTS AND MEN'S WRONGS. 
 
 ' I CONSIDER it most unbrotherly, not to say mean, Harry, the 
 first time you come to see me in my new home to talk of 
 hurrying away at the end of a week ; I expected you would 
 spend a month with us at least ; ' and the young mistress of a 
 pretty country-house, under whose veranda brother and sister 
 stood talking, tried hard, though with indifferent success, to 
 bring an expression of solemnity and vexation into a face 
 naturally bright and piquant rather than severe. 
 
 ' You must not be vexed, Nellie, dear, or think I do not 
 appreciate your home or your husband, or your sweet little 
 self; Crag's Nest is charming, and Fred is the best of good 
 fellows ; but you see business must be attended to ; I ought to 
 get to London to-morrow.' 
 
 * Oh, Harry, Harry, you must be at the extremest limit of 
 your wits to invent such transparent subterfuges ! I thought 
 yesterday it was Tregarthen that required your immediate 
 presence, and as you cannot very well be in Cornwall and 
 London at the same time, I can only suppose that for some , 
 reason you wish to get away, though you will not acknowledge 
 it, and are therefore driven to invent lame excuses. But I am 
 not going to listen to them,' continued the speaker, taking her 
 brother's arm with a loving gesture as they strolled from the 
 veranda to the wide terrace below. ' I know Major and Mrs. 
 Knagge are not like the good little books which " combine 
 instruction with amusement " ; indeed, without being uncharit- 
 able, I must acknowledge that the last quality is remarkable
 
 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 only by its absence from their conversation ; but no one can 
 say the same of Professor Wray ; I flattered myself that you 
 were getting to like him as much as I do. Fred will not hear 
 of letting you go ; and besides, I so much want you to meet 
 that dear Madeline Acton, she is coming this afternoon.' 
 
 Sir Henry Tregarthen gave a little impatient switch of his 
 cane, which sent the gravel flying over the lawn amongst the 
 flower-beds. But as he did not reply, Mrs. Silverton, after a 
 minute's pause, went on with increased enthusiasm. 
 
 ' There is nothing no, nothing in the world I am so 
 proud of as her friendship, which began in our first year at 
 Girton. Before we left college she lost both her parents 
 within a few months ; and she was so dreadfully cut up about 
 it that she has not since been near their fine old place in 
 Sussex, which has come to her, as she is an only child, and 
 where I stayed with them once. She now lives principally in 
 London, and devotes most of the time that other girls would 
 spend in amusing themselves, to working for the advancement 
 and happiness of women who are less fortunate in this world's 
 goods and less gifted than she is herself.' 
 
 ' A new and revised edition of Mrs. Jellaby in fact,' said 
 Sir Henry, sotto voce, but not low enough to escape his sister's 
 ear. 
 
 'Nothing of the sort,' she replied, in indignant denial. 
 ' Madeline is the last to neglect her own people ; at this mo- 
 ment she has made a home for an aunt, the widow of an officer, 
 and her little girl ; and more than this, she is- like a daughter 
 to the one and the best of elder sisters to the other, whom she 
 is sending to Queen's College School, and whom, she means to 
 train for and start in some profession. She has very decided 
 views, as I think I have told you, upon the necessity which 
 exists that every woman, whatever her station in life, should 
 be trained, so that, if needful, she may be able to support 
 herself.' 
 
 ' Oh, I do not for a moment doubt that your friend has 
 very decided views upon this and every other subject, and to
 
 WOMEN'S RIGHTS AND MEN'S WRONGS. 5 
 
 tell the truth, my dear, it is from this very lady with "views" 
 that I am anxious to escape. I really could not, even to please 
 you, face one of the -strong-minded confraternity, who spend 
 their time in getting up petitions, stump the country clamour- 
 ing for women's rights, and oh, I know quite enough of 
 
 such ladies not to wish to improve the acquaintance.' 
 
 ' I should not have thought that my dear old good-natured 
 brother was capable of such an excess of venom as you put into 
 the word " strong-minded." Now I should have thought that 
 strength of mind was a quality very valuable either to man or 
 woman, for it generally implies a corresponding strength of all 
 the other faculties good brains, noble ideas, and yes, and 
 warm feelings too. Oh ! you need not look so incredulous ! 
 my friend is a proof in herself that it is quite possible to be 
 strong without ceasing to be tender, though she has sufficient 
 strength of will to save life from degenerating into a mere 
 emotional see-saw.' 
 
 ' Well, my idea of a strong-minded woman is a sort of 
 being who looks upon men as her natural enemies, or at best 
 regards us all like Mrs. Winthrop as a species of animal whom 
 it has pleased Heaven to make instinctively overbearing and 
 troublesome, like bulls and turkey-cocks.' 
 
 ' I have no doubt you have drawn an admirable mental 
 portrait of poor Madeline ; I am sure she would feel nattered, 
 only you ought to complete it by giving her a hooked nose, a 
 moustache, blue spectacles, gloves with holes, and a generally 
 unkempt appearance. I believe you think there is some in- 
 separable connexion between usefulness and bad taste.' 
 
 ' Not exactly ; nor have I any sympathy with the old 
 writer, who, after declaring that when any woman was notorious 
 for her mind, she was in general frightfully tigly, proceeds to 
 warn men against such, since he says, in language more forcible 
 than polite, "fecundity of brain in the weaker sex usually 
 accompanies sterility and a disordered system." I have, as you 
 know, the greatest possible respect for women, but not for 
 abnormal types such as the lady lecturer I heard of the other
 
 6 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 day, who, not content with claiming equality, asserted the 
 superiority of her sex on all points, and ended by declaring that' 
 Solomon owed all his wisdom to the number of his wives. She 
 did not name her authority.' 
 
 ' Nor do you yours, 1 replied his companion, laughing, ' I 
 suspect in this case he drew upon imagination for his facts. 
 But this is what vexes me, that you, not being one of those 
 small-minded men who have naturally a low opinion of women's 
 intellectual capacity, and of her place in the world, should yet 
 indulge in such prejudices.' 
 
 ' Speaking of some men's estimate of women's place and 
 value in the world,' replied Sir Henry, with a skilful evasion of 
 the argumentum ad hominem, ' I was very much amused on my 
 way home two months ago, when taking up on board the 
 steamer a stray copy of the Gold Coast Times, to see that the 
 Chief Justice sitting on the bench at Cape Coast Castle, while 
 summing up in a case of murder, and speaking of the inade- 
 quacy of the motives often prompting this crime, said, " Mur- 
 ders are often committed in England for the sake of a bottle of 
 rum, or a pot of beer, or sometimes even for the sake of a 
 woman." ' 
 
 ' If it was not a slip of the tongue, and he was really in 
 earnest, I cannot say much for the judges own claim to respect,' 
 replied Mrs. Silverton ; ' I quite believe that 
 
 " So viel wie Jemand von den Frauen halt 
 So viel halt er von der Ehr, oder 
 So wenig." 
 
 In other words, " It is the low man thinks the woman low," and 
 therefore I can't bear to hear you, who are so very different, repeat- 
 ing ignorant platitudes of a movement about which you know 
 nothing except by hearsay, and taking a prejudice against a 
 girl you have never seen, and to whom you will give no chance 
 of defending herself.' 
 
 ' She could scarcely desire a more devoted champion, at any 
 rate, than her friend and my little sister, Miss Nellie Tre
 
 WOMEN'S RIGHTS AND MEN'S WRONGS. 7 
 
 I beg her pardon Mrs. Silverton, of Crag's Nest, Ilfracombe, 
 deputy county magistrate, and leader of public opinion in that 
 formerly benighted region ; besides, from what I have seen of 
 Major and Mrs. Knagge, your friend will have in the latter also 
 a valuable ally. 
 
 ' On the contrary, Mrs. Knagge proclaims herself thoroughly 
 satisfied with the existing position of women, and disclaims any 
 desire for a change.' 
 
 ' She keeps the Major well in hand, at any rate, so I under- 
 stand, though, I must say, she has the good taste not to make 
 it very obvious here. I have heard from some fellows who 
 used to be in his regiment, that the way in which she was 
 always interfering in matters connected with the service was 
 perfectly sickening.' 
 
 ' Just so,' said Mrs. Silverton. ' When you know a little 
 more of them you will find that it is not the women whom you 
 now regard with such pious horror, but those " who would not 
 for the world " make any change in the position of their sex, who 
 are inclined to exact an unreasonable amount of outward 
 homage and observance from men, and in some cases to actually 
 tyrannise over them. I should not have thought Mrs. Knagge 
 was one of these, however, if it had not been for what you 
 tell me, combined with the fact that Major Knagge is 
 very emphatic upon any theme touching the subordination 
 of women. When I hear men in public exceedingly self- 
 assertive and loud in their assumption of supreme authority, 
 I generally suspect that at home they are what is popularly 
 called henpecked.' 
 
 'You have evidently observed and thought a great deal 
 more upon this subject than I have, little woman; and I 
 should very much like to know what the dissatisfied of your 
 sex think they have to complain of, for it seems to me they 
 have the advantage over us in most things, and that this 
 crusade against supposed injustice is a sort of tilting at 
 shadows harmless, perhaps, but rather ridiculous. Surely 
 they are much better off in their sheltered position, looked
 
 8 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 up to as they are in all civilised countries with consider- 
 ation and respect, than if they were to change places with 
 men.' 
 
 ' But, my wise brother, we do not want to change places 
 with men.' 
 
 ' I am very ignorant, no doubt, but ' 
 
 ' I could not think of contradicting you. You are like the 
 bird-fancier who assures us that his larks very much prefer 
 restraint and the occasional petting and food he gives them to 
 the liberty which is their natural inheritance ; no persuasion, 
 however, will induce him to open the cage-door and give them 
 a chance. You ask what happy women, such as Madeline and 
 I, have to complain of 1 ? personally nothing. It is not for 
 themselves they are discontented, but for those (and, mind you, 
 they are the majority) who are not " sheltered," and are far 
 from meeting with universal consideration and respect. What- 
 ever may be the lot of a favoured few, women cannot, properly 
 speaking, be called free until every law which discriminates 
 between man and woman, to the injury of the latter, is done 
 away with.' 
 
 ' In some countries in the East, for instance I should say 
 women might with justice complain of want of freedom and of 
 much that is unfair; but amongst ourselves really I cannot 
 see ' 
 
 ' Where is the difference between the Mahommedan decree 
 which forbids fools, madmen, or women to call the hours of 
 prayer, and the English law which amongst all those who 
 possess the necessary property qualification denies a vote only 
 to lunatics, felons, and women. It is a very heinous offence, 
 no doubt, to have been born a woman ; but seeing that none of 
 us have been consulted upon this matter, one would think that 
 something less than a life-long expiation ' 
 
 ' Pray, Goody, please to moderate the rancour of your 
 tongue,' said Sir Henry in feigned alarm ; ' what is it so dread- 
 fully wrong in our Constitution 1 What is it you claim on behalf 
 of your deeply injured sex V
 
 WOMEN'S RIGHTS AND MEN'S WRONGS. 9 
 
 ' Nothing more nor less than an equal chance in the race of 
 life, equal incentives to study, fair rewards for labour ; it is not 
 necessary to be unhappy oneself to feel the unhappiness of 
 others, and I know too well what suffering the want of justice 
 in these matters causes.' A low whistle of supreme astonish- 
 ment, suppressed almost as soon as heard, showed some of the 
 surprise Sir Henry felt at his light-hearted sister's unusual 
 earnestness. 'Oh, there are a great many other things about 
 which women have a right to be discontented,' she went on. 
 ' Try to reverse our positions and look at the question from the 
 opposite point of view. What would English men say if forced 
 to contribute to the support of a government which they have 
 no voice either in electing or rejecting ; if, in nine cases out of 
 ten, they coiild not obtain doctors of their own sex ; if the 
 endowments of girls' schools amounted to ten times as much as 
 that expended upon boys; if the girls of well-to-do parents 
 appropriated, as a matter of course, the bulk of the family 
 property ; if amongst the poorer classes men and boys received 
 always less pay for equal work ; if, while young women in shops 
 and places of business in London and other large towns, had 
 many chances of wholesome recreation in the evenings, their 
 debating societies, their reading-rooms, their chess-clubs, their 
 mechanics' institutes, supported mainly by charitable contri- 
 butions, it were taken for granted that young men of the same 
 class do not require any special recreation, but that after a day 
 of dull, incessant toil, they should be contented (if respectable) 
 to spend the evening in the comfortless little bedroom of their 
 cheap lodgings 1 You look surprised.' 
 
 ' Not so much at your words, my dear, as at yourself, and 
 at the extraordinary development of the little girl whom I left 
 a very few years ago in short frocks, scampering across the 
 downs, climbing from rock to rock like a young kid, and 
 evolving only the crudest ideas upon every subject. If all 
 your sex have been advancing in like manner, and everything 
 you have been saying is not to be looked upon in the light of 
 special pleading, I shall be obliged to grant that women's claims
 
 10 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 to the franchise and other masculine " privileges," so-called, 
 deserve at least to be treated with consideration.' 
 
 ' Exactly, and I am sure you could not have a better oppor- 
 tunity for looking into these questions than by talking to 
 Madeline and Professor Wray. There are many things quite 
 as important as the party measures, to which, in view of 
 standing for our borough you acknowledge you have been 
 giving so much time lately.' 
 
 ' Very likely, and no doubt these women questions are 
 coming to the front amazingly. When I went to India one 
 heard next to nothing of them, and now scarcely a month 
 passes but one or other of the magazines rings changes on the 
 theme, and even in this out of the way region I find there is no 
 escape.' 
 
 ' But you do not really wish to escape, you are going to 
 stay with us a few days longer, like a dear good fellow, I 
 know 1 ' 
 
 Sir Henry looked down at the bright, but earnest little face 
 raised to his, and found it more than his affection and good 
 nature could withstand. ' So be it then,' he replied, resigning 
 himself with good grace, ' ever since you were so high,' holding 
 his cane about two feet from the ground, ' you have always con- 
 trived to turn your big elder brother around with the smallest 
 of your little fingers, and now Fred, too, poor fellow !' he soli- 
 loquised, shaking his head, ' has come under the yoke ; who 
 would dream, to hear her melting eloquence upon women's 
 undue subordination, that she could be such a despot 1 ' 
 
 'At any rate,' replied his sister, laughing, 'I have, like Nancy 
 Polwhele, the proud consciousness that my rule is a beneficent 
 one.' 
 
 ' Polwhele ! Polwhele ! Oh, yes, I recollect, at the south 
 lodge. It is high time I should get to know all my people at 
 Tregarthen. Wasn't it her husband who, as the Scotch sexton 
 put it, was so uncommon wasteful in wives'?' 
 
 ' I think so, Nancy is his third at any rate, and was warned 
 more than once against his drinking and unsteady habits.
 
 WOMEN'S RIGHTS AND MEN'S WRONGS. 1 1 
 
 " Never you mind," she said, " I know what I'm about," and 
 so it proved she did. Papa always said that woman was a 
 genius. One Saturday night, not long after their marriage, 
 Polwhele returned home in a condition rather unsteady than 
 otherwise, having spent all his wages in drink, and proceeded 
 systematically to break cups and saucers, plates and dishes, 
 every brittle thing that he could lay his hands upon. Nancy did 
 not attempt to interfere ; on Sunday she let him sleep himself 
 sober, and on Monday she said nothing by way of reproach as 
 he went off to his work in the fields looking rather ashamed of 
 himself. At mid-day she took him his dinner as usual tied up 
 in a clean handkerchief; the hungry man seized the pasty, 
 opened his clasp-knife and eagerly cut off a piece, but alas ! 
 instead of the expected slices of potato and turnip and savoury 
 pieces of meat, the crust contained nothing but fragments of 
 broken earthenware. " You brought me no money, and I had 
 only a little flour in the house," Nancy said, quietly, in reply to 
 his blank look, " so I did the best I could." It was by such 
 practical sermons as these, without any scolding or quarrelling, 
 that she succeeded in entirely reforming him.' 
 
 ' I wish I could think it would be as much for the general 
 well-being that the women who take up the public questions 
 we have been discussing should have things all their own way, 
 for I have no doubt that, whatever they insist upon, that sooner 
 or later they are sure to obtain ; whether they or any one else 
 will be the happier for it is another question. For my part I 
 think it is quite possible that in striving to exact to the utmost 
 their rights, they will find themselves in the position of the 
 traveller who, because a certain railroad allowed passengers to 
 carry a hundred-and-fifty pounds weight of luggage, thought it 
 a pity not to get all that belonged to him, and so, whether he 
 wanted it or not, always travelled with the full amount, to his 
 infinite inconvenience in going from station to station.' 
 
 ' If your knowledge of facts equalled your aptness of illus- 
 tration, sir, you would be a formidable antagonist ; but wait 
 till you have talked to Madeline and the Professor, and see if you
 
 12 .: MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 will dare to bring forward good metaphors any longer in support 
 of a bad cause. The point is though that you are going to stay, 
 that is settled 1 ' 
 
 ' Well, yes, on one condition.' 
 
 ' Namely 1 ' 
 
 ' Namely, that for every quarter of an hour Miss Acton has 
 to discourse upon women's rights, I shall have at least fifteen 
 minutes given to me for the consideration of men's wrongs. 
 Eh, Nep, old boy, don't you think that's a fair bargain.' The 
 fine old retriever who had been lately showing symptoms that 
 the conversation was getting out of his depth, gave a short 
 ecstatic bark at being personally addressed, and appeared, so 
 far as tail and eye could speak, to be profoundly impressed by 
 the turn affairs were taking, as Mrs. Silverton with open satis- 
 faction replied, 
 
 ' Very well, you shall have your way, only I warn you, you 
 had better find something besides your own unaided wits to fall 
 back upon. Let me suggest De Kock's Madame Pantalon, or 
 Besant's Revolt of Man, or Goldwin Smith's logical and courteous 
 pamphlet.' 
 
 'Spare me, spare me, I feel already as if I were back at 
 Oxford, and going in for " greats " after only a week's prepar- 
 ation. I know your friend perfectly without an introduction, 
 
 " She has views upon co-education, 
 And the principal needs of the nation, 
 And she writes in a handwriting clerky, 
 And she talks with an emphasis jerky, 
 And she paints upon tiles in the sweetest of styles, 
 But she doesn't know chicken from turkey." ' 
 
 'Doesn't she though, if it is Madeline to whom you are 
 so profanely referring, you had better attend the Kensington 
 School of Cookery first, if you mean to cross swords with her on 
 this subject. But that reminds me I have some things to look 
 after in the house, and I really think the kindest thing I can 
 do is to leave you to evolve a few ideas from your cigar, which
 
 WOMEN'S BIGHTS AND MEN'S WRONGS. 1 3 
 
 is, I know, an aid to reflection that the masculine mind usually 
 finds indispensable.' 
 
 ' As a sedative, yes, in such cases as the present. If you 
 would only have let me believe that your friend would have mis- 
 taken me (chicken as I am) for a turkey, my spirit would have 
 revived within me, as it is, well, I think a tonic will be 
 advisable, so I shall stroll over Hillsborough come Nep, old 
 boy ! and down to the bathing cove. Do not keep luncheon 
 for me, I shall take my flask and sandwich- tin.'
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 ' JE ne suis ni pour le droit feminin centre le droit masculin, ni pour 
 le droit ruasculin centre le droit feminin, je suis pour le droit humain.' 
 
 EMILE DE GIRARDIN. 
 
 1 They are slaves who fear to speak 
 For the fallen and the weak, 
 They are slaves who will not choose 
 Hatred, scoffing, and abuse, 
 Eather than in silence shrink 
 From the truth they needs must think, 
 They are slaves who dare not be 
 In the right with two or three.' 
 
 LONGFELLOW. 
 
 ' They err, believe me, who set down 
 As merely passion-blinded 
 Those ladies whom we title with 
 The epithet " strong-minded." ' 
 
 1 Think nought a trifle, though it small appear, 
 Small sands the mountain, moments make the year, 
 And trifles life.' 
 
 ' Let her make herself her own 
 To give or keep, to live and learn to be 
 All that harms not distinctive womanhood.' 
 
 TENNYSON, The Princess.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 A STRONG-MINDED WOMAN. 
 
 IT was the loveliest of August mornings when Sir Henry Tre- 
 garthen, leaving his sister to look after her guests and her 
 domestic duties, started for a brisk walk over Hillsborough, a 
 climb down one of its most inaccessible sides, and a plunge into 
 the water below sparkling in a beautiful little cove that nestled 
 confidingly into the embrace of the grim North Devon cliffs. 
 It was nearly an hour before either dog or master both being 
 semi-amphibious creatures could think their swim had lasted 
 long enough ; but although Nep, or, to speak with due 
 respect, Neptune, loved the ocean as behoved its king, while 
 Sir Henry's bathing propensities were so notorious that he 
 would never have earned commendation from the inn chamber- 
 maid as ' a nice clean gentleman which made no splashing, used 
 the corner of his towel, and guv no trouble,' they were both 
 destined on this particular morning to have more of the re- 
 freshing element than they had bargained for. 
 
 Scarcely had they finished their luncheon before clouds 
 began to gather in the sky, and just as Sir Henry had settled 
 himself with his back against an accommodating rock, his hat 
 over his eyes, and a cigar in his mouth, prepared thoroughly to 
 enjoy the dolce far niente, which is the legitimate offspring of 
 active physical exertions, a heavy drop, and then another, and 
 another, fell upon his ungloved hands. 
 
 'If it be true that he will do most who knows how to do 
 nothing thoroughly,' he said, slowly rousing himself, ' I was 
 just thinking I ought to have a career before me, but it is 
 very evident that I am not to be allowed to exercise my 
 capacity for idleness this afternoon.'
 
 18 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 ' Come Nep, wake up old boy ! you are not half a dog ; 
 why didn't you tell me it was beginning to rain 1 ' 
 
 Nep's only explanation was a short expressive bark and a 
 flourish of his magnificent tail, but he had so little doubt, on 
 seeing his master rise, of the right course to be pursued under 
 the circumstances, that, taking the initiative, he bounded up 
 the zig-zag path on the face of the cliff, growing more and more 
 excited as Sir Henry's fleetness of foot made it almost a neck- 
 and-neck race between them. On reaching the top they were 
 somewhat out of the ordinary route, but Sir Henry, who during 
 the last week or two had explored the neighbourhood to some 
 purpose, turned into a lane overarched by trees and lined with 
 moisture-loving ferns, and soon they emerged into daylight on 
 a hill that by pedestrians was often chosen as a short cut from 
 Ilfracombe to Crag's Nest, the carriage-road winding nearly 
 two miles round. They had still some distance to walk, 
 however, before reaching home, and Sir Henry was not sorry 
 to see the clouds already breaking ; but it continued to rain, 
 and it was with some surprise, therefore, that on turning a 
 corner in this little-frequented road he saw just ahead a solitary 
 figure, evidently that of a lady, and a young one to judge by 
 her slender figure and brisk elastic step. It could not be his 
 sister, and surely none of her acquaintances would choose to 
 mount the hill in such a heavy thunder-shower. His doubts 
 were soon, however, set at rest ; she stopped at a point where 
 the road branched to the right and left, and waiting until he 
 came up, said, with a slightly heightened colour, but no 
 hesitation of manner, 
 
 ' Excuse me, but can you tell me which of these roads leads 
 to Crag's Nest 1 ' 
 
 ' Crag's Nest is over the brow of this hill to the right, but I 
 am going there myself and shall have great pleasure iti showing 
 you the way,' he replied, raising his hat an extra inch or two in 
 tribute to the vision of a lovely, and at this moment flushed as 
 it was with exercise, very girlish-looking face which inspired him 
 with sudden anxiety to know something more of its owner.
 
 A STRONG-MINDED WOMAN. 19 
 
 'Thank you,' was the frank reply. 'I feel quite humiliated, 
 for I thought when once I had taken my bearings correctly I 
 should have no difficulty in finding my way from the station, 
 but I must have taken a wrong turning somewhere or I should 
 have been under cover by this time.' 
 
 ' I am not surprised at any stranger missing the road, it 
 would have been more wonderful if you had not,' replied Sir 
 Henry, courteously, while all the time he kept saying to 
 himself, 
 
 ' Station bound for Crag's Nest surely it must no, it 
 cannot possibly be that this gentle, soft-voiced girl, with her 
 gold-brown hair and modest eyes, should be Nellie's strong- 
 minded friend, Miss Acton, besides she was not expected until 
 nearly dinner-time, the carriage was ordered to meet the six 
 o'clock train, I know still shall I risk the supposition 1 
 Well, it can do no harm.' 
 
 ' I am Mrs. Silverton's brother,' he said,, turning to his 
 companion, ' and if I am not wrong in thinking you are the 
 friend she was expecting from London, I must apologise on her 
 behalf for your not having been met at the station.' 
 
 ' Oh, I concluded at once that Nellie had not received my 
 letter saying that I would take an earlier train, and as the flys 
 at the station did not look tempting while the country and 
 weather at that moment did, I decided to find my way on 
 foot, leaving my luggage to follow ; a not very wise proceeding 
 perhaps, but I do so enjoy a good walk.' 
 
 ' I cannot personally regret your decision, and I am sure 
 my sister will be delighted to have you a few hours sooner 
 than she expected ; but if you had been in Devonshire or 
 Cornwall before you would have known that the " Grandmother 
 of all buckets," as the Persians call drenches like this after- 
 noon's, is very apt to come unannounced ; we have no climate 
 in this part of the world, only weather, as some one with more 
 ti uth than politeness said of us, and so being accustomed to 
 eccentric meteorological conditions we are more or less prepared 
 for them, but you '
 
 20 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 ' You see that I am equally superior to circumstances,' with 
 a glance at the macintosh which, though not ' a thing of 
 beauty ' in itself, lost half its ugliness thanks to the graceful 
 contour of the figure it protected, 'I am accustomed to go 
 about in all sorts of weather.' 
 
 'You seem amused,' said Sir Henry, as he noticed a 
 twitching of the lips and an unmistakable dimple on the cheek 
 nearest him. 
 
 ' To tell the truth/ replied Madeline, no longer attempting 
 to control the mischievous smile which had been gradually 
 irradiating her face as Sir Henry spoke, ' I was thinking that 
 the contented old lady who said, " We ought to be glad to 
 have bad weather rather than none at all," could not have 
 been a west countrywoman, for I always notice that Cornish 
 and Devonshire people are hard upon their own climate.' 
 
 ' It is very good-natured of you not to quarrel with it after 
 such a reception.' 
 
 ' I hope my magnanimity may never have worse to try it. 
 for, in the first place, See ! it scarcely rains at all now ; how 
 lovely the country looks ! and in the second I have been 
 fortunate enough to make the acquaintance of two of the 
 Crag's Nest party without the formality of an introduction,' 
 she replied, turning to pat Neptune who appeared to be as 
 much impressed by their new acquaintance as was his master, 
 and from this moment kept pushing his nose against her hand 
 to intimate that he had no objection to be further noticed. 
 ' Please forgive my putting you in the same category,' she con- 
 tinued, glancing up from the dog to his master, ' but I have 
 the most unbounded respect for dogs.' 
 
 ' And a very limited one for men so I understand 1 ' 
 
 ' If you really think that,' said Madeline, with some amuse- 
 ment, ' I am afraid you must, in this respect, be like the old 
 Scotch professor drawing a conclusion because it will not 
 follow.' 
 
 ' I do not know that I should quarrel with you much,' said 
 Sir Henry, ' even if you felt the contempt which you are polite
 
 A STRONG-MINDED WOMAN. 21 
 
 enough to disclaim, for in certain moods I am inclined myself 
 to think with Victor Hugo that " a butterfly is a marvellous 
 work of nature which does its Maker credit, but that the 
 human animal is a profound mistake."' 
 
 'I cannot agree with you quite, for of all branches of 
 sciences I think psychology offers but you are only joking,' 
 and Madeline, catching the expression of her companion's 
 face, laughed at having been beguiled into a serious inter- 
 pretation of a mere absurdity so obviously meant to draw her 
 out. 
 
 ' Then you do not think that " the boasted lord of nature 
 is at the best a feeble creature"]' Sir Henry persisted. 
 
 'Generally speaking, no,' Madeline replied, guardedly, 'If 
 Nellie has given you that idea of me ' 
 
 ' Oh, no, she only told me well, in fact, she said quite 
 the contrary, but I find it difficult to shake off the idea that 
 the lady-supporters of women's rights think, with the King of 
 Brobdignag, that men are " the most pernicious race of little 
 odious vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface 
 of the earth." ' 
 
 ' So far from that we count many of the most thoughtful 
 men among our warmest friends and supporters, and though 
 nothing is more common, I know, than the idea that women 
 who ask for themselves and others freedom to live their own 
 lives, untrammelled by ignorance and prejudice, are antagonistic 
 to men ; are trying, in short, to establish a sort of rivalry, I 
 assure you that it is not the case.' Madeline spoke quickly and 
 with rising colour, but as her companion only looked at her 
 with interested inquiry as though waiting for her to finish her 
 sentence, she went on in a low voice, with slow and half- 
 hesitating accents ; ' where interests are so indissolubly linked 
 together as are those of men and women, there can be, I think, 
 no real antagonism of position or action ; it is only the time- 
 honoured accumulation of prejudice obscuring their better 
 judgment which makes otherwise reasonable people maintain 
 that the petition for equal legislation, for leave to develop the
 
 22 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 faculties with which they have been endowed, is taken up by 
 women in a spirit of rebellion against tyrants and oppressors 
 rather than as an appeal to the reason and tenderness of those 
 whom they know to be noble and true at heart.' 
 
 ' I am very glad to have it on your authority,' replied Sir 
 Henry, with quite a new interest in the subject under dis- 
 cussion, ' that there is no bitterness of feeling such as I sus- 
 pected ; but I must confess there has seemed to me something 
 very much like it in one or two of the remarks in some of the 
 papers you have sent my sister, a certain amount of hardness, 
 and (if you will allow me to say so of arguments for which 
 most probably you claim the monopoly of logic) a onesidedness 
 which did not impress me favourably.' 
 
 ' I suppose it is sometimes thought advisable to fight people 
 with their own weapons ; at any rate, those who see only one 
 side of a question ought to be shown the other ; and if here 
 and there a too strong feeling of partisanship shows itself, I 
 assure you that as a rule it is, as I said before, against 
 ignorance and prejudice in the abstract we contend, not against 
 reasonable and liberal-minded men, many of whom are amongst 
 our warmest friends and supporters.' 
 
 ' But might not the same be said by your opponents, that 
 they do not mean any disrespect to women in general, but 
 only object to the outrageous claims of a very small minority.' 
 
 ' It rests with those who rank themselves amongst our 
 opponents to prove, firstly, that the claims made are outrageous ; 
 secondly, that they are so feebly urged as to be unworthy of 
 attention.' 
 
 ' They would have very little chance against you, I am sure, 
 but please remember that personally my attitude is rather that 
 of a friendly critic than an enemy. I do not want to oppose a 
 movement in which my sister takes so keen an interest ; which 
 my brother-in-law, although a Conservative, has been taught to 
 support ; and which that thoughtfulest of the thoughtful, Pro- 
 fessor Wray, openly favoxirs ; but at the same time I cannot 
 profess to believe what I doubt, or support what does not com-
 
 A STRONG-MINDED WOMAN. 23 
 
 mend itself to my reason ; woman's suffrage, for instance, the 
 throwing open to them all professions without reserve, and 
 many other things which I believe are insisted upon with more 
 or less emphasis.' 
 
 ' I can quite understand these things seeming unreasonable 
 at first to any one who has not thought much about them,' 
 was the reply ; ' and I have not forgotten the story of the 
 energetic old woman who kept on scrubbing her kitchen 
 floor so often and so hard, that at last a hole appeared, 
 through which, by-and-by, she fell into the cellar and broke 
 her arm, so I certainly should not have introduced the subject, 
 having a wholesome dread of indiscreet zeal ; still I should like 
 to persuade you that the advocates of women's advancement 
 are not mere madcap reformers who are trying to overthrow 
 nature, to sweep away all private virtues, and " sap the very 
 basis of all civilised society." ' 
 
 ' If you will only undertake to argue out the subject with 
 me I shall be delighted, and to tell the truth I believe Nellie 
 intended to propose something in the shape of a general dis- 
 cussion to you and the rest of the party, for with the 
 enthusiasm of a neophyte she has made up her mind to my 
 conversion ; I must warn you, however, that I have the 
 character of being an obstinate fellow who rarely changes his 
 mind, and, unlike Neptune, never knows when he's beaten.' 
 
 ' So much the better for truth when you do espouse it,' 
 said Madeline ; ' but what a lovely view.' They had just 
 reached the summit of the hill, and nestling into one of its 
 hollows below lay Crag's Nest, whose well - kept lawn and 
 gardens stretched terrace beyond terrace down the shelving 
 side of the cliff, while the sea below lay shimmering in the rays 
 of the sinking sun, which seemed to shine with redoubled power 
 after its temporary extinction. The house itself, once pure 
 Elizabethan, had gradually assumed an individuality of its own, 
 not to be recognised of architects, but it looked, nevertheless, 
 picturesque and homelike, protected by a grove of pine-trees on 
 the bleakest sides, and covered to the very attic windows with
 
 24 MEN, WOMEN", AND PROGRESS. 
 
 flowering creepers, in bold contrast to which stood out the 
 grand headlands and rock-strewn summits of the hills behind. 
 ' One must live in a city to appreciate a scene like this,' said 
 Madeline, leaning on the gate, and drawing long happy breaths 
 of infinite content. ' I think even the cynical Frenchman could 
 hardly have said here that " nature was too greon and not well 
 lighted." ' 
 
 Her companion, however, was apparently more interested at 
 this moment in the contemplation of human nature in the person 
 of the fair woman whose face he had been studying undetected 
 for the last few minutes. ' I must say,' he replied, with some 
 irrelevance as it seemed to her, ' it requires no little moral 
 courage and disinterestedness on the part of a lady to take up 
 a cause which, in many instances, meets with nothing but 
 ridicule or contempt.' In strange contradiction to his usual 
 character, Sir Henry's opinions appeared to have been rapidly 
 modified since the morning, when he had had small sympathy 
 to bestow upon ' feminine reformers ' as he called them. 
 
 ' On the contrary,' replied Madeline, 'I think it would argue 
 the most culpable selfishness and cowardice not to oppose in- 
 justice which might be remedied if people, men and women 
 too, were not so apathetic, and instead of saying " really I 
 cannot understand what there is in this particular form of 
 abuse to make it worth spending time and money over," or 
 " that is such a trivial matter, what is the use of taking it to 
 heart," were to rouse themselves to a true understanding of the 
 evils which surround them, and a determination to do their 
 best, little though it may be, to surmount them.' 
 
 ' Whatever saves people from the trouble of thinking,' said 
 Sir Henry, ' is, I suppose, sure to be popular ; one appreciates all 
 the more, though, individuality and thoroughness when one does 
 find them.' His words were emphasised by tone and glance ; 
 but Madeline's face wore a look of abstraction as she gazed 
 earnestly far out to sea, and certainly, even if she heard his 
 words, made no personal application of the same. Her com- 
 panion watched her with an expression half of admiring
 
 A STROXG-MINDED WOMAN. 25 
 
 astonishment, half of disappointment, that she appeared so 
 self-sufficing, so composed, so different to most pretty girls it 
 had been his lot to meet. ' If it be true, as Steele says, that 
 " one must think well to look well," ' he said to himself, ' then 
 no doubt Nellie's friend carries a passport in her face that 
 must be available everywhere, still I am not sure that an 
 entire absence of self- consciousness on the part of a woman 
 is, at all times, attractive ; however, it is a consolation that 
 Miss Acton in the flesh does not answer to the portrait of a 
 Medusa, which I have been carrying about with me for the 
 last twenty -four hours; she is very straightforward and 
 pleasant to talk to, has plenty of character, and would make a 
 stanch friend no doubt, though, probably, an unsatisfactory 
 wife, even were she not much too self-reliant to think of the 
 possibility of marrying, or to encourage any one else to think 
 of it ; ' and having thus summed up the character of his new 
 acquaintance on the whole so favourably, he was quite pre- 
 pared, when they entered the house some five minutes later, to 
 meet his sister's questioning glance with a caress more re- 
 assuring than any words, and so the subject of his urgent 
 business in London was dropped by mutual consent.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 ' CO-EDUCATION of the sexes is preferred where practised, because it is 
 
 (1) natural, following the usual structure of the family and of society ; 
 
 (2) customary, or in harmony with the habits and sentiments of every- 
 day life and law ; (3) impartial, affording to both sexes equal opportunities 
 for culture ; (4) economical, using school-funds to the best advantage ; 
 (5) convenient, both to superintendent and teachers, in assigning, grading, 
 instruction, and discipline ; and (6) beneficial to the minds, morals, 
 habits, and development of the pupils.' Pamphlet published by the 
 United States Bureau of Education, containing the results of an inquiry 
 into the effects of co-educating the sexes in 340 cities and large towns in the 
 Union. 
 
 ' On the cultivation of the minds of women depends the wisdom of 
 men.' SHEKIDAN. 
 
 ' Pourquoi aurions nous done un privilege ? Est-ce parceque nous 
 sommes les plus forts ? Mais c'est une veritable injustice. Nous em- 
 ployons toutes sortes de moyens pour leur abattre le courage. Les forces 
 seraient egales si 1'education 1'etait aussi. Eprouvons les dans les talents 
 que 1'education n'a point affaiblis, et nous verrons si nous sommes si forts.' 
 
 MONTESQUIEU, Lettres Persannes, 38. 
 
 ' The intellectual and moral differences between the sexes seem to me 
 entirely the result of education, using that word in its most extensive 
 sense to comprehend not merely the instruction received from teachers, 
 but the habits of mind imposed by situation, or by the physical organiza- 
 tion of the human frame.' DUGALD STEWABT. 
 
 ' Long prejudice, an inferior education, and a perennial legal inequality 
 and injustice, have created that apparent intellectual inferiority [of 
 women] which has been converted into an argument of continued 
 oppression.' MAZZINI, On the Duties of Man.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE EDUCATION OF WOMEN. 
 
 IT was, on the whole, a pleasant little party assembled round 
 the dinner-table at Crag's Nest the following evening ; not too 
 large to allow of the conversation being general, and not made 
 up of such incongruous elements as to prevent free and friendly 
 discussion of whatever subject might be uppermost. Mr. 
 Silverton, the host, looked what he was a well-bred, honest, 
 kindly, country gentleman, fund of out-door life and exercise, 
 but reading dutifully his Times, his Quarterly and Saturday 
 Review ; a Conservative, as the Silvertons had always been, but 
 taking a genuine interest in the progress of matters social, 
 scientific, and political, and occasionally alarming his more 
 rigid Tory acquaintances by his general breadth of view. 
 
 It was not possible to see him and his young wife five 
 minutes together without feeling that, different though they 
 were in character, they understood each other perfectly, while 
 he was evidently as proud of her her brightness and intelli- 
 gence, her sparkling and yet not thoughtless nature as when 
 he brought her to Crag's Nest a bride six months ago. But 
 his manner was gentle and courteous to all women, even to the 
 not very attractive specimen of the sex who sat on his right 
 hand, giving one ear to his discourse, the other to whatever her 
 husband might be saying on the opposite side of the table ; for 
 Mrs. Knagge, although to a chance acquaintance she might 
 seem as neutral tinted mentally as she was physically, was, 
 with all her gentleness of voice and manner, and seemingly 
 delicate physique, a born autocrat, who since her husband's 
 retirement from the army, where all regimental minutiae 
 received the benefit of her maternal supervision, had with
 
 30 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 doubly strong, though soft and invisible reins, kept well in hand 
 husband, dependents, and any friends who could be brought to 
 believe in her. The Major, happily for him, had not the 
 remotest idea that he was under control, and no one knew this 
 better than his wife, who encouraged his somewhat didactic and 
 overbearing manner in public, sometimes even occasionally join- 
 ing in with a modest disclaimer of any leaning towards feminine 
 independence, well knowing that she controlled the springs 
 which would in a moment turn the gallant Major round, and 
 twist him into any form she pleased. 
 
 He was a stout, florid, and, on the whole, perhaps, rather 
 imposing looking man, with as befitted his profession a 
 remarkable development of the organs that to phrenologists 
 betoken combativeness ; his forehead, on the other hand, was 
 of a somewhat retiring disposition, which accounted, possibly, 
 for his not being an intellectual giant, although he had in early 
 youth spent some years at a great public school, where he suc- 
 ceeded in acquiring a smattering of Greek arid Latin, a vile hand- 
 writing, and a tolerably inaccurate knowledge of elementary arith- 
 metic; hisname had also appeared on the books of a college which, 
 as somebody said, ought to be the most learned in the world, 
 since ' most of the men brought a little learning with them and no 
 one ever carried any away.' But however this may be, there 
 is no doubt that Major Knagge since that time had accumulated 
 not a few ideas and prejudices, while nothing (next to fox- 
 hunting) gave him more delight than to air these ideas and do 
 battle for these prejudices with some opponent worthy of his 
 mettle. 
 
 Professor Wray, who seemed to appreciate his good fortune 
 in sitting between his hostess and Miss Acton, whom he had 
 known from a child, was a man apparently of about forty, with 
 a slight stoop, a long beard which, hiding all the lower part of 
 his face, made more effective the penetrating glance of his deep- 
 set eyes, and an almost abnormal development of forehead, ren- 
 dered still more conspicuous by the thinness of the hair upon 
 his temples.
 
 THE EDUCATION OF WOMEN. 31 
 
 He was talking with great warmth and interest to his 
 companions, when suddenly he became aware of certain glances 
 of almost pathetic alarm (as a few words of their conversation 
 were carried across the table) being cast upon him by Miss 
 Wynter, Mr. Silverton's aunt, a good, kind-hearted old lady, 
 and intelligent withal, but a foe to innovations, and inclined to 
 be shocked by any approach to freedom of thought and dis- 
 cussion. It was not, therefore, a matter for wonder that 
 her eyes grew rounder and her lips thinner, while her neat grey 
 curls shook excitedly in her keen disapprobation of what she 
 heard. 
 
 ' The experiment of mixed schools has been very exhaust- 
 ively tried in America,' Professor Wray was saying ; ' and 
 though, no doubt, the question of the moral, intellectual, and 
 physical education of girls is a very wide and complicated one, 
 and depends on many varying conditions of individual cha- 
 racter and circumstances, yet I cannot held thinking that if we 
 were to adopt in England generally the system of co-education, 
 we should find in it a solution for many of our educational 
 difficulties.' 
 
 ' I fear,' said Madeline, ' that it will be a long time before 
 the prejudices of English society on this point are overcome ; 
 people will not see that it is to co-education we must look to 
 cultivate the highest bonds of sympathy between men and 
 women ; and so boys and girls, who are destined in the future 
 to form close and life-long connexions, are taught not only 
 apart, but on entirely different lines.' 
 
 ' I trust the prejudices of English society against these new 
 ideas,' said Miss Wynter, gravely, ' will never diminish. I am 
 
 afraid it \vould be a sad day if ever ' a slow shake of the 
 
 head finished what the speaker could not find words strong 
 enough to express. 
 
 ' I really think,' answered Madeline, smiling kindly at her 
 critic across the table, ' if we examine the dangerous-looking 
 ghosts, we shall find them nothing worse than scooped turnips 
 illuminated by farthing dips. To begin with, the subject we
 
 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 were discussing has, at any rate, not the demerit of absolute 
 novelty.' 
 
 ' So far from being a new idea,' said Professor Wray, in 
 reply to her glance, ' it was, as you know, advocated more than 
 2200 years ago by the wisest of Greek philosophers. Seneca 
 and Plutarch also held some views on the training of girls far 
 in advance of many modern conceptions of what constitutes a 
 liberal education.' 
 
 ' What is this I hear 1 ' exclaimed Major Knagge, who 
 scented battle from afar. ' Can any one in their senses really 
 advocate teaching girls and boys indiscriminately, and allowing 
 them to learn, the same things'?' 
 
 ' I am afraid we must plead guilty,' said Professor Wray ; 
 'and to take just one point I refer to the matter of physical 
 training. No girls would be the worse, and the whole human 
 race would undoubtedly be the better, if healthy growth and 
 development were universally as much encouraged in girls as 
 it is in boys.' 
 
 ' I think boys also,' said Madeline, ' would be no less the 
 gainers if each one of them were as a matter of course taught 
 (I will not say needlework, for fear of sowing dragon's teeth) 
 some simple mechanical employment by which their hands 
 might be kept out of mischief, and which in after years they 
 might fall back upon, as women do, to relieve their feelings or 
 rest an overtired brain.' 
 
 ' It always has seemed to me,' said Mr. Silver-ton, ' a very 
 sensible notion to let boys of every rank learn some trade by 
 way of pastime : carving, or book-binding, or carpentering; but 
 I think we should draw the line at needlework. It always 
 strikes me as an effeminate thing for a man to busy himself as 
 some do with embroidery, or knitting, or crewel-work ; a 
 woman's delicate fingers, on the other hand, seem made for 
 such employments.' 
 
 ' Men always drift from sense into sentiment upon such 
 subjects as this,' said Mrs. Silverton, with a mischievous glance 
 at her husband. ' For my part, I like to see men able to em-
 
 THE EDUCATION OP WOMEN. 33 
 
 ploy their fingers usefully in needlework or anything else, 
 instead of having no other resource from reading or writing 
 but lounging or loafing about, so ashamed of possessing hands 
 that they carefully hide them in their pockets, while iu their 
 conscious idleness they are so uncomfortable themselves as to 
 make every one else the same. I mean to keep a stock of paper- 
 knives and uncut books in the drawing-room for their benefit.' 
 
 ' You are a little severe/ said Miss Acton ; ' they do not, 
 many of them (I am speaking of those to whom the name of 
 ''gentleman" applies of course), take refuge in their pockets, 
 even when they apparently find their hands a superfluity ; and 
 I know many men who, when kept at home by weather or any 
 other reason, have always some mechanical occupation to fall 
 back upon ; either, like Professor Wray, they are naturalists and 
 have specimens to sort, mount, and classify ; or they are clever 
 with their pencil, or at wood-carving ; or, if anglers, it may be 
 fly-making. I do not think men need necessarily sew or per- 
 petrate with a needle impossible flowers, and call it art em- 
 broidery ; but, at the same time, though elaborate stitching 
 may never be useful to them in after years, I quite agree with 
 you that needlework in its training for eye and hand is a 
 valuable branch of education both for boys and girls, at least 
 in the earlier standards, though there is an inordinate amount 
 of time devoted to it still in many girls' schools, so much so as 
 to be a serious hindrance to their education.' 
 
 ' Even you,' replied Mrs. Silverton, ' seem to doubt whether 
 any knowledge of sewing, except as a training for eye and hand, 
 is necessary for men. But I am quite sure that soldiers and 
 sailors, whether officers or privates, to say nothing of travellers 
 and backwoodsmen, must often regret their want of training 
 and clumsiness in the use of a needle and thread. I am sure, 
 Major Knagge, you will endorse what I say 1 ?' 
 
 ' My opinion,' replied that gentleman, ' sorry as I am to 
 contradict a lady, is that whatever a man may be driven to by 
 extremity, the sewing on of buttons and straps is for him a very 
 undignified and unsuitable occupation.' 
 
 D
 
 34 MEX, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 ' It never struck me in that light/ replied Sir Henry, con- 
 cealing an involuntary smile at the irresistibly comic affectation 
 of being xitterly crushed with which his sister turned towards 
 him, ' the dignity that wants nursing cannot be worth much ; 
 but, at the same time, I do not quite agree that it would be 
 good for boys and girls to be trained upon exactly parallel 
 lines. Some defmer of differences said, that "the natural 
 impulse of girls is to do exactly what they are told to do ; of 
 boys, to do exactly what they are told not to do ;" and I agree 
 with him thoroughly in his opinion that women are the " better 
 half of creation " ; but no one can deny that the mind, the 
 sentiments, the whole temperament of the one sex differs toto 
 coelo from that of the other, and that therefore what would be 
 perfectly fitting for a woman might be effeminate for a man, 
 and vice versd.' 
 
 ' The minds of women I should say,' replied the Professor, 
 ' differ no more from those of men than that of one man or 
 woman from another. The bane of our educational system in 
 the past has been the universal assumption that intellectually 
 and morally girls were to be judged by a different standard 
 from boys, while, as a fact, the very faults with which they 
 are charged are just the result of this system and nothing 
 else; taught to skim surfaces, how should they have been 
 thorough and accurate, decked with a mere veneering of 
 trifling and superficially-learnt accomplishments, which have 
 been well compared to the female ant's wings, meant to bear 
 their possessors to a settlement and then to be nipped off 
 and discarded? Are vanity, emptiness, and utter frivolity 
 an extraordinary result 1 Why, you might as well feed boys 
 upon solid wholesome food, and girls upon jellies and trifles, 
 and in explanation of the inevitable result say that it is 
 natural to a girl's constitution to be feeble and sickly.' 
 
 'But does not the attraction between the two sexes in a 
 great measure lie in these very differences ? ' 
 
 ' In one sense, yes, though I have often heard the word 
 effeminate applied to men, and masculine to women in reproach
 
 THE EDUCATION OF WOMEN. 35 
 
 for those very qualities, the more general interchange of which 
 would be to the advantage of both ; a boy's domestic and 
 moral training has in many ways been just as much neglected in. 
 the past as the full development of a girl's physical and intel- 
 lectual faculties. How rarely have boys been taught the 
 virtues of self-denial, gentleness, purity 1 How still more rarely 
 in girls have courage, abstract reasoning, thoroughness, 
 accuracy, a strict sense of honour, been thought worthy of 
 cultivation] By assimilating the education of the two sexes, 
 by enabling men and women to share those subjects of intel- 
 lectual interest which are the noblest of life's pleasures, by having 
 one standard for both of education, work, citizenship, by preparing 
 them equally for the serious business of life, not making one 
 sex more than the other dependent on the chances of marriage, 
 you will, so far from putting a barrier between them, only, as 
 Miss Acton suggested, give them a broader platform of 
 sympathy, common interests, mutual understanding, and help- 
 fulness, upon which to meet and prove that the so-called "new " 
 systems of education have brought about no revolution of the 
 primary laws of nature.' 
 
 Sir Henry glanced involuntarily at Madeline on reference 
 being made to her, but seeing her eyes turned towards the 
 speaker with a new earnestness, a something between ad- 
 miration and reverence in their expression, he somewhat 
 abruptly changed the subject. ' I was going to ask you just 
 now,' he said, addressing the Professor, ' in what way you con- 
 sidered the teaching of boys and girls together would prove a 
 solution of many existing educational difficulties 1 ' 
 
 'Would it not on economic grounds alone prove a very 
 great advantage 1 If girls and women are in the future to have 
 the benefit of endowments, which it is but fair that they should 
 share with their brothers, the only means to avoid diminishing 
 the educational privileges that boys now possess in our 
 grammar-schools and other endowed institutions, is to teach the 
 two side by side, effecting at once by this means a saving both 
 in accomodation and in teachers.'
 
 36 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 ' It would never work, my dear sir would never work/ said 
 Major Knagge. 
 
 ' I think the best answer to that is that wherever the system 
 has been tried it has proved a complete success; as, for 
 instance, north of the Tweed; Mr. Jolly, the Government, 
 Inspector of Schools for Scotland, gives the strongest testimony 
 in its favour ; the effect on both sexes he considers so good, 
 that he would, he says, be very sorry to see the practice dis- 
 continued. And (i, propos of this, he mentions a clergyman 
 holding a high position in Glasgow who, though educating his 
 daughters at home, sent them to a large mixed school fora certain 
 part of every day for the sake of its mental and moral effects.* 
 From the United States we have exactly the same testimony/ 
 
 ' I was told by an American lady not long ago,' said 
 Madeline, ' that at one time she had the strongest personal pre- 
 judice against mixed schools ; she was herself a very successful 
 teacher, but when it was proposed that an existing school for boys 
 should join hers for girls, on the plea that it would improve the 
 former, her reply was, " Why should I on that account sacrifice 
 my girls 1" Having been persuaded at last to give the experiment 
 a trial, she honestly said, " You should not have made your 
 arguments so narrow, since my school has consisted half of boys 
 I find the change has improved both, and my girls are more 
 ambitious, more obedient, and more ladylike." I need scarcely 
 say that she is now one of the warmest adherents of the 
 system.' 
 
 ' I should have said,' answered the Major, 'that as regards 
 the girls, the more natiiral resiilt would have been to turn 
 their silly little heads and fill them with frivolity and nonsense 
 at the expense of their lessons.' 
 
 ' Yoii cannot be expected to change preconceived opinions 
 at the first onslaught,' replied Professor Wray, ' but at the same 
 time such facts as that just mentioned by Miss Acton are very 
 stubborn things, and from what I have heard, observed, and 
 
 * See Pamphlet by A. W. Bennett, M.A. Is it Desiralle that Boys and 
 Girls should lie Taught Together ?
 
 THE EDUCATION OP WOMEN. 37 
 
 read upon the subject, it is my firm belief that so far from the 
 constant companionship of boys and girls leading to frivolity 
 and worse, where these evils have existed it has been due in a 
 great measure to the unnatural system of isolating the two sexes 
 at an age when they could only act and re-act upon each other 
 for good ; there is no reason why there should not exist between 
 them the pure and healthy intercourse of brothers and 
 sisters.' 
 
 ' You would soon, then, have superannuated,' said Sir Henry, 
 laughing, ' the mistress of a mixed school who hung a net across 
 the recreation-ground, that her pupils, if they must sit side by 
 side during lesson-time, should not at any rate play together. 
 For my part I am ready to believe that the system might answer 
 in elementary schools, but is the plan so desirable in the case 
 of older pupils 1 ' 
 
 ' Here again we have the testimony of facts : you must have 
 heard of the success of the " College for Men and Women " in 
 London ; of the Birmingham Institute again the reports are 
 altogether favourable, while the president of the Leeds College 
 for Men and Women gives as the result of his experience 
 that the system of joint education has acted beneficially on 
 both sexes.' 
 
 ' If men and women,' said Mrs. Silverton, ' may sit side by 
 side in church, at the theatre, or a lecture, what impropriety 
 can there be in students of both sexes attending together 
 systematic courses of instruction in subjects of useful practical 
 knowledge, or contending as candidates in an examination.' 
 
 ' I do not know,' replied her brother, ' that it was exactly 
 the question of propriety that moved me it may be that I 
 spoke in the interests of knowledge I was taking myself back 
 mentally to dear old Magdalen, and wondering whether the 
 presence of attractive girl-graduates would have had a bene- 
 ficial influence upon us as regards steady work. Alas ! my 
 conscience answers most emphatically, " No." ' 
 
 ' For a time possibly not,' said the Professor, ' that is to say, 
 so long as the distraction of novelty lasted ; but men cannot
 
 38 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 long withstand the example of earnestness in work set them by 
 the majority of women-students. The admission of women to- 
 University College (and you will allow that I have hud some 
 experience there) has changed the whole tone of the place. 
 The men behave now like gentlemen ; whatever there may have 
 been, loud or coarse, amongst a certain set, has, in very shame, 
 departed at the presence of the women-students, most of whom 
 (and I have observed them closely) are so much absorbed in 
 their work, and (young though they may be) as a rule so 
 steady and dignified, that any objection to their admission, or 
 doubts as to its good influence must fall to the ground.' 
 
 ' I do not question,' said Major Knagge, ' that on the 
 surface the young people behave like a community of monks 
 and nuns, but ' 
 
 ' Really, Major Knagge,' said Mrs. Silverton, with some 
 warmth, ' you are as bad as Monsieur Revenant, and you will 
 have sooner or later to acknowledge yourself qtiite as igno- 
 miniously beaten.' 
 
 ' But who is Monsieur Revenaut ] ' 
 
 ' A French delegate who was sent some years since to in- 
 quire into, and find as many flaws as possible in the working of 
 university co-education in America. The task appears to have 
 been quite to his mind, for he Avas so strongly prejudiced as 
 even to go the length of wandering night after night about the 
 college precincts, in the sure hope of discovering clandestine 
 meetings, secret correspondence, or something underhand going 1 
 on between the students of different sexes. He was rewarded 
 not exactly as he deserved, for no one shot him as a spy, but 
 he had to return home acknowledging himself mistaken in all 
 his preconceived ideas.' 
 
 'He must have had quite a formidable recantation to 
 make,' said Professor Wray, : if I may judge by what I have 
 seen of French prejudices on kindred subjects to this. Badly 
 as we have learnt the lesson that the more freedom of develop- 
 ment is encouraged in our girls, and the fewer the artificial 
 barriers which are raised between the two sexes, the higher is
 
 THE EDUCATION OF WOMEN. 39 
 
 the general moral tone of a nation, yet I think we are in 
 advance of all other European countries. See the strictness 
 with which young unmarried women in Italy, France, or Spain 
 are kept from knowledge of the world and all intercourse with 
 the opposite sex, except under the strictest espionage, and yet, 
 as a whole, they will scarcely compare favourably with the 
 American girl who, without being in any sense fast, is perfectly 
 free and natural ; who has ideas and is not ashamed of them ; 
 who meets your eye frankly, and is always ready with a civil 
 reply even although you may not have had the benefit of a 
 formal introduction. I refer to such girls as you may meet 
 any day in the United States, travelling alone, self-reliant, 
 fearless, and innocent, for to every man they are sisters or 
 would be, in the very remote chance of their ever requiring 
 protection against insult ; while no woman, however censorious, 
 would point the finger of scorn at them for doing what was 
 customary.' 
 
 ' Quite true,' said Sir Henry, ' and there is, no doubt, a 
 great charm about a highly cultivated American woman, but 
 your saying that we are in advance of our neighbours, the 
 French, in these matters reminds me that M. Dupanloup who, 
 if I mistake not, is the great champion in that country of 
 advanced education for girls does not approve of mixed 
 schools.' 
 
 'I remember,' said Madeline, 'he says, "Let girls learn 
 everything they can, but always in the strictest privacy," as if 
 any living being would have a chance of full and free develop- 
 ment with hands and feet tied, and the free air and light ex- 
 cluded. We must allow though,' she added, ' that he has done 
 a great deal for girls' education in his own and other countries, 
 and that for a bishop of the Eomish Church he is remarkably 
 liberal, we can scarcely expect that he should have so com- 
 pletely thrown off old ideas as to believe in, much less to ad- 
 vocate, mixed schools and colleges.' 
 
 ' But what one has a right to expect,' said Professor Wray, 
 ' is that so-called Protestants should by this time have thrown
 
 40 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 off the rags of mcdiecval monasticism to which arc clue these 
 and many other prejudices that act as barriers and stumbling- 
 blocks in the way of human progress.' 
 
 ' Yes,' said Sir Henry, after a moment's pa\ise, ' I should be 
 very sorry to keep our English girls in cages, feeding them on 
 chickweed or canary-seed ; but, as the old lady said, " there 
 must be some way between. Celery [Scylla] and Cherubs 
 [Charybdis] ; because you keep out of the one, you needn't 
 run smack into the other." A woman like poor Mrs. Pepys, 
 whose gossiping husband bought her a new gown that " the 
 poor wretch should have something wherewith to content her," 
 may be looked upon, I suppose, as the insipid produce of no 
 education and is not very attractive ; but I think there is 
 something still more alarming about the learned Mademoiselle 
 de Launay who, unable to keep her favourite mathematics even 
 out of matters purely sentimental, having observed that her 
 lover in walking home with her in the evening, while formerly 
 taking the two sides of a square through which they passed, 
 now struck across the middle, remarked that his love must 
 have diminished "in the inverse ratio between the diagonal of a 
 rectangular parallelogram and the sum of two adjacent sides." 
 In such a case the only wonder seems to me that the poor 
 man ever became her lover, not that he ran away from her 
 ultimately. Look at the Femmes Savantes of Moliere again.' 
 
 ' Those women,' said Madeline, ' were justly held up to 
 ridicule, for they were nothing more nor less than pedants, pro- 
 foundly ignorant and yet in their own eyes omniscient, they 
 are no fair picture of learned woman, there is all the difference 
 between real and superficial knowledge.' 
 
 * Hear, hear !' said the Professor. 'As George Eliot reminds 
 us in speaking of Romola, " the cramming with Latin and 
 Greek left her as much a woman as if she had done nothing 
 all day but prick her fingers with a needle," the fullest culti- 
 vation and development of all her faculties ought to, and I 
 believe does, bring out all that is most truly feminine in a 
 girl's nature.'
 
 THE EDUCATION OF WOMEN. 41 
 
 ' Yc cs. You are right about a smattering of knowledge, 
 no doubt,' replied Sir Henry ; but I daresay I am prejudiced 
 but still 1 cannot help feeling that to give women a similar 
 training to men would be to run the risk of depriving them of 
 some of their most attractive qualities.' 
 
 ' What are the qualities that my respected brother thinks 
 so attractive in a woman,' asked Mrs. Silverton, ' and yet so 
 easily spoiled that the fullest education is certain to take off 
 their bloom ? Does he think physical weakness desirable 1 If 
 so, then, of course, there is nothing to be said against denying 
 girls those active exercises considered necessary for the develop- 
 ment of vigour in boys. Does he consider it charmingly 
 feminine to be capricious, illogical, excitable, inaccurate ? 
 Then, by all means, stimulate the emotional and imaginative 
 side of their character, and debar them from the severe studies 
 that hold the balance true. If it is a charm for us to be 
 nervous and helpless, then the right way is to nip in the bud 
 any symptoms of self-reliance, and teach girls to think 
 cowardice and dependence pretty and attractive. Oh, Harry, 
 I really hope you are not quite so unreasonable as you seem, 
 for it is just this dread of thoughtful, clever women, which 
 some men assume, that makes many girls who would otherwise 
 have been sensible enough, hide such ideas and knowledge as 
 they possess, and often listen to and talk utter nonsense until 
 both sexes are brought down to a common level of silliness.' 
 
 Sir Henry listened to the young matron's severe remarks 
 with imperturbable good-humour, but apparently little of the 
 earnestness which she would like to have seen in him. 'Are 
 ladies really so much influenced by our opinion and so anxious 
 to please us as this 1 ' he asked, smiling ; ' I should not have 
 thought it though, I have heard of one case certainly of such 
 ultra humility on a bride's part, that she refused to sign any- 
 thing but a cross in the marriage - register, because the bride- 
 groom could not write, and " it would never do," she said, " for a 
 wife to know more than her husband." ' 
 
 ' A most becoming humility,' said Major Knagge, ' they are
 
 42 
 
 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 safe to be a happy couple when the wife at the outset re- 
 cognises her true position in the er marital relation. Men 
 being er reasoning animals, and women, though very 
 charming, yet none the less unreasoning creatures, they are 
 Avise to recognise their secondary place in nature.'* 
 
 ' Which brings iis back to our main argument,' said the 
 Professor, ' I think it is men who, in this claim to a monopoly 
 of reason, prove themselves unreasonable in holding as a 
 natural deficiency what has been simply the result of education. 
 Teach girls, as commonly as you do boys, logic, mathematics, 
 and physical science, make them learn by understanding, not 
 by rote, that is to say develop their reasoning faculties, and I'll 
 warrant you will have no cause to complain of the average 
 w r oman being more unreasonable and inconsequent than the 
 average man.' 
 
 ' My dear sir, do you mean to tell me that any kind of 
 education will ever teach a woman to listen to reason that goes 
 er in opposition to her feelings. No, no, men will be men, 
 and women women, to the world's end ; a woman's vision is is 
 er circumscribed, a man's takes a wider range; man is the 
 pioneer, he goes before, he leads, women from their natural 
 timidity can only be safe in following ; if they do profess any 
 decided er views upon religion, or etiquette, or what not, they 
 are sure to be narrow and prejudiced.' 
 
 Mrs. Silverton raised her eyebrows slightl}* at the words 
 ' narrowness ' and ' prejudice,' but Madeline's face bore a look 
 of genuine amusement as she quietly led the conversation back 
 
 * Lest any reader should think our typical opponent of women's 
 advancement overdrawn, it may be as well to quote a few words from a 
 letter of Dean Burgon's which appeared in the Daily Ncics on April 24th, 
 1884. In speaking of the proposed admission of women to examinations 
 for honours at Oxford, he says it is a " moral revolution ", " disastrous to a 
 woman's best interests " ; she was from the Creation intended to be " the 
 complement of man's being ", "his chief est earthly joy, but all this is 
 brought to an end at once if you teach her to try to be (what she can 
 never become) man's equal, much less man's superior. Henceforth, she 
 will have to be kept down, &c., &c."
 
 THE EDUCATION OF WOMEN. 43 
 
 to the subject under discussion. ' So long as you teach 
 women,' she replied, turning towards Major Knagge, ' that sub- 
 mission to authority and tradition are her only proper attitude, 
 so long, I am afraid, the charge of narrowness and prejudice 
 may be justly made against them ; so long as it is held that 
 reasoning faculties are a matter of sex and not of individual 
 character and education, so long Avill shallowness and caprice 
 take the place of that common-sense and intelligence in which 
 we appear to you so strikingly deficient.' 
 
 'My dear young lady you must not think me er personal 
 the ladies present are, of course, excepted.' 
 
 ' However grateful we may feel for the exception,' Madeline 
 replied, with a smile and a slight bow by way of acknowledg- 
 ment, ' I am afraid I cannot accept a personal compliment at 
 the expense of womankind in general, and I know, like Pope, 
 you hold that " most women have no characters at all " ; but to 
 show you that I bear no malice, I will make you a present of 
 another equally appropriate epigram of his which, if you do not 
 know it, may be useful on a future occasion. " Women are 
 like riddles," he says, "not only because they are at first un- 
 intelligible, but also because when once found out they please 
 no longer." ' 
 
 The Major was one of those happy people so protected by 
 an impenetrable shield of amour propre against any arrows of 
 sarcasm, that he never could see a joke against himself, so 
 while Madeline stopped short rather, suddenly fearing that the 
 love of repartee was leading her beyond the bounds of courtesy, 
 she was reassured by seeing her opponent solemnly produce his 
 note-book with the object, as she had suggested, of securing the 
 epigram for a future occasion. 
 
 Sir Henry, whose chivalrous nature could not endure the 
 risk of being associated with Major Knagge and his notions of 
 feminine inferiority, thought the momentary silence a favour- 
 able opportunity for a disclaimer. ' I want you quite to 
 understand,' he said, addressing Madeline and Professor Wray, 
 who sat directly opposite to him, 'that, my reasons for not
 
 44 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 going with you entirely upon the subject of mixed or advanced 
 education, arise not from contempt or indifference but from the 
 utmost respect and admiration ; the fear, in fact, that any change 
 must be for the worse. For instance, a woman's perceptive 
 faculties, her instinctive knowledge on an emergency of what to 
 do at once, are far in advance of ours ; the average man often 
 does not see what is just before his eyes, or sees it without 
 perceiving it ; he turns a question over and over in his mind, 
 examining it first on this side then on that, until an oppor- 
 tunity which a woman by some marvellous instinct would 
 have seized at once, is gone. Now is it not possible that 
 by developing a woman's reasoning faculties by the study of 
 abstract science, you run the risk of weakening her peculiar 
 and instinctive characteristics which are no less valuable]' 
 
 'I always observe,' said Madeline, 'that when, either in 
 women or in any of the so-called lower animals, men recognise 
 any kind of intelligence which they cannot understand, they 
 call it " instinct " ; but what this "instinct " is, no one seems 
 exactly able to define, except that it is bestowed by nature as 
 a sort of compensation for the lack of certain reasoning faculties 
 assumed to be the peculiar property of one-half of the human 
 race.' 
 
 ' And supposing it to be true,' said the Professor, ' that 
 there is, as the wise books of the East assert, an inward 
 illumination implanted in the nature of a woman, I do not see 
 what reason we have to fear that culture will eliminate it.' 
 
 ' On such a theory as that,' said Mrs. Silverton, ' where are 
 you to stop, you might even go so far as to deny girls the most 
 rudimentary knowledge, on the plea of not interfering with this 
 supposed inspiration ; really, with all its plausibleness, I do 
 not see that any one who refuses to develop a girl's reasoning 
 powers for fear of injuring her perceptive faculties is more 
 liberal-minded than the Oriental, who dictates that daughters 
 shall be made emulous of acquiring the virtues of their sex, but 
 must be altogether forbidden to read and write ; does it com- 
 pensate for the denial of education, with all its advantage, to be
 
 THE EDUCATION OF WOMEN. 45 
 
 told that " every book of knowledge is implanted in the heart 
 of a woman," and to be paid compliments upon their marvellous 
 intuition.' 
 
 ' We must be thankful that the barriers of tradition and 
 ignorance are fast breaking down,' said Mr. Silverton ; ' we are 
 growing out of the holy horror of anything unusxial which once 
 actuated parents and teachers alike. Before many years have 
 passed I expect and hope that the majority of our country- 
 women will have, in common with their brothers, all the 
 benefit of a cheap and thorough education which endowment 
 gives. It is for women who, like you and Miss Acton, have 
 had exceptional advantages, which only a comparatively few can 
 now obtain, to influence public opinion on these matters; it 
 cannot be very hard, since the tide has turned and is setting 
 strongly in your favour.' 
 
 ' It is not so very long ago, though,' said his wife, ' since 
 an article appeared in the Globe asserting that there were points 
 beyond which the female intellect absolutely refused to go, in 
 proof of which it was said that some women - students never 
 could get beyond the Rule of Three ! ' 
 
 ' In the same way,' replied Mr. Silverton, ' it was said that 
 mathematics were beyond the range of the feminine intellect, and 
 yet, as you know, it is in this line more than any other that 
 during the last few years women have distinguished themselves ; 
 witness Professor Clifford's testimony to Miss Ellen Watson. 
 Never fear ; AVC are making progress here, and very rapid 
 progress ; the tone of the daily papers alone is sufficient to show 
 this. It is only a very few years ago, you say, since the article 
 you have just referred to appeared, and now it is scarcely com- 
 mented on as remarkable, that a woman should take a first-class 
 in mathematics, still less that Latin and Greek should form 
 part of a regular course at a high school, and gymnastics and 
 cricket have thrown into the background curtseys and calis- 
 thenics.' 
 
 ' Turning for a moment from the question of particular to 
 that of general education,' said Madeline, 'you will scarcely
 
 46 HEX, WOMEX, AXD PROGRESS. 
 
 believe me, perhaps, but on one occasion when my father, who 
 was an enthusiast on the subject of education, asked a 
 seemingly intelligent mechanic why he opposed the Act which 
 brought it within reach of the poorest, his answer was, " I go 
 agin it on principle, sir, not because of its onconstitutionality, 
 but because it's onnat'ral. Ign'rance is nat'ral," he said, " we 
 was born ign'rant and ought to be kep' so." ' 
 
 ' A survival of the same spirit,' said Professor Wray , ' which, 
 on the first introduction of forks into Germany, made some un- 
 cleanly saints preach against them as an insult to Providence 
 which had provided us with fingers. Truly nothing dies so hard 
 as bigotry and prejudice. But you could tell me something of 
 this from your experience on the School Board, I expect.' 
 
 ' Yes,' said Madeline, ' but I was thinking, as Mr. Silverton 
 spoke just now, that we have more to be thankful for than 
 disheartened aboiit, when we think how times have changed 
 since Francoise de Saintonges, in the sixteenth century, I think, 
 because she wished to establish a public girl's school in France 
 was hooted through the streets of Paris, while four learned 
 doctors were consulted by her father to assure himself as to 
 whether her idea was not a temptation of the evil one. And I do 
 not think any one now-a-days writing a pamphlet like one I have 
 seen in the British Museum, entitled, A plea for a Lawe Pro- 
 hibiting the Alphabet to Women, would find even one disciple, 
 or receive anything but ridicule.' 
 
 ' It certainly is extraordinary,' said Sir Henry, ' when one 
 thinks of the lengths to which ignorance and prejudice were 
 carried in former days ; why even Fenelon taught, if I re- 
 collect aright, that true modesty was almost as incompatible 
 with learning in a woman as vice ; reading, writing, a little 
 grammar, and the first four rules of arithmetic, were, I believe, 
 his limit, while it was safer for them to know nothing than too 
 much, just as if sweetness and silliness were synonymous.' 
 
 ' Take care, Harry,' said his sister, laughing, ' I shall have 
 to caution you, as the police do their prisoners, that whatever 
 they say Avill be used in evidence against them. One argument
 
 THE EDUCATION OF WOMEN. 47 
 
 I heard just now sounded very much as if the speaker thought 
 " sweetness and silliness synonymous," that, in fact, as the 
 Chinese proverb says, " The glory of a man is knowledge, but 
 the glory of a woman to renounce all knowledge." ' 
 
 ' Thanks, Mrs. Silverton, but I refuse emphatically to wear 
 the cap you are generous enough to offer me ; I think nothing 
 more charming, as you know very well, than a refined highly- 
 educated woman, that is a very different thing to washing them 
 trained to masculine pursuits.' 
 
 ' Unfortunately,' said Madeline, ' no two persons hold pre- 
 cisely similar ideas as to what course of study may be considered 
 distinctively feminine.' 
 
 'Our old friend of this morning, for instance, Madeline,' 
 said Mrs. Silverton, ' has some curious suggestions to make 
 upon this subject.' 
 
 'Who is that]' asked her brother. 
 
 ' Only an ancient book which we found in the library this 
 morning, and Avliich contains in remarkable phraseology a 
 guide to what was considered a liberal education for women a 
 hundred years or more ago. I will find it by the time you 
 rejoin us,' she continued, rising from the table, ' it will amuse 
 you ; meantime you and Major Knagge may evolve, if so please 
 you, a course of instruction which shall be liberal, progressive, 
 and enlightened, and yet offer no prejudices, and upset no 
 existing: institutions. I do not envv you.'
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 ' THE Scythians put out the eyes of their slaves that they might have 
 no distraction in their work of beating outter. There are also people 
 who destroy the sight of a nightingale that it may sing the better. Keally 
 one is almost tempted to think that a similar spirit ruled such educa- 
 tion as has been given to women.' DANIEL STERN. 
 
 ' On veut que les femmes ne soient pas coupables d 'etudes comme si 
 leur ame etait d'une autre espece que celle des hommes, comme si elles 
 n'avaient pas, aussi bien que nous, une raison a conduire, une volonte a. 
 regler, des passions a combattre, ou s'il leur etait plus facile qu'a nous de 
 satisfaire a tous ces devoirs sans rien apprendre.' 
 
 FLEUKY, Traite du Choix des Etudes, p. 265. 
 
 4 People do not require from the oak that it should be like a birch, 
 nor from the lily that it should resemble the creeping cestus. "With men 
 it is the same ; they are allowed to each grow according to his bent and 
 nature, and to become that which the Creator has called them to be ... 
 but women must be cast in one mould, andfollow one line which is chalked 
 out for them as if they had no souls of their own to show them the way 
 and to give them an individual bent.' FREDERIKA BREJIER, HertJia. 
 
 ' A woman that would neglect her family for her studies would equally 
 
 neglect them for frivolous pursuits and dissipation Hitherto 
 
 usefulness and duty to men have been thought the only objects worth 
 caring for with regard to women ; it would at least be generous to take 
 the individual happiness of the sex into consideration.' MRS. SOMERVILLE, 
 Letters quoted in ' Woman's Work and Woman's Culture, 1 Essay V,
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE EDUCATION OP WOMEN. Continued. 
 
 * I caught a few words of your conversation as I entered the 
 room/ said Sir Henry, when some twenty minutes later he 
 joined his sister and her friend who were seated tete-a-tete upon 
 a lounge in a corner of the drawing-room, 'is it allowable for 
 one who is neither a child nor a genius to possess the organ of 
 inquisitiveness 1 I must confess I am curious to know which of 
 our social institutions Miss Acton looks upon as a survival 
 of barbarism.' 
 
 ' The subject of our conversation was not very wise, dear 
 Harry,' said Mrs. Silverton, her eyes as usual sparkling with 
 fun, 'we talked principally of you and Fred, and men in general, 
 I think.' 
 
 ' That is too bad,' said Madeline, smiling, ' for we are, as a 
 rule, quite as much, if not more, the slaves of custom than men ; 
 we were remarking, I think, in particular,' she added, turning 
 to Sir Henry, ' upon the tenacity with which people cling to 
 habits that once perhaps may have been expedient, but which 
 have long ceased to have any raison d'etre.' 
 
 'A propos of ' 
 
 ' Of men sitting so long over their wine, I think ; of all those 
 who regularly follow the custom I fancy there arc very few 
 who remember its disreputable origin.' 
 
 ' For my part,' replied Sir Henry, ' it is a habit I should not 
 be sorry to see done away with, or at least reduced to such 
 moderate measure as reigns in this establishment. In a speech 
 of Daniel O'Connell's, he says that the reason ladies were 
 admitted to the Irish Parliament was originally that it was no-
 
 52 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 uncommon thing for members to make their appearance drunk, 
 and it was thought, as the result proved, that the presence of 
 ladies must put an end to such a disgraceful state of things. No 
 doubt the presence of self-respecting women always exercises a 
 salutary control over men, which our forefathers (who after 
 dinner, I am afraid more often than not, made brutes of them- 
 selves) found no doubt irksome.' 
 
 ' And naturally,' said Mrs. Silverton, ' they were glad to 
 get rid of the restraint, both upon their drinking and the con- 
 versation which accompanied it ; but I presume there are few 
 men now-a-days who after dinner find it expedient to keep out 
 of our sight, or whose favourite subject of conversation are so 
 risque that they find it a relief when the dining-room door has 
 hidden the last petticoat from their sight.' 
 
 ' Tempora mutantur, I cannot say you do xis more than 
 justice,' Sir Henry answered. ' Manners, as Miss Acton was 
 saying, are very apt to be perpetuated without regard to 
 the morals upon which they were founded. During the last 
 century, for instance, it was customary in Russia, so I have been 
 told, when a lady got drunk at the house of a friend, for her to 
 return the following day to acknowledge with thanks the 
 pleasure that had been afforded her, now I daresay if the truth 
 were known, though I am sure the ladies now never indulge to 
 excess, they keep up to this day some remnant of the etiquette 
 connected with this obsolete custom.' 
 
 ' Not a bad tit quoque, Harry,' said Mrs. Silverton, ' sup- 
 posing we had been amusing ourselves by accusing your sex 
 in particular of intemperance he has not quite got over the 
 idea, Madeline, that we have a contempt for men in general, 
 and lose no opportunity of finding weak joints in their armour 
 but to show how much you are mistaken, sir, though it is more 
 than you deserve,' she continued, addressing her brother, ' I 
 will indulge your curiosity and acknowledge that so far from 
 throwing stones at you we had been, on the contrary, congratu- 
 lating ourselves upon having four such representative men with 
 whom to discuss the subjects upon which yoii consent to be
 
 THE EDUCATION OF WOMEX. 53 
 
 enlightened, and which, joking apart, I am very anxious you 
 should know something about. There is Professor Wray, 
 always in the forefront of the battle against ignorance and 
 prejudice; there is Fred, like the dear old Liberal-conservative 
 that he is, following at a humble distance ; then immeasurably 
 behind him,' she added, with an affectionate and admiring 
 glance that belied her words, ' comes the future Member for 
 Tregarthen, who though he calls himself a Liberal, still clings to 
 the traditions of the past in a manner, that if he has not by 
 that time lost the habit, will I hope some day make him blush ; 
 and lastly, Major Knagge who, if he had ever heard of De 
 Maistre, would I am sure have highly approved of the educa- 
 tional theories of that illustrious Frenchman, who rules that in 
 whatever line women try to emulate men, they can be no better 
 than monkeys, poor imitations ; that science is for them a 
 dangerous pursuit, and any attempt on their part to under- 
 stand the simplest branch of it, will only make them ridiculous 
 and unhappy. Painting in oils, too, I believe, he considered 
 unbefitting the " female sex," as he call us, though "a modest 
 and occasional use of the pencil might be permitted." ' 
 
 ' These prejudices of the past are really very ridiculous,' 
 replied her brother ; ' but how you must have studied the 
 subject, my dear, and Miss Acton, too ; she seems to have read 
 every book ever published, and every word ever written about 
 the education or non-education of her sex. ' 
 
 ' The study is not a dull one, for denseness is amusing, 
 don't you think sol' she replied; 'but if the prejudices of the 
 past, when not irritating, are entertaining, I think quite as 
 much may be said for those of the present day. I expect, 
 though, to return to the diversity of opinion that exists amongst 
 you, that you kept the ball rolling after our well-ordered 
 retreat.' 
 
 ' It grieves me to have to acknowledge, my dear, that we did 
 not do anything of the sort, that, in fact, on your departure we 
 actually let it drop. I suppose the truth was,' continued Sir 
 Henry, addressing his sister, but with his glance wandering in
 
 54 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 the direction of her friend, who had just risen and now stood at a 
 little distance talking to Mr. Silverton, her delicate features, her 
 well-poised head and graceful figure, in its soft clinging drapery 
 of pale blue, thrown into strong relief by the tapestry curtains 
 behind her, ' it would have been as dry, stale, and unprofitable 
 as the play of Beauty and the Beast, with Beauty's part 
 obliterated.' 
 
 ' Neatly turned, though a plagiarism ; but without com- 
 pliment, confess the truth, you were heartily tired of the whole 
 subject 1 ' 
 
 f Not by any means ; you must know very well that I was 
 more than half-joking this morning in my professed contempt 
 for these women's questions, they are coming to the front so 
 much now, that with the dread possibility of being questioned 
 thereupon by my constituents, I am not indifferent to, or un- 
 grateful for, the chance of forming some definite opinions npon 
 them, Avhich I can scarcely be said to have done at present.' 
 
 Mrs. Silverton with all her openness was a discreet little 
 woman, so she listened demurely to such explanation as her 
 brother had to offer for his change of attitude, and made neither 
 by look nor word the slightest allusion to his evident admiration 
 for the beautiful girl whom he had been on the point of running 
 away from but yesterday. 'Then you mean to encourage us 
 so long as it may be profitable to do so,' she laughed, looking 
 up at him ; ' it reminds me of the old woman in Durham, who 
 took a keen interest in the project of throwing open the 
 University to women, and was quite pathetic in her anxiety 
 that the ladies should have a suitable building appropriated to 
 their use : by-and-by it transpired that she had been calculating 
 upon obtaining the office of bed-maker. Is not your interest 
 of somewhat the same type 1 ?' 
 
 'A little more disinterested I hope, as you shall find, if you 
 can make good your claims ; but I thought you had something 
 to read to me.' 
 
 ' Yes. Oh, I see Madeline is just showing it to Professor 
 Wray ; it is a curious old tract we found in the library, written
 
 THE EDUCATION OP WOMEN. 55 
 
 early in the last century by a gentleman who evidently con- 
 siders his notions upon women's education very liberal. Come 
 and look at it.' 
 
 'There is the pamphlet we were speaking of,' said Miss 
 Acton, handing it to him as he approached. ' Please mark the 
 capital letters and the author's lofty tone : " The more con- 
 tracted and unemployed the deliberating and directing Power 
 of the Mind is, the more liable is the elective to unworthy 
 Pursuits and discommendable Options.'" 
 
 'That "discommendable Options" is very fine,' said Sir 
 Henry. 
 
 ' Yes, but this is the passage we referred to,' said his 
 sister, turning over the pages ; ' where he exhorts his lady 
 readers to " adorn their Understanding with the Improvements 
 of Learning " "I mean," he qualifies " with such as are suitable 
 to her Sex. This is a Matter vastly more worthy of her 
 Attention than any external graces she can possibly put on. 
 .... She will receive more Profit and solid Pleasure from 
 reading Ingenious Authors than in wearing out the Morning 
 in ranging in Order her Essences. Perfumes, Combs, Pomatums, 
 Washes, Patches, &c., &c., or in placing the Trinkets of the 
 toilet ; all which make up no more than Contrivance in Folly 
 and Confusion in order" "however," he says, fearing to be 
 thought too advanced for his contemporaries, " I do not recom- 
 mend it as absolutely necessary for a young lady to trouble 
 herself with French, Italian, Latin, or any other foreign 
 language, because she can meet with sufficient amusement and 
 instruction in her OAvn." ' 
 
 ' Their notions of what constituted a liberal education 
 were certainly in those days very limited,' said Sir Henry, 
 returning the book to Miss Acton. ' But after all I suppose 
 you must draw the line somewhere ; the question is where ? ' 
 
 ' That is what every one seems to be asking,' was the reply. 
 ' Few sensible people now object to a certain amount of intel- 
 lectual development; all they do is to quibble about the 
 degi-ee, which proves that we have made some advance since
 
 56 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 our grandmother's days. I am afraid you do not believe in the 
 improvement,' she said, on catching sight of the dubious, not 
 to say distressed, expression of Miss Wynter's usually placid 
 face. 
 
 ' To tell the truth, my dear, I cannot help thinking the old 
 ways were best ; with all these changes one never knows how 
 things will end. Fifty years ago, if women did spend half 
 their time in needlework, they could, at any rate, sew decently, 
 which very few girls do now-a-days.' 
 
 ' I am quite willing to grant you, auntie,' said Mrs. Silver- 
 ton, ' that a knowledge of sewing is useful to girls, as it is, 
 though, perhaps in a lesser degree, for boys too,' she added, 
 with a decisive little nod, ' but you cannot compare this age 
 of machinery, when as much work can be well and neatly done 
 in a day as would formerly have occupied a week, with the 
 times when everything had to be done by hand ; you might as 
 well quarrel with the women of fifty years ago for buying their 
 stuffs and linen instead of spinning and weaving it all them- 
 selves.' 
 
 ' True,' said the Professor ; ' it is one of the conditions of 
 human progress that as society becomes more complex and 
 civilised, so the intellectual supersedes the mechanical, brain- 
 work gains upon mere power of muscle. The same rule applies 
 to women as to men ; and perhaps few ideas have done so 
 much to stunt the human race as the notion that the feminine 
 mind should be enlarged only within certain prescribed limits, 
 beyond which development becomes an evil. Of this I am very 
 certain, that before any great evolution of a higher life may be 
 expected, women must have nothing less than equal intellectxial 
 and moral freedom with men. Every faculty bestowed by 
 nature is given for use ; how, then,, can women fill the place 
 nature intended them for unless allowed the fullest freedom, 
 the most favourable conditions for the unfolding of all their 
 powers ? No other limit is justifiable save that set by indi- 
 vidual capacity; and those who discourage learning in any 
 individual or class are doing their best to destroy one of our
 
 THE EDUCATION OF WOMEN. 57 
 
 most powerful weapons in the war against vice, for by the 
 spread of knowledge you let light and air into a close infected 
 atmosphere, introducing at once a great element of health and 
 well-being.' 
 
 ' Whenever I find people in one way or another denying 
 this,' said Madeline, ' it always makes me think of the old 
 Jesuit priest who declared that as the limbs of children must 
 be swaddled to give them just proportions and make them grow 
 straight, so the human mind must also be swaddled if it is to 
 remain happy and healthy. Every one has found out now that 
 it is by exercise, and not restraint, that strength of body is 
 developed ; and yet, while we laugh at the Chinese for cramp- 
 ing their women's feet, there are some people, I am afraid, still 
 amongst us who consider it a much less serious error to cramp 
 their heads.' 
 
 ' They have yet to learn,' said Professor Wray, ' that free- 
 dom is a necessary condition of all healthy, intellectual growth. 
 " If you plant an oak," as Goethe says, " in a flower-pot, one of 
 two things must happen, either the oak will be dwarfed or the 
 flower-pot must break." ' 
 
 ' But some people prefer dwarfed plants,' said Sir Henry. 
 
 ' That depends greatly,' said Madeline, ' upon the size of 
 the dwelling which a man's own mind inhabits.' 
 
 ' But, to follow out Goethe's metaphor, if dwarfed trees are 
 not among the noblest of natural objects, you must allow, as an 
 excuse for those who prefer them, that they are sometimes very 
 pretty and attractive.' 
 
 ' Yes, and if usefulness is not worth consideration, if a 
 woman's vocation is to be simply ornamental, then the dwarf- 
 ing system has some excuse, though many a fine nature has 
 been spoilt by it, many a noble character, like the oak, too 
 strong for its flower-pot, has broken the bonds of tradition, and 
 sometimes, perhaps by the very force of reaction, been driven 
 into extremes of self-assertion.' 
 
 ' I suppose it is in this way,' said Mrs. Knagge, ' that you 
 account for many of these advanced women being so very ob-
 
 58 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 jectionable, so unconventional and ill-niannerecl, that, for my 
 part, I do not wonder sensible people are prejudiced against the 
 higher education one hears so much about.' 
 
 'Higher fiddlesticks,' said Major Knagge, in a subdued 
 growl, audible only to his wife, who, true to her role of con- 
 jugal humility (in public), turned to him with a gentle smile, 
 and, 
 
 ' You were aboiit to remark, my love 1 ' 
 
 ' Oh, nothing particular ; but it er appears to me that 
 the word " higher " is applied to everything er outre now- 
 a-days, and, with all due deference to the ladies present, who 
 er differ from me, most sensible women, I think, recognise the 
 folly of competing with men.' 
 
 Madeline evidently found Major Knagge quite irresistible 
 with his pompous platitudes, hesitating search for suitable 
 expressions, and unhesitating belief in himself. 
 
 ' May I tell you a little story 1 ' she asked, with eyes danc- 
 ing, but with the meekest possible intonation. 'A few years 
 ago, a girl applied for admission to one of the American Univer- 
 sities ; her request was granted ; but as a sort of reproof for 
 her ambition, one of the sentences given her to translate from 
 the Greek was this, from Antigone : "Seeing, then, that we are 
 women, ought we not to be modest, and not try to compete 
 with men 1 ?" Having taken the highest honours in Greek, 
 finding herself, indeed, some way ahead of every man in the 
 class, she could not resist the temptation to retaliate by intro- 
 ducing into her Greek composition the following : " Seeing, then, 
 that we are men, ought we not to be ashamed that we have 
 been vanquished by a woman 1 " ' 
 
 ' A very er good story, and very well told,' said the 
 Major patronisingly, and with unmoved solemnity, though 
 there was a general smile of amusement at the aptness of 
 Madeline's reply. ' There are, doubtless, exceptional cases in 
 which ladies have er distinguished themselves ; but their 
 achievements, I should say, are less er remarkable in them- 
 selves than as being the work of er the weaker sex, from
 
 THE EDUCATION OF WOMEN. 59 
 
 whom natiirally we do not expect much beyond domestic and 
 er social graces. This is where women make a mistake ; 
 instead of being contented with their er acknowledged pre- 
 eminence in matters of taste and feeling, they er unwisely, 
 allow me to suggest, attempt to rival us in intellectual pur- 
 suits, iii which the only result must be er ultimately igno- 
 minious failure.' The major here drew his handkerchief across 
 his brow, and looked around him with the air of having made 
 use of arguments quite unanswerable. But resistance came 
 from an unexpected quarter. 
 
 ' We men,' said Sir Henry, ' knowing how feeble we are in 
 many respects compared with a woman, would like to be 
 thought to have a monopoly of brain-power ; but I am afraid 
 the competitive examinations of the last few years only prove 
 what consummate coxcombs we must have been ever to 
 have thought so. I have been feeling more humble than 
 ever,' [he added, turning to Professor Wray, ' ever since you 
 showed me in black and white the results of some of these 
 examinations.' 
 
 ' It is no good disputing the fact,' said the Professor, in 
 reply. ' I do not, of course, carry statistics about with me, but 
 I know that when I was examining mixed classes for the B.A. 
 degree at London University, forty-two per cent of the men 
 only got their degree, while of the twenty-two women who pre- 
 sented themselves, seventy-three per cent were successful ; of 
 the men, twenty-seven per cent were placed in the first 
 division ; of the women,, sixty-eight obtained this distinction, 
 though their average age was, if anything, lower. In Professor 
 Huxley's science classes again last year, the one woman who 
 competed came out ahead of all the male students. Such facts 
 speak for themselves.' 
 
 ' But even supposing women to possess inferior abilities,' 
 said Madeline, ' would Major Knagge think that a reason for 
 allowing such gifts as they possess to be lost for want of 
 ciiltivation ? Is it not Ruskiii who says that the most obvious 
 duty which one owes to one's fellow-creatures is to ascertain
 
 60 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 one's own special gifts and strengthen them to the utmost for 
 the help of others'?' 
 
 ' Well, if girls want to help other people,' replied Major 
 Knagge with some warmth, for he felt he was getting the worst 
 of the argument, ' they will do this much better by keeping 
 their own place and attending to their er peculiarly feminine 
 duties. For instance : Mending their own and their fathers' 
 and brothers' clothes, making puddings and pies, and attending 
 to domestic matters generally instead of dabbling in things 
 quite out of their reach.' 
 
 ' Like the old writer in Puritan times,' said Sir Henry, 'you 
 think that " she who knoweth how to compound a pudding is 
 more desirable than she who skilfully compoundeth a poem ; " 
 that is rather a low view to take of woman's mission, I think.' 
 
 'And just imagine,' said Madeline, greatly amused, 'the 
 position of a man with a mother and six sisters condemned to 
 spend their energies exclusively on the occupations you recom- 
 mend. To afford them sufficient employment his normal 
 condition would have to be that of the hero in " The House 
 that Jack built," " all tattered and torn," while it is dreadful to 
 think of the amount of "puddings and pies" the poor man 
 would be compelled to consume, he would have to adopt the 
 motto once suggested to the British Association, "Courses may 
 come, and courses go, but I eat on for ever." ' 
 
 ' " We may live without friends, we may live without books, 
 But where is the man who can live without cooks," ' 
 
 quoted Sir Henry, ' I confess, for my part, hpwever, I should 
 try to live without elaborate cookery if it depended on the 
 labour of the ladies of my family; but perhaps I am no true 
 Englishman, for Douglas Jerrold declares that our rational love 
 of dining is so great that if the country were to be demolished 
 by an earthquake, we should meet and manage to dine some- 
 where amongst the ruins, just to celebrate the event. You hit 
 the Major harder than you intended,' he added, in an aside to
 
 THE EDUCATION OF WOMBS'. 61 
 
 Madeline, as he stooped and picked up the ball of wool she had 
 just dropped in talcing her knitting from the table. 
 
 ' How,' she asked, innocently '? 
 
 ' Well, you see, he is something of a gourmand, and like 
 Athenseus, he holds that "to cookery we owe well-ordered 
 States," so profane joking on such a solemn subject is really too 
 much for his equanimity.' 
 
 ' I am very sorry,' she replied ; ' but really some arguments- 
 it is impossible to treat seriously.' 
 
 ' I am afraid, Major Knagge,' the Professor was saying at 
 the same moment, ' you are inclined to share a very common 
 but, I think, mistaken belief that highly cultivated women are- 
 apt to neglect their household duties, but from conscientious 
 women, that is to say from the majority, I think quite the 
 contrary result is to be expected ; for by training the mind to- 
 thoroughness you only increase their sense of responsibility,, 
 and desire to perform even the smallest duties well.' 
 
 ' I can speak from experience,' said Mr. Silverton, with an 
 affectionate glance at his wife, who was at this moment engaged 
 in pouring out the tea, ' that a ladies' college is not necessarily 
 a bad preparation for domestic life ; the man who wants a 
 mere housekeeper and not a friend and companion in his wife- 
 had better marry his cook at once, for if the husband's pursuits 
 and pleasures are of an entirely different nature from those of 
 the wife, it leads to separate interests and separate lives, and 
 when they are together they have very few sympathies in 
 common. So long as the woman, who is a man's constant 
 companion, remains only half-developed, her influence must bo 
 injurious, retarding his mental growth, and inducing him to 
 rest satisfied with much smaller things than he might have 
 accomplished under the influence of a friendly rivalry and 
 appreciative but discriminating encouragement. What do 
 you say, Nellie ? ' he added, seeing that his wife, from whom he 
 was taking the cups to hand to their guests, catching the drift 
 of his last remark met his glance with one of her brightest 
 smiles.
 
 62 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 ' I think,' she replied, 'that while you teach wives thorough- 
 ness, and try to bring their minds up to the highest mental 
 and moral standard, you must not forget also to teach 
 husbands not to hold themselves so entirely aloof, as some do 
 from choice, in all matters of domestic responsibility, they have 
 no right to refuse to take a share of their wives' anxieties on 
 the plea that these things are no concern of theirs.' 
 
 ' But, my dear ! ' said Sir Henry, ' you must not forget 
 that there is nothing many women would resent more than the 
 interference of a blundering male creature in their domestic 
 affairs, like old Hannah, whom we used to laugh about at Tre- 
 garthen, who thought one day in the week was quite often 
 enough to have a man about the house.' 
 
 ' I remember,' replied his sister, smiling ; ' but old 
 Hannah's was, I hope, not a typical case. I have no doubt 
 there are wives who like to keep their interests and occupations 
 as much apart as possible from those of their husband, just as 
 there are husbands who ignore the claims of Avife and family 
 beyond the point of providing for their maintenance. But 
 what I assert is that in a true marriage there should be a 
 constant interchange not only of sympathy but of counsel and 
 helpfulness ; a man should be ready always to put his shoulder, 
 if need be, to the domestic wheel, and not, on the other hand, 
 think that by hiding his particular worries he is doing what is 
 best for either of them.' 
 
 ' It is no doubt a pity,' said Professor Wray, ' that men of 
 the working classes, using the term in its widest sense, from 
 professional men downwards, see so little of their homes and 
 are almost strangers to their children; but when motive power 
 comes to be distributed with as much case as gas and water, 
 we may hope that many thousands of fathers, whose houses 
 now are just sleeping places, no more, Avill be able to make 
 their homes the centres of their activity.' 
 
 ' A problematical blessing for the wives in many cases, I 
 expect,' said Sir Henry ; ' but I do not quite see what all this 
 has to do with education.'
 
 THE EDUCATION OP WOMEN. 63 
 
 ' I was just thinking/ said Major Knagge, whose ruffled 
 feathers had by this time readjusted themselves, ' that jokes 
 and wide-of-the-mark arguments will not er disprove my as- 
 sertion that women who go in for learning will must er 
 inevitably neglect more important duties, think them in fact er 
 beneath their notice.' 
 
 ' I tried, though no doubt feebly, to say a word to the point 
 just now/ said Professor Wray, 'and Mr. Silverton pointed the 
 argument very aptly, so I thought; but to give you an example 
 that just occurs to me of the practical and common-sense view 
 of the every-day duties of life, taken by the most advanced 
 supporters of the higher education of women, I was talking, 
 not long ago, to a friend, who during his recent stay in America 
 visited, amongst other places, Wellesley College, Massachusetts, 
 which is not a girl's school, calling itself a college, but a 
 women's University, where there is no branch of knowledge in 
 which the students may not graduate, and yet the'girls do all the 
 work of the establishment with their own hands, it being thought 
 well that all should understand and take a practical part in 
 housekeeping and domestic economy ; this does not look like 
 shirking the humbler branches of what they consider quite as 
 much as you do peculiarly a woman's work ; the time these 
 duties occupy, however, is but one hour each daily, which is 
 not allowed to interfere with their studies. Another thing that 
 struck me as a very wise arrangement is, that a resident lady- 
 physician is employed not only for ordinary professional duties, 
 but also to give all the students, whether intended for doctors 
 or not, instruction in dietetics and the ordinary laws of health, a 
 rule, which is, I believe, followed at many similar institutions.' 
 
 'My dear sir/ said the Major, if possible more unconvinced, 
 more pompous and emphatic than before, ' this may be all very 
 well for women who have no man to look after them, and who 
 must, therefore er rely upon their own exertions, but do you 
 think it is to such institutions, with their pedandic and cut-aud- 
 dried systems, that men will go for their wives ? No, em- 
 phatically no ! '
 
 64 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 There was a rapid interchange of glances between Mrs. 
 Silverton and her husband, and an amused smile hovered 
 around her lips, which gradually gave place to an expression of 
 delighted approval, as, turning to Major Knagge with a warmth 
 of indignant protest unusual with him, her husband replied, 
 ' So much the worse for them, that is all ; a woman's mind was 
 no more meant to be barren and unprofitable than a man's, it 
 is only asses, so far as I know, who have a special and particular 
 liking for thistles ; only dull or empty-headed men are afraid of 
 intelligent women, and I hope for the credit of our sex that 
 these are in the minority. 
 
 ' And for the sake of humanity too,' said the Professor, 
 ' since it would be a bad look out if the mothers of our race 
 were to be chosen exclusively from the silliest or most ignorant 
 of their sex ; so we will hope that it is only ignorant or vicious 
 men who prefer empty-headed and frivolous wives, in whose 
 indiscriminating devotion they are safe from criticism, and 
 in comparison with whom they may still keep up an as- 
 sumption of superiority, very soothing, no doubt, to their 
 self-love.' 
 
 ' It will be time enough for such men, I think,' said Mrs. 
 Silverton, ' to use their preference as an argument against 
 granting women facilities for acquiring any knowledge they 
 may desire, when the supply of women as foolish as themselves 
 is entirely cut off, and since, as Mrs. Poyser says, " God Al- 
 mighty made them to match the men," that will be, I suspect, 
 never. But what a serious expression, Madeline ! ' 
 
 ' I was thinking,' was the reply, ' of how invariably, and to 
 me provokingly, these discussions seem based upon the assump- 
 tion that to please man is a woman's unique destiny ; that her 
 existence has no raison d'etre, except so far as it ministers to, or 
 influences him ; that, in fact, if she knows how to love she 
 knows enough. We shall never, I think, get an altogether 
 satisfactory system of education until it is universally recog- 
 nised that a girl should be trained with a view to her own 
 present and future advantage, and to the interests of humanity
 
 THE EDUCATION OF WOMEN'. 65 
 
 at large, not with a single view to the convenience of the 
 opposite sex.' 
 
 There was an indignant protest in the very turn of her 
 head, in the expression of lip and nostril, in the ring of the 
 speaker's voice, sweet and low though it was, which seemed to 
 move one of her hearers at least physically as well as mentally. 
 
 Sir Henry, as he came round and stood at the back of his 
 sister's chair, thought, as he marked Madeline's heightened 
 colour and sparkling eye, that such an advocate might easily 
 convert a whole room full of heretics. 
 
 Madeline felt his gaze fixed upon her ; but there was no 
 room in her thoughts for self-consciousness, and she took his 
 attention as a hopeful sign of interest, not in herself, but in her 
 subject. 
 
 ' You understand what I mean,' she said. ' Was it not you, 
 Sir Henry, who were quoting Moliere at dinner 1 You remem- 
 ber his L'Ucole des Femmes, perhaps ] ' 
 
 ' Not much, I am afraid,' he replied, as he came and took a 
 chair close to the couch on which Madeline and Professor Wray 
 were sitting. ' I just recollect that there is a narrow-minded 
 old bourgeois, who adopts a young girl and brings her up in 
 some eccentric fashion.' 
 
 'Yes ; and his is just the type of thought that I complain 
 of ; do you not recollect how he explains to a friend 
 
 " Je la fis elever selon ma politique 
 C'est-a-dire ordonnant quels soins on emploierait 
 Pour la rendre idiote autant qu'il se pourrait ; " 
 
 and how by-and-by, on the eve of her marriage, poor girl, he 
 makes a long speech, telling her that her sex was created for 
 dependence, and that Providence having divinely ordained that 
 power should be on the side of the beard, woman's first and 
 primary duty was to be all submission, she must not, therefore, 
 dare even to think, much less act, on her own responsibility.' 
 
 ' I remember,' said Sir Henry, ' he was the sort of feikm 
 over whom, if one met him in real life, one would long to direct 
 
 V
 
 66 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 the hose of a fire-engine to take a little of the starch out of 
 him. I need not say I am sure that I have no sympathy with 
 such narrow-minded and selfish ideas ; but at the same time, I 
 ask it, in all Inimility, do you not think that abstruse study is 
 apt, I do not say always, but sometimes, to make women hard 
 and cold, less lovable and loving than they would otherwise 
 have been?' 
 
 ' It is possible,' replied Madeline slowly, as though weighing 
 every word ; ' I have not thought much about this view of the 
 subject ; but it is possible, perhaps probable, that amongst 
 thoughtful and studious girls and women, you would not find 
 many cases of that subversion of tire judgment by emotion, that 
 loving " not wisely but too well," which forms the stock-in-trade 
 of a certain class of novelists.' 
 
 ' But,' said Mrs. Silverton, ' if their hearts are not so lightly 
 Avon, are they not better worth the winning 1 It is very good 
 for men to feel, too, that they cannot have everything their 
 own way ; though, for my part, I do not believe that enlarging 
 a girl's views and strengthening her nature has a hardening 
 effect. There is all the difference in the force of a stream kept 
 between banks and one allowed to flow hither and thither till it 
 is practically lost.' 
 
 ' Hypatia,' said the Professor, ' was not a worse daughter 
 for all her erudition and extraordinary genius ; the learned 
 Italian women of the Renaissance, Isabella of Mantua, Caterina 
 Cornaro, Caterina Sforza, Lucrezia Tomabuoni, the guide and 
 teacher of Lorenzo de Medici, Vittoria Colonna, the friend and 
 inspirer of Michael Angelo, had, we know from the testimony 
 of their contemporaries, nothing harsh or unfeminine about 
 them ; Olympia Morata, again, as Mr. Trollope remarks in his 
 biography, supplies a further contradiction to the theories of 
 those w r ho object to learned women : " Did her learning," he 
 asks, " make her a less loving or even a less housewifely wife 1 
 Did her competency to correspond with the greatest scholars of 
 Europe render her less capable of gaining the affection of her 
 friends ? Her Homeric studies did not keep her from visiting
 
 THE EDUCATION OP WOMEN. 67 
 
 the poor in the plague-stricken houses of Schweinfurth, or 
 detain her from her solitary watch by her sick husband's bed- 
 side." Laura Bassi, though in learning she excelled most of her 
 contemporaries, was no less noted as a good manager and a 
 devoted wife and mother, she had no less than twelve children, 
 but her marriage, so wrote Fantuzzi, only added another charm 
 to her womanhood without destroying her individuality or 
 interfering with her scientific studies.' 
 
 ' Many of the Italians of the Renaissance,' said Mr. Silver- 
 ton, ' were, I think, in advance of many of their descendants in 
 recognising that the fullest freedom and widest cultivation are 
 the most favourable conditions for the development of the 
 noblest and purest humanity, whether in man or woman.' 
 
 ' Strangely enough, though,' said Professor Wray, 'in those 
 days a learned woman was called a '' virago," not, however, as 
 a term of reproach, but as one of honour and respect, in which 
 sense it is used by Jacob von Bergams in his work on celebrated 
 women. It is, therefore, quite a mistake to suppose, as some 
 have done, that the term has any connexion with such modern 
 nicknames as " blue stocking," " female pedant," the " shriek- 
 ing sisterhood," and other epithets, which pass for wit amongst 
 a certain class of writers and their equally shallow readers.' 
 
 ' That is very curious,' said Sir Henry. ' I had no idea 
 that the word " virago " had so completely changed its mean- 
 ing. But to return to our argument : after all, it is with the 
 women of our own day that we have to do ; those Italian ladies 
 may have been quite exceptional in their acquirements, and, 
 anyway, one must allow something for the exaggeration and 
 love of eulogy which always animates the pen of a biographer, 
 . be he ever HO anxious to speak " the truth, the whole truth, 
 and nothing but the truth." ' 
 
 ' You will not yield your ground until there is not an inch 
 left to stand upon, I see,' said the Professor. ' It would be 
 easy to give you any number of recent examples of women who, 
 while eminent for learning, have been no less admirable in all 
 their domestic relations. Mary Somervillc as a wife, Caroline
 
 68 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 Herschell as a sister, Harriet Martineau as a daughter, Madame 
 de Sevign6 as a devoted mother ; there is no idea more preva- 
 lent and more false I am convinced than this, that true tender- 
 ness of feeling and domestic tastes are incompatible with a 
 strong, well-regulated, and highly-cultivated mind ; indeed, my 
 experience has generally been that it is those people who know 
 and think the least who are most headstrong and opinionated,, 
 most thoughtless and frivolous.' 
 
 ' I am not going to let you have everything your own way/ 
 said Sir Henry, smiling ) ' there is something to be urged on 
 the other side. I know of a case, for instance, in which an 
 eminent literary man found so little of a helpmate in his 
 almost equally clever wife, that after a year or two of marriage 
 they were compelled to part ; and one of her best Ion mots 
 shows how much of Avifely affection or even interest she pos- 
 sessed, for when asked on one occasion if she had read her 
 husband's last work, she replied, " No, I renounced the devil 
 and all his works a long time ago." ' 
 
 ' And you think,' said his sister, ' that if she had been a 
 dull or ignorant woman they would have had a greater chance 
 of happiness 1 We are not arguing that all intellectual women 
 are, as a matter of course, perfect, only that culture has no 
 tendency per se to unfit women for the duties of everyday life, 
 but rather the contrary, cultivation only raises, does not change 
 the nature. "A mother's love for offspring," as Sydney Smith 
 says, " hardly depends on her ignorance of Greek, nor is she 
 likely to neglect an infant for a quadratic equation.'" 
 
 ' But even,' said Miss Wynter, who had for the last few 
 minutes been listening attentively, ' supposing these new ideas 
 about education to have all the advantages you claim, I know a 
 great many doctors say they have most injurious effects upon a 
 girl's constitution. I was reading an article not long ago I 
 don't quite recollect where in Avhich it was shown that women 
 coiild not bear the strain involved in the close study of abstruse 
 subjects.' 
 
 ' I have never found doctors more free from prejudices than
 
 THE EDUCATION OP WOMEN. 69 
 
 other people,' said Madeline, ' hence, perhaps, the cry about 
 mental strain being bad for girls ;' and, really, I think until 
 they have as much movement and outdoor recreation as boys, 
 it is impossible to judge whether or not they can stand the 
 same amount of intellectual exertion, for the theory that they 
 are not strong enough to bear the air and light answers about 
 equally well for women as for plants the less they have of 
 these the more pale and sickly will be their mental and physical 
 condition.' 
 
 ' I only know,' replied Miss Wynter, ' that there were 
 many cases given in this article proving that the over-taxing of 
 the brain in some of our high-schools and colleges was having 
 the most evil effects upon the health of our young women.' 
 
 'I never yet heard, auntie,' said Mrs. Silverton, 'that to 
 overtax the brain was good for any one, man or woman, boy or 
 girl ; but because the health of a few men at college gives way 
 under high pressure, no one thinks of seriously arguing that 
 study beyond a certain given point is bad for all men, and that 
 further instruction upon the subjects in which a few have 
 failed is no longer to be allowed at our Universities, and yet 
 that is very much the sort of argument applied to women.' 
 
 ' For my part,' said Mr. Silverton, ' I think that the very 
 general success of the higher local examinations has proved 
 that the majority of women have no less than men the power 
 of earnest work, and are able to bear at least equally the strain 
 of competition. I cannot think it is just that artificial barriers 
 should be set up on no better basis than theories, which are 
 still matters of controversy.' 
 
 'There can be no question,' said Professor Wray, 'that, 
 looked at from any point of view, it is unwise to interfere with 
 the natural processes by which capacity is tested and incapacity 
 exposed. More than this : there is a want of true manhood in 
 saying to -women, " Before we yield you anything you must 
 prove your capacity," while at the same time we place all kinds 
 of difficulties in their way. With women as with men, in the 
 intellectual as in the physical contest, the survival of the fittest
 
 70 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 is the law of nature, and the weaker must sooner or later in- 
 evitably go to the wall without any help from existing pre- 
 judices as to assumed incapacity. The only thing to be 
 guarded against is the undue forcing of young girls under 
 seventeen into severe intellectual exertions, while the body is 
 growing and before the brain is fully developed, especially if 
 at the same time, as Miss Acton remai'ked, they are not given 
 every opportunity to indulge in such active sports and exercise- 
 as their brothers all enjoy.' 
 
 ' I think the age to which many of the most distinguished 
 litei-ary women have lived,' said Madeline, ' shows that in their 
 case, as in that of men, it is not so much hard intellectual 
 work, as injudicious or tinsuccessful work which injures ; and 
 how nmch of a woman's work under present conditions must be 
 iinsuccessful 1 A boy's education always tends towards some 
 definite end, he has honours set before him, money in the 
 shape of exhibitions and scholarships, and finally the chance of 
 proving the power of knowledge in some definite career ; much 
 as things have improved, how few of all these encouragements 
 fall to the lot of the most gifted woman 1 ' 
 
 1 But surely,' said Sir Henry, ' the earnest student ought to* 
 find his or her work its own reward.' 
 
 ' Perhaps so ; but still it wants, I think, an exceptionally 
 strong love of any particular branch of learning to pursue it 
 solely for its own sake without any ulterior aims. Take, for 
 instance, two average schoolboys, and set them to construe, say, 
 a play of CEdipus, promising to the one, by way of reward, a 
 pony, a handsome writingrdesk, a cabinet for curiosities, or 
 whatever he may have a fancy for ; while to the other you say, 
 " I give you a much higher motive, your labour must be its 
 own reward, when you have completed your task, I will allow 
 you to keep the exercise-book in which it is written, with my 
 annotations and notes of approval where they are deserved." 
 Would you call that fair, and could you be surprised if the 
 second boy felt the injustice and was disheartened ? ' 
 
 ' I quite see your point,' said Sir Henry, ' and women have,
 
 THE EDUCATION OF WOMEN. 71 
 
 110 doubt, in the past suffered great injustice in the matter of 
 education ; but you must allow that things are mending, and 
 that there is a very general desire now to give them a fair 
 chance.' 
 
 ' We are constantly told of all that is being done for women 
 in the way of education,' said Mrs. Silverton, ' while what is 
 left undone gets quietly ignored, and yet Madeline's parable of 
 the two boys applies to the present almost as much as to the 
 past ; just think how very few and far between are the en- 
 couragements to learning set before women compared with the 
 prizes to be earned by men possessing neither more ability nor 
 more industry ; the only wonder, I think, is that so large a 
 number still go on steadily doing their best without being 
 either discouraged or indifferent, though they are very much in 
 the position of workmen who are expected to be overcome with 
 gratitude for the present of a set of tools, while, at the same 
 time, their hands are carefully tied so that if they use them at 
 all it can only be in a very limited fashion.' 
 
 ' There is a story,' said Madeline, ' told of a girl who was 
 such a celebrated climber that she would have been made a 
 member of an Alpine Club had it not been for the misfortune 
 of sex ; however, by way of consolation, they elected the dog 
 who had accompanied her on all her expeditions you think 
 the story very ridiculous, no doubt,' she added, in reply to Sir 
 Henry's look of amusement, ' but I do not think it gives at all 
 a bad idea of the indirect sort of recognition which is all the 
 cleverest and most zealous women-students can hope to receive 
 at our chief Universities.' 
 
 ' But their names appear in the class-lists, do they not? 
 Avhile London gives them the hall-mark of a degree, and Oxford 
 and Cambridge a certificate of having passed their examin- 
 ations.' 
 
 ' True, but after 1 As regards any future career, except in 
 one direction, the woman who has herself or others to support 
 is very much in the position of the workman to whom Nellie 
 referred, with his fine tools and hands tied so that he
 
 72 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 cannot use them. How many doors to a future competence will 
 she, in spite of her education, find ready to open at her 
 knock ? ' 
 
 ' I cannot, for the life of me, see what women want more 
 than they have got,' said Major Knagge, looking up from the 
 pages of the Field in which, and the depths of a large easy- 
 chair, he had been buried for the last quarter of an hour ; 
 * many a poor subaltern spending er his life's blood in his 
 country's service would be thankful for a fourth of the income 
 earned by the mistresses in girls' high-schools, what with their 
 comfortable house, their fixed salary, their capitation-fees, and 
 er I don't know what else.' 
 
 ' You cannot, I think,' said Professor Wray, ' compare the 
 responsibilities of the one, the brains, the organizing power 
 required in the one case with those demanded in the other ; I 
 take it that intellectual wealth is the primary source of a 
 country's prosperity, and that, therefore, these women per- 
 forming the higher service deserve the better pay.' 
 
 ' I am prepared to grant that,' said Sir Henry, ' but is not 
 their position in itself a refutation of your argument that girl- 
 students have no incentive to work 1 ' 
 
 ' And how many of the thousands of girls being educated at 
 our high - schools and colleges can hope to attain such a 
 position ? These prizes are few and far between, and not so very 
 brilliant after all, when you compare them with the salary and 
 position not of a subaltern but of a Major -General (for the 
 women you refer to, recollect, are at the summit of their pro- 
 fession), or with the head master of a public school, who not 
 only has a much higher salary and position, but has also the 
 happy consciousness that if he does not openly transgress the 
 decalogue, as interpreted by modern ideas, he may almost with 
 certainty count sooner or later upon a bishopric. But putting 
 aside for the moment the question of the employment of 
 women, what we are maintaining is that as yet they are far 
 from having their fair share of the educational endowments of 
 the country. The money available for the encouragement of
 
 THE EDUCATION OF WOMEN. 73 
 
 learning in girls, is, I believe, something under 5000Z. per 
 annum, whereas the endowment of boys' schools reaches over 
 277,0001, nearly sixty times as much, to say nothing of the 
 funds of our Universities applied almost exclusively to the 
 advantage of men. Oxford owes its chief wealth to the spoil of 
 nunneries, and yet, though it is now tardily proposing to 
 admit women to some examinations, no sense of justice prompts 
 adequate provision for their higher education. When girls and 
 women are admitted as freely in every respect to all endow- 
 ments as men, then, and not till then, will they cease to have 
 any right to complain of injustice.' 
 
 ' Look for example at Christ's Hospital,' said Madeline; 
 'founded originally for boys and girls, it educates 1100 of the 
 former in a manner that will enable them to take a good 
 position in society ; while a few, a very few, girls are trained, and 
 that, so I understand, for domestic service. It seems almost 
 incredible, but when Mill first brought forward the question of 
 Woman's Suffrage in the House of Commons there was no pro- 
 vision whatever for the higher education of girls, and yet the 
 opposition to any change was, at least, as strong as it is now ; 
 indeed, many reputedly intelligent men went so far as to say 
 that the brain-power of girls being so very far inferior, to admit 
 them to the same examinations would at once lower their 
 prestige. I never could quite follow their line of reasoning, I 
 suppose it was too involved for my limited apprehension. 
 
 ' To tell the truth,' said Sir Henry, 'looking at the results of 
 recent examinations, there is more reason, I think, to fear 
 that we shall be humiliated by being left far behind in the 
 race, and shall have to begin with shame to take a lower place 
 in creation than we have hitherto supposed ourselves to be 
 entitled to.' 
 
 ' Some such fear was expressed by no less a person than 
 Titus Livius,' said Professor Wray, ' and has been echoed 
 occasionally ever since, but it is a very unworthy one.' 
 
 ' So I think,' said Madeline, ' if, as soon as women have fair 
 play, men are to be more or less effaced, then they must be
 
 74 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 very much feebler creatures than we have been always led to 
 suppose.' . 
 
 ' I wish people would understand,' said Mrs. Silvertou, 
 ' that the education of women is a question of general not of 
 class benefit ; supposing a woman in any particular case to be 
 her husband's superior in culture and natural endowments, it 
 must be for their joint benefit that she is in a position to supply 
 his intellectual deficiencies. I must say it is very difficult to 
 imagine any worthy motive actuating those men who still desire 
 to keep women mentally in leading-strings.' 
 
 ' I do not see that,' said Sir Henry, ' I believe a great many 
 of these wicked tyrants are actuated by a true reverence for 
 womanhood, they would spare women all they can, taking the 
 toil of advancing knowledge on their own shoulders, feeling as 
 they do that the enjoyment of things should be a woman's part 
 in life.' 
 
 ' What an abnormal development of ideality, and what 
 ignorance of the real issues of life such men must possess ! ' 
 replied Mrs. Silverton. ' But "against stupidity the gods them- 
 selves are powerless," and people who will persist in looking 
 through the wrong end of a telescope in spite of remonstrance, 
 are only to be given up as hopeless, I suppose ; but just fancy 
 any one in this nineteenth century taking it as a matter of 
 course that all women are happy, sheltered, and protected, 
 and, therefore, do not, like men, require to be prepared for the 
 battle of life.' 
 
 ' It is, of course, taken for granted,' said Major Knagge, 
 ' that women will find this protection in their natural sphere, 
 that they will er marry and be supported by their hus- 
 bands.' 
 
 ' But,' said the Professor, ' do you think anything but 
 immemorial custom could make it seem decent or fitting that 
 women should depend upon marriage for a maintenance, the 
 only alternative to which is destitution and misery 1 Every day 
 well-born and delicately nurtured women are thrown upon 
 their own resources, perhaps with others dependent on them,
 
 THE EDUCATION OP WOMEN". 75 
 
 and it is both cruel aud selfish to ignore this fact and refuse 
 to the rising generation a training which shall make them 
 capable and self-supporting, and enable them to command some 
 employment suitable to their station in life. Nothing can 
 touch the money invested here. I do not ignore the difficulties 
 in the way of women's work, but these will lessen as time goes 
 on, and we can, at least, save those who are still young from 
 drifting into the miserable condition of pauperism and de- 
 pendence into which so many elderly gentlewomen among us 
 have been forced, chiefly by their defective training.' 
 
 ' But,' asked Sir Henry, ' has not the case of such women 
 been somewhat overstated by the lovers of sensational charity 1 ?' 
 
 ' That,' said Madeline, ' would be impossible ; if it were not 
 so late, I would read you some extracts from the reports of the 
 Governesses' Benevolent Institution, which would show you 
 how very wide and pressing is the want of a training which 
 shall put women of the educated classes in a position of 
 pecuniary independence.' 
 
 ' But the question of " women's work," ' said Mrs. Silverton, 
 ' is so wide and would take us so very far afield, that if we 
 allow ourselves to start upon it, we shall be like the little old 
 woman in the nursery-tale with her refractory pig, " and shan't 
 get home to-night," and, therefore, with the consent of the 
 honourable members present, I move that the debate be ad- 
 journed.'
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 ' THE only argument entitled to any weight against the fullest con- 
 cession of a woman's right to choose her own sphere of activity and use- 
 fulness and to eTolve its proper limitations, rests on the assumption that 
 woman does not claim any such rights. If she sees fit to navigate vessels, 
 print newspapers, frame laws, and select rulers any or all of these I 
 know no principle that justifies men hi interposing any impediment to 
 her doing so.' HORACE GREELEY, Letter to tlie Ohio Convention. 
 
 ' When women are called upon to assume the burdens of men, and to 
 undertake the responsibility of providing for their own subsistence, they 
 approach the task under greater difficulties than belong to then: more 
 powerful competitors. Now, Sir, I cannot help thinking that for some 
 reason or other there are various important particulars in which women 
 obtain much less than justice under existing social arrangements. It is 
 to me a matter of astonishment to observe in London the distribution of 
 employment as between men and women. I scarcely ever see in the hands 
 of women an employment that ought more naturally to be in the hands of 
 men ; but I constantly see hi the hands of men employment which might 
 be more beneficially and economically in the hands of women.' 
 
 MR. GLADSTONE'S Speech in the House of Commons, May 3rd, 1871. 
 
 1 The honest, earnest man must stand and work, 
 The woman also, otherwise she drops 
 At once below the dignity of man 
 Accepting serfdom. Free men freely work.' 
 
 ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING, Aurora Leigh. 
 
 ' The earnestness of life is the only passport to the satisfaction of life. 
 
 THEODORE PABKER.

 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE EMPLOYMENT OF WOMEN. 
 
 THOUGH still almost oppi'essively hot in the middle of the day, 
 there was an autumnal chilliness in the morning air which made 
 Madeline, who had gone out for a constitutional directly after 
 an early breakfast, walk across the downs with something more 
 than her usual briskness, to the great delight of Neptune, who 
 had already promoted her to such a high place in his esteem, 
 that contrary to his usual custom he forgot in her society to keep 
 up any resentment at not having been allowed to join his master 
 and the shooting-party. Like most well-bred animals he delighted 
 in being talked to, and always showed his appreciation of the 
 attention in a manner quite unmistakable ; so it was a matter 
 of no small astonishment to Madeline that suddenly, while she 
 Avas speaking to him, he sniffed the air for a second, gave a low 
 whine, and throwing politeness to the winds, bounded suddenly 
 over a hedge into one of the fields which skirted the common, 
 and presently disappeared down a small ravine on the opposite 
 side of the enclosure. Curious to find out what was the cause of 
 this unwonted excitement, Madeline followed at a more moderate 
 pace, but before she reached the edge of the slope Neptune had 
 re-appeared, barking, and now ran before her looking back 
 every moment to see if she was following. After making her 
 -way, not without difficulty, through the gorse and bracken 
 which just at that point lined the sides of the ravine, she 
 reached a small grass-grown spot, where seated on a stone 
 beside the brook that here made its way somewhat noisily to 
 the sea, she recognised to her astonishment Sir Henry Tre- 
 garthen, whom an hour ago she had seen in the highest
 
 80 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 spirits starting for a good day's shooting, but who now looked 
 the very picture of misery and discomfort.' 
 
 ' Please do not move,' she exclaimed, as with a woe-begone 
 smile by way of greeting he attempted to rise on her approach ; 
 ' I hope nothing serious has happened 1 ' 
 
 ' Only a piece of my confounded ill-luck, I beg your pardon, 
 but I am afraid before you arrived I had lost, not only my 
 day's sport, but my temper. The fact is, soon after we started 
 I was clever enough to strain my ankle in scrambling through 
 a hedge, and finding that walking made it get worse and worse 
 instead of better, I was obliged at last to turn back ; I thought I 
 could manage to get to Crag's Nest without alarming Nellie 
 by sending for the carriage, but by the time I reached this 
 stream my foot had become so swollen that I slit my boot up 
 with my pocket-knife and tried what wading through the cold 
 water would do for me, and this cut is the result. A sharp 
 stone, I suppose. But I cannot bear to keep you standing,' he 
 added, with a sense of humour that no discomfort could entirely 
 repress, ' if I could only in natural gifts emulate that superior 
 animal the stork, I would offer you my seat and stand at ease 
 for an indefinite period upon one point of support, but as it 
 is ' 
 
 Madeline did not smile in reply; a softened and almost 
 tender expression, so her companion thought, came into her 
 eyes as she drew nearer and saw the real state of the case, 
 for his foot was bleeding in a way to alarm a novice in the art 
 of surgery ; but Madeline had not spent six months in a London 
 hospital for nothing. ' Will you let me examine it 1 ' she asked, 
 with just a shade of timidity mingling with her natural impulse 
 to relieve suffering wherever it might be found. 
 
 With most of the young women of his acquaintance, Sir Henry 
 would possibly have made some polite protestations, ' So sorry 
 to trouble them ;' Ashamed to let a lady wait upon him,' &c., 
 but Madeline's manner, as taking off her gloves she knelt down, 
 and without saying another word began to bathe his foot, was, 
 though gentle and womanly, at the same time so practical and
 
 THE EMPLOYMENT OF WOMEN. 81 
 
 business-like, that he feltcornplimentaryplatitudcs would be quite 
 out of place. ' Now, can you manage to hold it in the running 
 water while I make a bandage 1 If you will give me your 
 handkerchief, I think with mine it will be long enough,' and so 
 saying she took needle, cotton, and thimble from a housewife in 
 her pocket, and tearing the cambric into strips began to sew 
 them together.' 
 
 ' You are evidently not one of those persons who are born 
 with two left hands,' said Sir Henry, who was watching her 
 with a mingled feeling of gratitude and admiration, as she 
 deftly and firmly wound the bandage around the strained 
 ankle and wounded instep, ' my foot feels better already.' 
 
 ' I am glad of that, and I do not think the strain is 
 very serious, though it may entail a few days' rest. But the 
 question is, after your foot is bound up, how are you to reach 
 home? Only a phantom coach and horses could get down this 
 ravine.' 
 
 'Now do not, please do not recommend two men and a 
 stretcher,' pleaded Sir Henry. 
 
 ' I wonder,' said Madeline, meditatively, ' if with my help 
 you could manage to walk; it cannot be more than five minutes 
 from the lower part of the grounds, and you could rest again 
 on a gaixlen-seat before going up to the house.' 
 
 ' I am sure I could manage it, but well, in the first place, 
 I hate to give you all this trouble, and in the second, I shall 
 never get on that boot again.' 
 
 ' True, I had forgotten your boot ; I think you will have after 
 all to let me go to the house to see what Nellie can find in the 
 way of an easy shoe, only you ought to be at home and resting 
 your foot as soon as possible.' 
 
 ' Oh, thanks ; but I really think there is nothing serious the 
 matter, I feel so much better now, owing to your good offices, 
 that I can easily limp such a short distance, only my boot 
 wait, I have thought of a plan. Here, Neptune, good dog, 
 slipper,' he exclaimed, pointing to the discarded boot. ' I think 
 he will understand,' he continued, turning to Madeline, 'for he 
 
 G
 
 82 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 has been in the habit of taking my boots and bringing my 
 slippers from one part of the house to the other ; ' and true 
 enough, the retriever, after looking for a moment questioningly 
 in his master's face and then at the boot, seized the latter and 
 trotted off without any further hesitation in the direction of 
 Crag's Nest. 
 
 ' You are very fortunate to have such a dog,' said Madeline 
 presently, with some enthusiasm. 
 
 ' I certainly was mistaken when I said in my haste this 
 morning that I was an unlucky fellow,' but the look with which 
 these words were accompanied were lost upon his companion, 
 who had stooped down and was again examining the injured foot. 
 
 ' That cut has not stopped bleeding, I am afraid,' she said ; 
 ' I shall have to alter the arrangement of the bandage and 
 draw it tighter I think ; there, that is better, does it hurt you V 
 
 ' Hurt me, yes no, not my foot. You believe in cold 
 water, Miss Acton?' 
 
 ' Yes, in most cases, it is at any rate a safe remedy.' 
 
 ' Are there no occasions when warmth would be better for 
 a patient 1 ' 
 
 ' Certainly, though not, I think, in the present instance ; 
 but that is surely Neptune coming back already, and with the 
 slipper too. Oh, you good dog ! You ought to have the medal 
 of the Royal Humane Society.' Madeline talked fast, unusually 
 fast for her ; but Sir Henry was for the moment silent, and for 
 some reason as nearly sulky as his happily constituted nature 
 would allow. Rising slowly he made one or two ineffectual 
 efforts to get on alone, but was fain at last to accept his com- 
 panion's frankly proffered arm. 
 
 ' It does seem reversing our positions, though,' he said, with 
 a half- apology, ' I ought to be helping you along this rough road.' 
 
 ' If I had hurt my foot I am sure you would.' 
 
 ' A thousand times yes ; but under any circumstances it 
 always seems a lady's right to claim, and a man's privilege to 
 give her help.' 
 
 ' In our artificial state of society, yes ; but nature never
 
 THE EMPLOYMENT OF WOMEX. 83 
 
 intended a woman to be helpless, it ought not to be more 
 difficult for her to get about than a man ; it is only custom, an 
 irrational dress, and defective physical training that have made 
 it so. I hope the day will come when health, comfort, and 
 fitness, rather than fashion, will have the ordering of our 
 clothing. Men have the advantage over us in this respect.' 
 
 'But I am sure you would not advocate dressing like a 
 man.' 
 
 ' Certainly not ; here we should fail at once in fulfilling the 
 condition of fitness ; besides, I do not think that your dress, 
 though in some sense convenient, is altogether rational, and it 
 certainly has contrived in many respects to reach the acme of 
 ugliness ; it has, however, this advantage over ours, you are not 
 greatly hindered by it in the active business of life. But I see 
 your foot is paining you, I am glad we have reached the 
 shrubbery at last, will you not rest here on this seat while I 
 go on to the house and find Nellie 1 ' 
 
 Sir Henry was not sorry to accept the invitation, nor, 
 contrary to her expectations, did his sister have much difficulty 
 in persuading him to rest in his own room for an hour, thanks 
 to which, perhaps, by luncheon-time he seemed in general health 
 and spirits, none the worse for his morning's accident, and from a 
 couch near the dining-room window was ready, in the intervals 
 of a very excellent meal, for a passage-at-arms with any one 
 who chose to enter the lists. ' Miss Acton has been giving me 
 some new ideas, Nellie,' he said, 'on the subject of ladies' dress, 
 and I have been wondering if, as usual, you agree with her, 
 why you do not from that seat of genius, your inner conscious- 
 ness, evolve and set the example of wearing what you would 
 consider rational garments ? ' 
 
 ' There is no good in making oneself peculiar,' was the reply, 
 * one only gets talked about and laiighed at, and loses what 
 little influence one might otherwise possess. The world always 
 ridicules what it is not accustomed to ; you must have ob- 
 served yourself that, however pretty and sensible a dress may 
 be, provided there is anything uncommon or unfashionable
 
 84 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 abcmt it, those who venture to wear it are always pointed out 
 as people who ought to be kept under moderate restraint as 
 harmless lunatics ; while, however absurd or unhealthy, what is 
 in the fashion is by the majority always tolerated and often 
 admired. It shows how successful and moderate we have been 
 in our attempts at reform, that you have not observed any 
 difference, though we do not indulge in high-heels, or narrow- 
 toes, or corsets, or crinolettes, or long dresses either except in 
 the evening/ 
 
 ' The worst that can be said of most of the proposed reforms 
 in ladies' dress,' said Professor Wray, who, having had proofs to 
 correct for the mid-day post, had not joined the shooting-party, 
 ' is, that they are either ugly, or else in many ways as incon- 
 venient as those they are designed to supersede.' 
 
 ' I think it is a pity also,' said Madeline, ' that the divided 
 skirt and the costumes generally recommended by the "Rational 
 Dress Society," should not be within the reach of many who 
 would gladly adopt them ; in this way I mean : a woman of 
 limited income can get a useful dress in the prevailing fashion 
 at any shop for a reasonable price, but the demand for any of the 
 forms of " rational dress " is so small, that the price is proportion- 
 ably great, so that a woman who has no maid to make it for her, 
 and no time or sufficient talent to make it for herself, is really 
 unable to change, however much she may wish it.' 
 
 ' I quite see that,' said the Professor, ' in fact, a rational 
 dress must have become general before those who need it most, 
 the women-toilers in our mills and factories, can benefit. It is 
 a sad but, I believe, an undoubted fact, that hundreds, indeed 
 thousands of these workers are not only occasionally exposed 
 to danger as it is, but are unable to improve their positions 
 owing to the difficulty of moving with their full skirts amongst 
 the machinery.' 
 
 ' I should be sorry to see flowing drapery altogether 
 abolished,' said Sir Henry, 'but there must be some way in 
 which ladies might compromise the matter, without long 
 trailing skirts acting as snares for the feet of unwary men,
 
 THE EMPLOYMENT OF WOMEN*. 85 
 
 tight ones which fetter their own movements, or inflated ones 
 that fetter those of every one else who comes within a yard of 
 them.' 
 
 'As women are getting more thoroughly educated, more 
 active and helpful,' said Madeline, ' there is, I think, an increas- 
 ing rebellion amongst the more sensible against the tyranny of 
 fashion ; and when we remember what the last hundred years 
 has done for men in substituting, on the whole, useful garments 
 for the picturesque but unserviceable finery of the past, ^ve are 
 justified, I think, in hoping something from the future. I do 
 not see why it need be a case of utility versus beauty, though ; 
 and I trust we shall take warning by men's failure to secure 
 the last, and not in our turn sweep away the flowers with the 
 weeds.' 
 
 ' That woman would certainly be a public benefactor,' said 
 Mrs. Silverton, as she rose from the table, ' who would invent 
 something for us in the shape of dress that should be useful, 
 comfortable, becoming, and tolerably permanent. But this is 
 not a very interesting subject for gentlemen, nor one in which, 
 with all due deference to them, their advice can be of much 
 practical use. What shall we do with our wounded Knight 
 this lovely afternoon 1 ' 
 
 ' Oh, leave me to take care of myself, it is not fair that you 
 should all be punished because I am a prisoner.' 
 
 ' We are not going to do anything of the sort,' replied his 
 sister, with her peremptory little nod. ' Madeline, will you 
 ring, dear; and Professor Wray, I know you will not mind 
 helping Watson to wheel the couch out under the veranda, 
 you and Harry can enjoy your cigars, and we will bring our 
 work and books ; or if you like we will resume the discussion 
 Avhich was growing so warm that I was obliged to break in upon 
 it the night before last. Auntie, will you join us, or would you 
 rather go for a drive with Mrs. Knagge ? ' 
 
 ' That is right,' said Sir Henry, as, after duly weighing the 
 respective merits of a tete-h-tete drive and the interest of a 
 general discussion in which they might put on the break occa-
 
 86 MEX, AVOMEX, AXD PROGRESS. 
 
 sionally, when theories too alarmingly progressive threatened 
 the old family coach with ruin, Miss Wynter and Mrs. Knagge 
 followed the rest of the party into the A r eranda. ' I shall 
 want your support,' added Sir Henry, with feigned alarm, ' or 
 these A r ery advanced people, with arguments at their finger's 
 ends, will be too nnich for me. But perhaps, after all/ he- 
 continued, ' Miss Acton has not the courage of her opinions, 
 since for the last tAVO days she has not even referred to the 
 subject of our Tuesday evening's discussion.' 
 
 'One would think, to hear you, Harry,' said his sister,, 
 laughing, ' that you really liked people of one idea ; Avhereas, I 
 know no one in the world who Avould be so much bored by 
 them. Madeline has only been giving you time for the process- 
 of digestion, having some experience of the circumstances 
 under which " silence is golden." ' 
 
 ' I have heard a great many Avomen quote that old proverb,' 
 said Sir Henry, ' but few who have cared practically to 
 illustrate it.' 
 
 ' Another argument,' said Mrs. Silverton, ' in favour of our 
 plea for the fullest possible culture. Try shaking a box with 
 just a few coins in it, the clatter is something fearful ; but 
 pack it full of bank-notes,' she added, Avith a glance at Made- 
 line, ' and it is so silent that a stranger might think there Avas 
 not much in it ; only those who know what key Avill be an 
 "open Sesame" can hope to get at its contents.' 
 
 Madeline's hand was laid for a moment with an affectionate 
 gesture upon that of her friend, as though to thank her for her 
 good opinion, but at the same time to deprecate the application 
 of such nattering Avords to herself. ' The lock on my ideas is 
 a very ordinary one, I am afraid,' she said, with a smile. ' I 
 was not sure,' she continued, turning to Sir Henry, ' if you 
 were sufficiently interested in Avhat we were saying the other 
 night about the pressing necessity there is that women should 
 have greater facilities for self-support to care to resume the 
 discussion, that is all.' 
 
 'To show that I was "sufficiently interested," I recollect
 
 THE EMPLOYMENT OF WOMEX. 87 
 
 perfectly that the question of women's fitness and opportunities 
 for work arose out of your claim that all girls should be edu- 
 cated as the great majority of boys are, with a view to some 
 definite occupation.' 
 
 ' Yes, I do not think study which has not a definite and 
 useful object can fairly be called education. In a race, every 
 competitor is allowed to gtart fairly ; at any rate, those who 
 claim for themselves superior strength and swiftness are not 
 given an advantage.' 
 
 ' Certainly not ; I quite agree that girls should be allowed 
 equal chances to learn everything of which they are capable, 
 or for which they have a natural aptitude.' 
 
 ' That is something for you to acknowledge, Harry,' said 
 Mrs. Silverton. ' But would any young man, do you think, 
 studying medicine, or science, or reading for the bar, be likely 
 to feel a very great interest in his work if he were made 
 clearly to understand that, however successful he might be 
 in passing his examinations, he must never turn the knowledge 
 he has acquired to any practical use, or hope to make any 
 money by it. Is it not natural that with things as they are at 
 present, an intelligent girl should ask herself, " And after all, 
 when I have worked my utmost, when, in the face of difficulties 
 greater than any my brothers have had to contend against, I 
 have acquired the knowledge which, if I were a boy, would 
 enable me to earn a competence in some useful and honourable 
 profession, is it fair, is it right, that I should be tied hand and 
 foot to prevent niy making any use of that knowledge ? " 
 Education, without employment to follow, is, as somebody says, 
 like strengthening to their fullest capacity the wings of a young 
 bird, and then cooping it up for life within the bars of a narrow 
 cage.' 
 
 ' " Work \vithout hope draws nectar in a sieve, 
 And hope without an object cannot live," ' 
 
 quoted Madeline. ' When an active-minded girl has no outlet 
 for her energies, no occupation worthy of the name, it is not
 
 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 extraordinary, I think, if health, temper, and spirits alike 
 suffer. It is not given to every one to create out of surround- 
 ings a busy and useful life, nor to build up a self-sufficing 
 existence out of such unpromising materials as most girls on 
 leaving school are provided with ; I knofr a case in point, and 
 no doubt there are many similar. A lady my mother knew had 
 only one daughter, whom she educated quite on the old 
 spelling-book and sampler system, and instead of gratifying the 
 girl's desire for learning, and encouraging her intellectual 
 tastes, did everything she could to keep her down to the level 
 of mediocrity, which she considered for a woman the only safe 
 standard. The daughter, full of energy and ability inherited 
 from her father (a well-known physician, who, unfortunately 
 for her, died when she was very young), did not, even as she 
 grew older, rebel, but with her spirit and longing for a wider 
 sphere, her health gave way under the constant round of pre- 
 scribed trivialities. Mrs. Dakhi at last became alarmed, and 
 having vainly consulted their country doctor, took her at last 
 to a London physician, who, after making a careful examination 
 and asking a few questions about her habits and mode of life, 
 said, "Your daughter is suffering from a serious complaint, 
 which, for want of a better name, I will call dullness ; it is in 
 your power to cure it, / cannot." ' 
 
 ' I hope,' said Professor Wray, ' the mother had sense 
 enough to see where she had been wrong.' 
 
 ' Thanks to my parents' influence, yes ; poor Mrs. Dakin 
 came to them as her nearest neighbours for advice ; she was 
 very like an old hen in charge of an enterprising duckling ; but 
 having made such & fiasco of her system of training, she wisely 
 determined on their suggestion, that though swimming seemed 
 to her a very unnatural and doubtful proceeding, if her 
 daughter ivould not or could not be contented to follow example 
 and precedent, it must be better to indulge her than lose her ; 
 so Mary was allowed to follow her natural bent, and soon 
 recovered her energy and spirits. By the help of an uncle and 
 of the old doctor who had given her mother such good advice,
 
 THE EMPLOYMENT OF WOMEX. 89 
 
 she went to Paris, threw herself heart and soul into the study 
 of medicine, took her degree, and now, having a large practice, 
 is able very materially to help her mother, who is living with 
 her, apparently quite happy and contented at finding that, in 
 spite of her "eccentricity" and her constant occupation, Mary 
 can still spare time to be attentive and affectionate.' 
 
 ' But was not that an exceptional case ? ' said Miss Wynter. 
 * Do you think girls, as a rule, have any of this craving for 
 work, or desire for a wider sphere than is offered by their 
 family or social circle? I must say I have not seen it.' 
 
 ' For my part,' said Mrs. Knagge, ' what girls mostly seem 
 to care about, I think, is their own amusement.' 
 
 ' Can you expect anything better,' said Madeline, ' when 
 they are, in a great measure, shut out from the serious occupa- 
 tions and responsibilities of life, and condemned to trifles; when 
 parents prefer for their daughters a life of idleness to a life of 
 independence, practically allowing them to grow up with the 
 idea that work is not a privilege, but a curse 1 ' 
 
 ' The girls are not to blame,' said Mrs. Silverton ; ' I have 
 known many who, on leaving school, have tried to keep up 
 their studies, but after a time they have grown weary ; there 
 was no emulation, there were so many distractions, there was 
 so little encouragement, and no practical result to be hoped 
 for, so the lives that in some definite profession might have 
 been made full of usefulness and beauty, drift, most likely, into 
 a soured old maidenhood, or into an unsatisfactory marriage, 
 from either of which a little honest satisfying work might have 
 saved them.' 
 
 ' It will be a happy thing for the rising generation,' said 
 Professor Wray, ' when all fathers of families, however secure 
 their position may seem, have the sense to follow the example 
 of Charlemagne, who had each of his daughters, so say the 
 chroniclers, taught some occupation, so that if ever, as he said, 
 they should experience adverse fortune, against which nothing 
 could absolutely guarantee them, they might still have the 
 means of subsistence.'
 
 90 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 ' But,' said Sir Henry, ' as things stand at present, you can 
 hardly expect that parents should be willing to invest money 
 in educating their daughters for a profession which, if they 
 marry, will probably be abandoned.' 
 
 ' If,' replied the Professor, ' a son is so delicate that there 
 appears small chance of his living beyond five-and-twenty, you 
 would not think his father justified in making that a reason for 
 saving money upon his education.' 
 
 ' Besides,' said Madeline, ' those parents who are able to 
 save a little money for a daughter's marriage-portion, would 
 surely act much more wisely and kindly in spending it upon 
 a professional training, of which no reverses can deprive her, 
 which no imprudent trustees can invest foolishly, and no care- 
 less husband or children can possibly squander.' 
 
 ' Still,' said Sir Henry, ' I cannot help thinking that to a 
 married woman a profession would be practically useless.' 
 
 ' I do not see that,' replied his sister ; ' supposing she 
 marries and is childless, it must be a blessing to have some 
 wider interests than are involved in housekeeping ; supposing 
 she marries a man in the same profession as herself, working 
 as his partner she may be an unspeakable help to him. Should 
 he happen (and men are sometimes inconsiderate enough) to 
 fail in health or business, her capacity for bread-winning may 
 perhaps be the only thing that stands between them and utter 
 poverty, as in the case of that brave German woman, Babette 
 Schnell, who, seeing ruin staring them in the face, owing to her 
 husband's love of amusement and indifference to his profession, 
 learnt his art of dentistry, and by this means supported herself 
 and her daughter.' 
 
 ' But all this, my dear,' said Miss Wynter, seriously, ' is 
 quite bringing a woman out of her proper place ; if she does 
 her duty, she will find quite enough to occupy her in looking 
 after her husband and children and her domestic affairs.' 
 
 ' Biit, auntie, even a young mother, you must allow, unless 
 she spends her whole time in dressing and undressing and 
 otherwise worrying her baby, must have hours daily at her
 
 THE EMPLOYMENT OP WOMEX. 91 
 
 command; and by-and-by, as the children grow up, and the 
 younger ones go to school, the older to college, it is the same. 
 Again, when they are married or launched in life, might not 
 the thirty or forty years that remain to her be happily and 
 usefully employed in professional work, which would keep her 
 from rusting into premature old age, or from being absorbed by 
 narrow aims and interests and becoming the victim of dyspepsia 
 and discontent.' 
 
 ' My humble opinion is,' said Professor Wray, ' that any 
 household and domestic duties will be performed with greater 
 pleasure and efficiency by those women whose intelligence has 
 been trained in some other vocation ; wider interests will 
 enable them to rise above the irritation of petty cares, while in 
 the matter of domestic economy you would look in vain, I am 
 convinced, amongst them for a bride like the one mentioned in 
 the Saturday Review, who started on housekeeping by dividing 
 her husband's income of 400 per annum thus: "There will 
 be 100. for rent, 1001. for my clothes, 100^. for his, and you 
 know we cannot possibly eat 100" So even from the selfish 
 point of view which will always, I am afraid, influence the 
 majority of men, we are likely to find the comfort of our homes 
 much safer in the hands of one whose business faculties have 
 been developed, and to obtain more communion and sympathy 
 in life's trials and anxieties from one Avho has herself experi- 
 enced the like.' 
 
 ' And supposing a woman,' said Madeline, ' is left a widow, 
 as so many are, in straitened circumstances, what a blessing 
 a profession must be, saving her from the misery of becoming a 
 burden upon friends, or passing her life in morbid repining, and 
 a miserable struggle to keep up appearances. It is not only 
 bread, though, that is wanted, but occupation for head, hands, 
 and heart. The life of thousands of women in the upper and 
 middle classes is often painfully empty and colourless, until, 
 like the girl I was speaking of just now, they go very near, as 
 George Macdonald says, to falling into a consumption "just 
 from discontent, the discontent of a soul which is meant to sit
 
 92 MEN. WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 at the Father's table, and so cannot content itself with the 
 husks that the swine eat." I fail to understand how any one 
 can think about the subject at all without being saddened by 
 the Avaste of mental and moral power in the aimless uncertainty 
 which characterises the lives of so many girls and women, 
 whose only vista is 
 
 " A wall so blank 
 Their shadow they thank 
 For sometimes falling there.'' ' 
 
 ' But do you not think,' suggested Sir Henry, ' that when a 
 girl's nature seems ' to eat into itself,' as it were, it is less 
 * l for lack of something else to hew and hack " than because her 
 heart is not filled, because in some way the emotional side of 
 her nature is not satisfied.' 
 
 ' I cannot believe,' said Madeline, with some earnestness, 
 '* that an aimless and objectless life, however full of affection, 
 can be an altogether happy and useful one ; a woman's nature 
 like a man's is many-sided, and in spite of the poet's much- 
 quoted assertion, love was never meant to be her " whole 
 existence "; what makes it " of man's life a thing apart " but the 
 fact that existence to him, as a rule, is full of varied and 
 absorbing interests, as it should be also to her, if life is to be as 
 complete as nature intended ; for she has also an intellect which 
 demands cultivation, energies which demand free exercise, and 
 emotions which, though they may colour her life, should not, 
 for want of counterbalancing forces, be allowed completely to 
 govern it.' 
 
 ' Certainly,' said Professor Wray, ' seeing that each woman 
 is a complete and distinct individual, with a separate per- 
 sonality, she should, in all justice, have the means to live 
 happily and usefully without necessarily uniting herself to any 
 man ; I do not by this, mind you, mean to deny that either sex 
 will find in true marriage a fuller and more complete life.' 
 
 ' It may be so,' replied Madeline, ' but even if it were not 
 such a lottery that many from choice remain single, those who
 
 THE EMPLOYMENT OF WOMEN. 93 
 
 make a girl's probable marriage a reason for denying her the 
 means of self-support must be ignorant that there are about a 
 million more women than men in the country, who, for no- 
 worse crime than that of a celibacy which is unavoidable, are 
 condemned by prejudice to a life of poverty.' 
 
 ' But all single women are not poor,' said Mrs. Knagge. 
 
 ' Not necessarily, but out of the forty-three per cent of 
 Englishwomen above the age of twenty, who, according to the 
 last census, are either widows or unmarried, a very small pro- 
 portion are wealthy ; and surely such a fact as this makes it 
 imperative that there should be more sources of self-supporting, 
 self-sufficing industry, open to women.' 
 
 ' I had no idea that the disproportion was so great,' said 
 Sir Henry ; ' it does certainly make the question a more serious 
 one than I thought.' 
 
 ' And this statement, the accuracy of which I can endorse/ 
 said Professor Wray, ' does not apply to any particular country, 
 for almost all over the civilised world women are greatly in the 
 majority, and if we refuse the means of self-support to any 
 whose future is not amply provided for, the question becomes 
 one for political economists. How are these women to be 
 maintained ? " To keep them," as Miss Davics wisely remarks, 
 "from earning money, does not prevent their spending it, and if 
 they are not supporting themselves they must be consuming 
 the present earnings or accumulated savings of somebody else." 
 Until government is prepared to pension every unmarried 
 woman, until men are prepared to pay an extra tax for their 
 support, they have no right whatever to put difficulties in the 
 way of their earning an independent livelihood. ' 
 
 ' I have no doubt you will, after all the arguments used for 
 my conversion, think me very prejudiced,' said Sir Henry, ' but 
 I own I do not like the thought of well-bred, gently-nurtured 
 women, contending in the arena with men, at the risk of the 
 poetry which surrounds them being sunk in the rough prose of 
 a hard struggle for existence. There is nvuch that is attractive, 
 I think, in the cultus of positivism which regards women as the
 
 94 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 priestesses of humanity, whose condition is to be one of repose, 
 and whose mission necessitates her abstaining altogether from 
 the practical pursuits of the rougher sex.* 
 
 ' Such a visionary conception of our mission in life,' said 
 Madeline, ' could only be made to apply to a certain privileged 
 class, and in them, I think, we should soon find its tendency 
 would be to develop the worst forms of selfishness and egotism. 
 If, in the business of life, men's manners are so rough that 
 women, for their own sakes, must be kept apart, all I can say 
 is the sooner men reform their manners the better.' 
 
 ' They will never do that,' said the Professor, ' by excluding 
 women; besides, we have stern facts to deal with, not poetical 
 ideas; the question has still to be answered : How are our I will 
 not say surplus, but unattached womenkiud to be provided for, 
 if the means of eaniing an honourable living is denied them] ' 
 
 ' I do not think it is altogether fair, though,' said Sir Henry, 
 ' to speak as if they had no alternative, as a [rule, between 
 marriage and poverty. I should be sorry to think that many 
 women were like that Scotch lassie whose mother, when her 
 late mistress, on going over the bride's comfortable cottage and 
 well-kept garden, remarked what a fortunate girl Mary was, 
 replied, " Aweel, ma'am, maybe, maybe, but there's joost ane 
 little draaback, she canna bide her man." A great many women, 
 as you say, have no " drawbacks " to provide for them, but 
 comparatively few, I should think, above the working classes, 
 are without a father, a brother, a son, or some male relative, 
 ready and willing to support them.' 
 
 ' So far is this from being the case,' replied Madeline, ' that 
 on the contrary, three millions out of every six adult English- 
 women are at this moment working fora living, two out of three 
 independently, and what difficulties they have to struggle against ! 
 The best years of their lives are wasted, their energies are 
 paralysed by want of money, or training, or opportunities for 
 making available such gifts as they possess. If you had seen 
 what I have I am sure you would be convinced that the woman's 
 * Comte's General View of Positivism.
 
 THE EMPLOYMENT OF WOMEN. 95 
 
 cry for work must be met by something more practical than 
 sentimental objections, or even temporary palliatives, for it is 
 want, it is actual hunger which is forcing many of them on. 
 And bad as it is with the poor, the case is worse with the 
 daughters of many professional men clergymen, doctors, 
 lawyers, officers whose income being all wanted to keep up 
 their position will not bear the strain of providing for the life- 
 long maintenance of idle or incapable children. It is all very 
 well for the Times to say, as it did upon one occasion, that a 
 woman's right is the right to a natural protector, but actual 
 facts show that a large number of women are forced not only 
 to stand alone, but to be the support of others ; I could give 
 you instance after instance of women who have had dependent 
 upon them aged parents, sick husbands, or even nephews and 
 nieces, and who, after all their exertions on behalf of others, 
 are now brought to a penniless old age, and obliged to depend 
 on charity for support* And I do not see how things are to 
 mend so lorig as women are debarred from the higher trades 
 and professions.' 
 
 ' And so long,' said Professor Wray, ' as they arc educated 
 with one view viz., that when they grow up they will in- 
 evitably get married and be provided for; indeed, to the 
 majority of poor, but well-born girls, no choice is given between 
 a husband and nothing, which, as an American writer says, is 
 very often "a choice between two nothings"; and so if death or 
 reverse of fortune comes to the father of a family while the 
 sons are already above want or on the road to self-support, the 
 daughters have too often nothing before them but penury, 
 gradual sinking in the social scale, or a loveless, miserable 
 marriage ; since, so far from being trained to a high concep- 
 tion of the dignity of labour, they are imbued with the notion 
 that idleness means refinement, and that the women (I beg 
 their pardon, "the ladies ") of a family ought not to do anything, 
 and yet if work is honourable for the one sex, it cannot be lesa 
 so for the other.' 
 
 *See Reports of Governesses' 1 Benevolent Institution.
 
 96 MEN", WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 'People think that sort of prejudice is [dying out,' said 
 Madeline, ' and yet not very long ago I heard of a lady who 
 got into sad disgrace with the mistress of a girl's school, by 
 urging upon her that the certificate of the Universities local 
 examiners would be of great service to her pupils in their 
 future life. " Madam," was the reply, " the young ladies in 
 my establishment will never require to put their education to 
 any practical use." Idleness was the hall-mark of good- 
 breeding, a woman would lose caste by work, and so, whatever 
 abilities they might possess, their vocation was to be just that 
 of a Dresden china shepherdess, no more ; to smile and look 
 pretty, and be ready to harmonise with the drawing-room 
 furniture of any man who could afford to give the high price 
 requisite for such a possession. Surely every woman should 
 have some more lofty aim in life than this unworthy waiting 
 upon the chances of marriage.' 
 
 'You do not seem to have a very high opinion of the 
 married state, Miss Acton,' said Mrs. Knagge, feeling bound, 
 in her husband's absence, to wield his harmless Aveapon of 
 small criticism. 
 
 ' I hope my ideal is not altogether a low one,' Avas the 
 reply, ' but it seems to me that the fact of depending on 
 marriage for the means of living, of looking upon it, in Ihort, 
 as a species of life-annuity investment, and the consequent 
 tendency to direct every thought towards it, is enough to taint 
 the finest nature in the world.' 
 
 'And supposing a woman,' said Mrs. Silverton, 'to be 
 placed by rank and Avealth out of reach of this danger, she is 
 none the worse for having a serious aim in life instead of 
 looking upon it as a summer's day, in which she has nothing 
 to do but to bask in the sunshine, and ignore all dis - 
 agreeables.' 
 
 ' I must acknowledge, for my part,' said Professor Wray, 
 * I cannot enter into the feelings of any man who would not 
 rather be the deliberate choice of a thoughtful, independent 
 woman, than marry a helpless, characterless doll, with no
 
 THE EMPLOYMENT OP WOMEN. . 97 
 
 resources in herself, or one who has been trained' on the 
 principle of good old Dr. Gregory, " that women must conceal 
 such sense as they possess unless they would disgust the sex 
 they were born to please "; or one who, being taught that marriage 
 was the end and aim of life, was ready to accept the first good 
 offer. It is such marriages as these which help to fill up the 
 records of our Divorce Court; far, far better that women 
 should spend their lives in ceaseless toil than marry, I do 
 not say without love only, unless their choice is such as 
 
 / / ' 
 
 tends to their higher development, since it is as much a 
 woman's duty as a man's not to live merely for her immediate 
 surroundings, but to make humanity at large the better and 
 happier for her existence.' 
 
 ' It is nothing but masculine egotism which has made the 
 success or failure of a woman's existence,' said Mrs. Silverton, 
 ' depend upon gaining the love of men who have retained for 
 themselves a multitude of other chances, while they decree that 
 she shall have no choice- between marriage and insignificance.' 
 
 ' Poor little trodden-down, oppressed, much injured being,' 
 apostrophised her brother. 
 
 ' It is no good expecting you to be serious, Harry, I know ; 
 but Madeline was going to speak.' 
 
 ' I beg your pardon,' said Sir Henry, turning towards her; 
 ' you, Miss Acton, are not so unscrupulously severe and sweeping 
 in your statements, so you have a right to the best attention of 
 all reasonable men.' 
 
 'Which means that you will give me yours,' replied 
 Madeline, smiling. ' I was going to say that I really think 
 men suffer by the present regime not much less than women ; 
 in their affections, from the risk they run of being married 
 merely for a home ; and also in their brains and purses, which 
 are often so unduly taxed for the support of a household, that 
 they are in danger of becoming little more than mere money- 
 making machines.' 
 
 ' If every girl,' said Professor Wray, ' were taught that it 
 is neither wise nor prudent to marry until she possesses, or is 
 
 H
 
 98 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 in a position to earn at least enough for her own maintenance, 
 and the means of doing so were put within her reach, future 
 generations would profit in more ways than one, and husbands 
 would soon, I suspect, begin to congratulate themselves on the 
 change; besides, every woman has as much right to in- 
 dependence as a man, it is no less necessary to her moral 
 dignity, and in common fairness she is entitled to at least such 
 a choice of employments as will enable her if she pleases to 
 remain single; or, if she marries, to undertake the responsibilities 
 of that most sacred of all human relations, at the dictate not of 
 necessity but of love, not of ambition but of genuine esteem.' 
 
 ' You allow,' said Sir Henry, ' that marriage is the happiest 
 and most natural state, and yet in a way, by making women's 
 work more remunerative, you put a premium as it were upon 
 celibacy ; is it not to be feared that the result of this universal 
 independence which you advocate will be that many women 
 who would have married and made happy and useful wives, 
 may remain single 1 ' 
 
 ' And is it not better they should, until they are fortunate 
 enough to meet one who will compel their highest friendship 
 and strongest affection 1 In face of the many evils daily re- 
 sulting from heedless rushing into marriage, anything which 
 will make people weigh its responsibilities beforehand should 
 be welcomed as a blessing.' 
 
 ' Apparently some people,' said Mrs. Silverton, ' would like 
 to drive women into matrimony like silly cattle into a pen, by 
 closing every other avenue ; I must say that is a noble view of 
 the subject to taka Oh, Harry, after all we have been saying 
 to think of your remaining still unconvinced, and bringing for- 
 ward such selfish arguments too ! ' 
 
 ' I am not quite so stiff-necked, perhaps, as I seem,' was 
 the reply, ' but no convictions worthy the name can be 
 formed without examining a question from every point of 
 view.' 
 
 ' Quite right,' said the Professor ; ' the theory, however, 
 which you have just been putting forward, more by way of
 
 THE EMPLOYMENT OF WOMEN. 99 
 
 argument than from conviction, I think, reminds me of the 
 Zend Avesta's decree, that " any damsel who having reached 
 the age of eighteen shall refuse to marry, must remain in hell 
 till the Resurrection " ; we do not, in modern times perhaps, 
 hear such open condemnation of the crime of celibacy, but 
 those who make the risk of it a motive for denying girls a 
 thorough training and a fair field in which to labour, practically 
 utter very much the same denunciation ; for not only would 
 the ability to earn an honourable living have saved many girls 
 from sacrificing their self-respect and happiness by making a 
 loveless and unsuitable marriage, but herein, if I mistake not, 
 lies the solution of that social problem the vice of our great 
 cities, the demoralisation of modern society.' 
 
 ' Home is a woman's proper place you say, but how if she 
 have no home worthy the name 1 I can assure you, as a fact, 
 that in many cases it is ceaseless grinding toil, starvation 
 wages, and the hopelessness of procuring any honest employ- 
 ment which swell the ranks of vice ; aye, and I believe that 
 many a gentle, pure-minded woman is, in despite of all her 
 highest feelings, yearly driven into a life that is abhorrent to 
 her better nature by this cause, and this alone. M. Duchatelet, 
 and few are better qualified to judge, says that of all the in- 
 centives to vice in Paris and other large towns, none is more 
 influential than the miserable poverty to which women are 
 reduced by want of work and insufficient earnings, owing 
 principally to the usurpation by men of a large number of 
 occupations in every way more suitable to women. Employers 
 themselves recognise the impossibility of living on such salaries 
 as they give, and the usual question put to a girl who seeks 
 employment in a Paris shop is " Has she any means to pay for 
 pretty toilettes ]" The "means" being a term only too well 
 understood. And in England, though less openly cynical upon 
 the subject, we are far from being above repi'oach ; unable to 
 obtain work, refused admittance to a workhouse, what is a 
 woman to do 1 Can she keep body and soul together upon a 
 shilling a-week and a loaf of bread ] " It is not rare " (to apply
 
 100 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 M. Duchatelet's words again) "to find even widows or deserted 
 wives, of hitherto irreproachable character, becoming abandoned 
 at last in the hope of saving their families from starvation, 
 after having vainly tried to procure the necessaries of life in 
 every honest occupation open to them." Competition in the 
 narrow lists framed by superstition and prejudice, the de- 
 preciation of her labour, the charge of impropriety brought 
 against any woman who dares to be peculiar, the mercenary 
 marriages into which they are forced for want of proper inde- 
 pendence, are all combining to their dishonour, and the sooner 
 it is universally recognised that every woman has a right to 
 claim a position independently of her relations to the other sex, 
 the better it will be for society.' 
 
 ' I have often thought,' said Miss Wynter, ' that men ought 
 not to monopolise work that could be as well or better done by 
 women ; if the ladies who spend so much of their time in 
 agitating for admission to men's professions would only agree 
 not to enter any shop where men are needlessly employed, in 
 the sale, for instance, of feminine apparel, they might be of 
 some use.' 
 
 ' That is a very good suggestion, auntie, so far as it goes,' 
 said Mrs. Silverton, ' though it does not touch the position of 
 girls of the upper and upper - middle classes, and therefore 
 there is still some necessity for the agitation which you de- 
 precate ; but there is no doubt that with women of lower rank 
 also the chances of earning a competence are lamentably small.' 
 
 ' I cannot see how any one with the smallest sense of 
 j ustice,' said Madeline, ' can think it fair that men with broad 
 shoulders and strong muscles, who are capable of undertaking 
 any labour where physical strength is a sine qud non, should 
 receive high wages for light mechanical duties which women 
 would do as well or better cutting or dressing ladies' hair, 
 devising their costumes, measuring out yards of ribbon, 
 winding up lace, retailing pins and needles, cakes and sweets, 
 are occupations that in common justice ought to be given up to 
 the physically weaker sex.'
 
 THE EMPLOYMENT OF WOMEN. 101 
 
 ' Waiting at table, too,' said Mrs. Silverton, ' is, I think, 
 essentially a woman's work ; if I had my way I would treble 
 the tax on men servants.' 
 
 ' How about Watson and consistency, my dear 1 ' said Sir 
 Henry, smiling, ' you can do as you please in your own household, 
 and yet you have always one, and sometimes two men to wait 
 at table.' 
 
 ' You would not have me turn away an old servant like 
 AVatson, who has been from time immemorial a sort of 
 factotum at Crag's Nest, and was so fond of Fred as a baby 
 that it was difficult to say if he was more butler than nurse ; 
 and George, as you know, though he does wait so well, was only 
 engaged as a coachman ; but if we make any change I shall 
 certainly follow Lady Gower's example, she has not a man in 
 the house excepting the coachman at night, and I am sure her 
 three parlour-maids in their grey gowns and spotless caps, 
 collars, cuffs, and muslin aprons, are the perfection of neat- 
 handed Phyllises.' 
 
 ' I think it is very likely,' said Professor Wray, ' that if 
 women would qualify themselves they might obtain employ- 
 ment as reporters, as pianoforte -tuners, and in many other 
 untried fields ; photography too, I think, might be more widely 
 practised by women; while in regard to watch-making, Sir John 
 Bennett considers that if English women were allowed and 
 encouraged to make the delicate parts of a watch, their work 
 would be so superior as to greatly increase the sale, to the 
 advantage of both men and women ; in this respect, Switzer- 
 land is far ahead of us.' 
 
 ' In other directions, however,' said Madeline, * though much 
 remains to be done, I have noticed a gradual improvement. 
 In looking at the last report of the " Society for the Employ- 
 ment of Women," I see that lithography promises to be a fairly 
 profitable industry for English girls, as it has long been for 
 those on the Continent ; the students at the school of wood- 
 engraving are beginning to earn fair wages ; the demand for 
 efficient women-clerks and book-keepers is increasing slowly; in
 
 102 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 printing it is the same, while in regard to clerkships in the 
 General Post Office, Mr. Fawcett's report to the House of 
 Commons was that they had given such satisfaction that the 
 employment of women was being gradually and steadily ex- 
 tended.' 
 
 ' Seeing that this is the case,' said Sir Henry, ' one is 
 inclined to ask what more would you have 1 ' 
 
 ' Madeline has been showing you the bright side of the 
 picture,' said Mrs. Silverton, ' I do not think we have a right 
 to be contented until every woman, whatever her social 
 position, has, at least, equal resources with those enjoyed by 
 men.' 
 
 ' And after all,' said Madeline, ' the supply falls very far 
 short of the demand ; we find still very few parents, above the 
 pressure of immediate necessity, who recognise it as a duty to 
 train daughters as well as sons for some definite profession ; it 
 can scarcely, according to current ideas perhaps, be expected 
 that people of gentle birth though limited means, while their 
 boys become lawyers, doctors, clergymen, or get commissions 
 in the army or navy, should be willing for their girls to sink to 
 a lower social level as telegraph -clerks, or apprentices to a 
 printer ; and yet, though there is a general tendency to keep 
 them out of the higher professions, the necessity for . work 
 remains the same.' 
 
 ' Just so,' said Professor Wray ; ' in former days girls or 
 widows of good family were, for their protection from the 
 rough conditions of the time, sent straight into a convent, or 
 married as quickly as possible ; advancing civilisation has 
 rendered this no longer necessary, women can live now without 
 male protection, but the question echoing on every side is 
 " How 1 " Each step of a woman who wishes to earn an 
 honourable livelihood is beset with difficulties, the patience and 
 courage needed by her are far beyond those men require in the 
 like circumstances, so that only the exceptionally brave and 
 energetic can succeed in working out for themselves an in- 
 dependent career. Work that is menial or ill-paid they are
 
 THE EMPLOYMENT OP WOMEN. 103 
 
 quite welcome to; but when it comes to a question of pro- 
 fitable employment " Clear the way," cries masculine selfish- 
 ness, " that we may have more room."' 
 
 ' Men expect to be allowed to do whatever they are capable 
 of doing,' said Mrs. Silverton, ' and how they can justify it to 
 themselves to sneer as many do at women for desiring the same 
 thing I cannot understand.' 
 
 ' Because, I suppose, they start,' said Madeline, ' upon the 
 assumption that only in exceptional cases has a woman public 
 as well as private duties; that it is unfeminine for her to en- 
 gage in any occupation outside a certain very narrow range, 
 and that they do her a kindness, therefore, by putting stum- 
 bling-blocks in her way.' 
 
 ' I am not inclined to impute such universally good in- 
 tentions,' said Mrs. Silverton, ' or else why should so many men 
 be tolerant of women's work only when it is not lucrative, or is 
 something that they cannot possibly do themselves ] ' 
 
 'Come now,' remonstrated Sir Henry, 'I do not think 
 things are quite so bad as you represent ; I do not think men, 
 or society we will say, is quite so hard upon women who are in 
 earnest in trying to carve out a career for themselves ; in 
 more than one paper and magazine I have seen articles so en- 
 couraging that you might hav.e written them yourself.' 
 
 ' In spite of that, I maintain that when it comes to a 
 question of the higher employment of women, society in the 
 main is like the good man who said, "I will not shed thy 
 blood friend, but I will hold thee under water until thou art 
 drowned." If you tie a woman's wrists together what good is it 
 to say " by all means use your hands in the way that suits you 
 best"; if you fetter her ankles, to declare "now if you can 
 beat us in the race you are perfectly welcome to do so." The 
 fact is that, intellectually speaking, women have been treated 
 as they are in China ; men have dwarfed their feet, and then told 
 them that nature never intended them to stand alone, but that as 
 a reward for absolute submission they will graciously extend to 
 them at least to a certain number of them their support.'
 
 104 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 ' But excuse me, my dear, it may be my own obtuseness, 
 but your accusations seem a little vague ; what are the par- 
 ticular handcuffs and fetters that you have in your mind, and 
 which stir up such warmth of indignation ? ' 
 
 ' Let me see. Well, for instance, a woman may serve on the 
 School Board, which is, I allow, a position of trust and respon- 
 sibility ; she is welcome to spend her money and time in the 
 service of Government, but though the faculties which are so 
 useful in this capacity would equally fit her for many branches 
 of the Civil Service, she is shut out from all well-paid offices of 
 State. She may possess shrewdness and reasoning faculties 
 which would have placed a lawyer at the head of his 
 profession, 'but Coke and Blackstone must be sealed books 
 to her so far as t making any practical use of them is con- 
 cerned. 1 
 
 ' A woman's sympathy and powers of observation again,' 
 said Professor Wray, ' eminently qualify her for the -practice of 
 medicine, and yet. what prejudices she had, and still has to en- 
 counter here ? It is a question whether a woman's more scru- 
 pulous moral sense might not be somewhat in her way upon the 
 Stock Exchange, but many have shown business capacity and 
 organizing power which would have been of the greatest possible 
 use to a banker, a merchant, the director of a public company, 
 and yet in none of these capacities has she had any chance, so 
 far as I know, of distinguishing herself.' 
 
 ' There is one though, I think only one, public company,' 
 said Madeline, in which women are directors.' 
 
 ' I am glad to hear it,' replied the Professor ; ' I have long 
 been of opinion that every kind of intellectual work would gain 
 by the co-operation of men and women, since, looking at things 
 as they must from different points of view, the one is able to 
 supply what the other lacks.' 
 
 ' Was it not Franklin,' said Madeline, ' who first compared 
 men and women to the two halves of a pair of scissors, meaning 
 that the one cannot get on without the other, while the differ- 
 ence between them does not imply so much the choice of
 
 THE EMPLOYMENT OF WOMEX. 105 
 
 different pursuits, as each contributing his or her individual 
 part to the perfection of a common work.' 
 
 ' I have often,' said Mrs. Silverton, ' thought of a profession 
 which women might engage in with advantage to all con- 
 cerned, I mean that of an architect. No one denies them 
 their share of artistic faculties, so I do not see why their 
 designs should not be equal in beauty to many of our best 
 works; and certainly when it comes to the practical side of the 
 business in domestic architecture, we should gain immensely by 
 the increased comfort and utility of our dwellings, the plans of 
 which I am sure are often lamentably deficient in common- 
 sense.' 
 
 ' Quite true, and it would be a great advantage again to all 
 concerned,' said Professor Wray, ' if capable women were ap- 
 pointed iu equal numbers with men as Government Inspectors 
 of Schools ; they are acknowledged everywhere to have a keen 
 insight into practical details, and the working of our educational 
 system would, I doubt not, be much more perfect as well as 
 more economical, if the eyes of women as well as men were 
 more frequently brought to bear upon it. Indeed, when one 
 begins to enumerate the offices which women might fill to ad- 
 vantage, but from which jealousy or prejudice has shut them 
 out, it is not easy to stop ; although I spoke just now of the 
 difficulty many an honest woman in Paris has in earning a liveli- 
 hood, there is no doubt that in some ways France is here in 
 advance of us; for instance, the French railway companies 
 employ thousands of women, not only as booking-clerks, but 
 occasionally also as "pointsmen" and "signalmen," the salaries 
 also are the same as those received by men, that is to say, an 
 ordinary clerk of either sex receives from 40 to 50/. per annum, 
 head-clerks from 721. to 96/.'* 
 
 * Would you have no limit then,' asked Sir Henry, ' to the 
 professions which you think should be thrown open to women T 
 
 ' None but that which is set by their own capacity, or want 
 
 * Paper read at the Social Science Congress, Cheltenham (1878), OH the 
 Industrial Employment of Women in France, compared with England.
 
 106 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 of capacity. If a woman be endowed by nature with high gifts of 
 any description, why, in the name of justice, should she be for- 
 bidden to use them ? You believe in Huxley I know, and it 
 would be impossible to speak more decidedly than he did the 
 year before last at the annual distribution of prizes at the London 
 School of Medicine for Women. " They ought decidedly," he 
 says, " to be allowed to take up any career for which they feel 
 themselves fitted ; I do not understand why free-trade in these 
 matters should not apply everywhere ; why free access to every 
 calling should not be thrown open to every human being." ' 
 
 ' You would except the Church, I presume,' said Miss 
 Wynter, gravely. 
 
 ' Well, if you must have priests and apostles, links as it 
 were between the spiritual and the material world, I see no 
 reason on earth why women are not as well, and in some ways 
 better fitted for the office than men ; they are universally ac- 
 knowledged to be more refined as a rule, more spirituelle, more 
 moral than men.'. 
 
 ' But, my dear sir,' remonstrated Miss Wynter, ' d you lay 
 no weight on St. Paul's prohibition, " I suffer not a woman 
 to teach or to usurp authority." "Let your women keep 
 silence in the churches," and so on.' 
 
 ' By taking the literal meaning of isolated passages in the 
 Bible,' was the rejoinder, ' you may prove almost anything.' 
 
 'But,' replied Miss Wynter, 'we are told that all Scripture 
 is given by inspiration of God, and therefore in following it we 
 cannot well go wrong.' 
 
 * That text,' said the Professor, ' is a mistranslation, in the 
 original we have no " is given," the text reads, "All Scripture 
 given by inspiration of God is profitable for reproof," &c., that is 
 to say, all which is divinely inspired is worthy to be received as 
 a guide ; but the rest followed literally is more likely to lead 
 people astray than anything else. The Bible, for instance, is 
 quoted in defence of Mormonism, and on the strength of the 
 texts to which you refer certain Christians have even argued 
 that women ought not even to sing or repeat the responses,
 
 THE EMPLOYMENT OF WOMEN. 107 
 
 while the question was at one time seriously raised whether it 
 was not unbefitting a woman to answer with so much as an 
 audible "Amen."' 
 
 ' That is a very different matter, though,' said Miss Wynter. 
 
 ' But they cannot " keep silence " and sing at the same time, 
 that is very certain.' 
 
 'And in point of fact we know that women did both 
 prophesy and preach in the early Church,' said Madeline ; ' I 
 think you will find,' she went on, addi-essing Miss Wynter, 
 ' that the words in the Bible are not only " upon my servants," 
 but " upon my servants and my handmaids will I pour out my 
 gifts, and they shall prophesy, your sons and your daughters 
 shall prophesy ; " while St. Paul gives special instructions as to 
 how women were to prophesy, referring to the Eastern custom 
 which led women always to veil themselves in public, he directs 
 that when they teach they are to be covered.'* 
 
 ' Exactly,' said the Professor ; the apostle simply availed 
 himself of the notions current amongst the Jews, without 
 meaning to endorse them as intrinsically sound ; in those days, 
 when the idea of a woman's throwing off her veil in public meant 
 to the popular mind something like throwing off all sense of 
 modesty, he naturally would not have Christian women bring 
 disrepute upon their religion by startling innovations; but 
 though (in spite of his views having widened considerably) he 
 still retained some of the social prejudices of his age and early 
 training, it evidently never occured to him that the vocation of 
 religious teaching, even in public, was to be exclusively a mas- 
 culine function, else, as Miss Acton suggests, why should he give 
 directions as to how they should appear?' 
 
 ' He distinctly says, however,' replied Miss Wynter, ' " I 
 suffer not a woman to teach," and reproves them for speaking 
 in the congregation, telling them to ask the husband at home.' 
 
 ' It is thought by some of the best authorities,' said the Pro- 
 fessor, that the apostle on this occasion, so far from laying 
 
 * 1 Corinthians, xi. 13.
 
 108 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 down a general rule for all times, was referring to a specific 
 scandal, to the disorderly and contentious spirit of some 
 members of his congregation, men and women, husbands and 
 wives, who had taken to disputing in public, and causing con- 
 fusion in the churches. In such a case the only course was to 
 silence one, and according to all precedent it was the woman's 
 place to give way. However this may be, it is very certain St. 
 Paul was not in a position to instruct the nineteenth century 
 in practical matters ; and, indeed, so far from claiming the in- 
 fallibility accorded him by many, he himself says in referring 
 to some other social questions, " I speak this of permission, 
 not of commandment ; " and remember if you claim inspiration 
 for isolated texts, the words of the prophet Joel that Miss 
 Acton referred to just now, "My sons and my daughters shall 
 prophesy," which may be translated "preach," are equally 
 significant, and as quoted by St. Peter should carry with them 
 equal authority.' 
 
 ' Besides, is not the whole drift of Christ's teaching,' said 
 Madeline, ' one of liberty and personal responsibility, which, had 
 He lived in these days, would have placed Him and His disciples 
 in the foremost ranks of our supporters ; for His doctrine, if any- 
 thing, was one of perfect equality between men and women, 
 Jews and Gentiles, bond and free ; He never by word or action 
 assigned to women an inferior place, and as for their finding 
 their sole legitimate sphere of labour in domestic matters, I 
 believe the only occasion on which He actually blamed a woman 
 was when He reproved Martha for too great an attention to her 
 household affairs, or at least, for expecting her sister also to 
 make them the boundary of her ideas.' 
 
 ' People run to the Bible professedly to be taught the truth,' 
 said Mrs. Silverton ' (I do not mean you, auntie, of course, I am 
 speaking generally), buttheirreal object is, as a rule, I think, to 
 twist its records into props for their own particular convictions.' 
 
 ' And those who, instead of taking the general spirit of its 
 teaching,' said Madeline, ' insist upon literal interpretations, 
 are really not much wiser, I think, than the Chinese manu-
 
 THE EMPLOYMENT OF WOMEN. 109 
 
 facturer who, being required to reproduce a mutilated set of 
 china, took great credit to himself for copying not only the 
 form and design, but also all the flaws and cracks of the 
 original. A great deal of the opposition, and many of the 
 difficulties put in our way have been due, I think, to the inter- 
 pretation given to a few stray utterances of St. Paul.' 
 
 'And yet,' said Professor Wray, 'the apostles and their 
 immediate successors must have had wider views of women's 
 mission in the Church than were held in later times, for not only 
 were deaconesses an institution, but in some parts of Christendom, 
 so I have understood, there were priestesses also, who gave 
 orders, preached, and taught.' 
 
 ' Who is your authority V asked Miss Wynter ; ' of course, 
 if the truth of your statement could be vouched for, it would 
 be an argument worthy of consideration, although all one's 
 feelings might be against it.' 
 
 'Chateaubriand, in his Histoire du Christianism, makes the 
 statement, I believe, and also gives several references to well- 
 known authorities ; but we want no further proof that women 
 officiated in the early Church than is to be found in the re- 
 strictions of a later date; for instance, the eleventh Canon of the 
 Council of Laodicea forbad their being ordained to the ministry, 
 while other Canons of the Council of Orleans, Paris, &c., prove 
 that for a long period there were women who preached, baptized, 
 administered the sacrament, and filled various offices in the 
 Church during the apostolic age, which they were deprived of 
 later by ecclesiastical enactments ; and apart from custom 
 and prejudice, what is there so alarming in the idea, why 
 should your feelings be against it 1 ' 
 
 ' It seems to me utterly beyond all reason, the notion of 
 women standing up in the pulpit.' 
 
 ' It is not the custom, I grant ; but what then?' 
 
 ' I cannot believe that any modest, right-feeling woman 
 would do it.' 
 
 ' And yet,' said Madeline, quietly, 'where would you find more 
 gentle, modest women than among the quakers, who have always
 
 110 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 refused to recognise the assumed superiority of one sex over 
 the other. Among the early Methodists, too, the women 
 preached, and no doubt the records of their younger, purer 
 days would afford many a prototype for the gentle, high-souled 
 Dinah Morris.' 
 
 ' I cannot meet you in argument, my dear,' said Miss 
 Wynter, her usual good nature tempered by solicitude at find- 
 ing a, girl, whom she could not help liking, holding doctrines 
 that she so entirely disapproved. ' You young people are so 
 very much in earnest that it is possible you may get your way 
 some day ; I hope, however, I may not live long enough to see 
 a woman in the pulpit.' 
 
 ' Save as a matter of principle, I do not know that I either 
 have any great ambition in that direction,' was the reply ; 
 ' what I feel much more strongly is that women, who are so 
 sadly in need of work, should be so entirely cut off from 
 branches of the Civil Service, which many are so well qualified 
 to fill. At the British Museum Library, for example, there is a 
 large staff of officers employed at salaries varying from 120/. to 
 over 500/. a-year; but no woman, however highly educated, 
 fitted for, and desirous of obtaining such a post, has a chance 
 of competing for it. The Post Office, thanks to Mr. Fawcett's 
 influence, is the one department in which there has been an 
 attempt to give men and women equal chances, but there are 
 few men such as he was.' 
 
 ' Doctors, lawyers, Members of Parliament, the majority of 
 them, at least,' said Mrs. Silverton, ' find it to their interest to 
 bow down to the idol of immemorial usage ; but monopolists 
 always have to give way before the force of public opinion, that 
 is one consolation ; . and others will have sooner or later to 
 follow obstructive doctors off the path which they, in their 
 turn, are selfishly trying to block.' 
 
 ' Ah, I remember,' said Sir Henry, ' you were complaining 
 just now that lawyers are determined to refuse women fair 
 play ; that though some women of marked ability have been 
 making this profession their goal for years, prejudice will not
 
 THE EMPLOYMENT OF WOMEN. Ill 
 
 give them a chance to play the part of Portia. Now, if I were 
 a bencher, and any lady were desirous of distinguishing herself 
 in my line of life, I have no doubt I should do all I could to 
 help her, but, at the same time, I cannot understand any 
 woman wishing it. Think of the degree of publicity involved, 
 the unpleasant cases they might have to deal with, to say 
 nothing of a thousand minor disagreeables.' 
 
 ' No position in life for any earnest man or woman can hope 
 to be entirely free from these,' said Professor Wray ; ' but I do 
 not know that this supplies a valid reason for avoiding it ; and 
 there is no compulsion that I know of used to force counsel to 
 accept cases they do not like. Women are, I know, not generally 
 supposed to have judicial minds ; but this, being interpreted, 
 means simply, as we have said before, that their training has, 
 as a rule, not been of a nature likely to develop their logical 
 faculties. I venture to think that we should have fewer legal 
 quibbles if women had more to do with the making and admin- 
 istering of the laws ; their love of arriving quickly at a conclusion, 
 instead of arguing round and round a subject, turning it, as we 
 do, inside out, and viewing it in every possible light, would 
 make them more expeditious, and, when properly trained, not 
 less exact.' 
 
 4 In America, as no doubt you know,' said Madeline, ' many 
 women-lawyers are already practising successfully. In the 
 year 1868 the only legal journal of any value in the West, the 
 Chicago Legal News, was started by a lady, Mrs. Bradwell, who 
 was shortly after called to the bar. In Iowa, a woman, Mrs. 
 Foster, has been appointed one of the committee to examine 
 candidates for the bar ; she and her husband in partnership, 
 under the title of Foster and Foster, have won many a case 
 together ; and, by the way, I think there could not be a better 
 answer to the objection that a professional life for a woman 
 must interfere with the comfort and happiness of her home, 
 than Mrs. Foster's own simple words, in which, at a meeting in 
 1878, she gave an account of her reasons for studying law : " I 
 claim no heroism," she said, " either in pursuit of my legal
 
 112 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 studies or in the performance of my professional duties. I 
 began the study of law because my husband is a lawyer, and 
 because I wanted to know what he knew, and do as much as 
 I could what he did. I have read Blackstone for hours, with 
 my little children playing about me, and I was as ready to 
 pause and attend to their small wants as though I had been 
 engaged with my needle, and quite as well as though I had 
 been reading a gay romance ; I passed my examinations, and 
 was introduced to the profession at my husband's earnest re- 
 quest ; and to-day the firm of Foster and Foster is harmonious 
 in itself, and at peace with all the world." ' 
 
 ' That does not sound as if she had neglected her husband 
 for her work,' said Mrs. Silverton. ' But I am inclined to go 
 much further than you besides the question of a woman's 
 right to obtain an honourable living by the law, ought women 
 in general to be denied the advice of one of our own sex 
 as counsel, the sympathy of our fellows on a jury, a decision 
 from a woman's point of view by one of our own sex as 
 judge]' 
 
 ' The objection of publicity which the majority of women 
 shrink from applies to all these,' said Sir Henry. 
 
 'But,' replied Madeline, 'if on examining the question 
 thoroughly, you find the evils on the other side so much worse 
 than the unpleasantness on this, is it not cowardice and selfish- 
 ness rather than true modesty for one's own comfort's sake 
 to keep in the background ] Besides, if we look at the question 
 fairly, there is no more publicity in being a clerk or manager 
 of a bank or in a merchant's office than behind the counter of a 
 shop ; there is no more publicity in working at the catalogues 
 in the British Museum Library than in writing there for the 
 press, or studying as hundreds do week after week ; nor can 1 
 see that there is anything unwomanly in such work as framing 
 legal documents, investigating authorities, citing precedents, 
 preparing evidence ' 
 
 ' Or even pleading in court,' said the Professor. ' There 
 would be no more publicity for the woman-counsel than for the
 
 THE EMPLOYMENT OF WOMEN. 113- 
 
 woman-witness ; in a court of justice than on the stage, or in the 
 lecture-room/ 
 
 ' Nature never meant women to speak in public,' said Miss- 
 Wynter; 'to begin with, they have not voice enough to- 
 do it.' 
 
 ' Pardon me, ? said Professor "VVray, ' I think you are mis- 
 taken there. A man's voice Glaisher is my authority will, 
 under favourable conditions, reach a mile, a woman's two ; it 
 is the natural result of their being higher pitched, just as in a 
 band playing at a distance you will hear the clarionet or fife 
 when the trombone is quite inaudible.' 
 
 ' Well,' replied the old lady, somewhat inconsequently, ' I 
 shall never like the idea of women lecturing in public ; and I 
 do not believe any nice woman would care to do it. I am sure 
 I may say this without being personal, for I know neither Miss 
 Acton nor Nellie have ever done such a thing.' 
 
 ' We have taken part in debates, though, at college many 
 times,' replied Madeline ; ' and in a large assembly it comes to 
 very much the same thing. I assure you, I know many very 
 nice and very womanly women, too, who frequently lecture in 
 public.' 
 
 ' On the grounds upon which you object to this, auntie,' 
 said Mrs. Silverton, 'you might just as reasonably prohibit 
 women the stage and the concert-room.' 
 
 'I do not see that,' said Mrs. Knagge; 'actresses and 
 singers do not set themselves up as teachers.' 
 
 ' Then do you find anything objectionable in women 
 writing, as so many do, works on educational and ethical 
 subjects?' 
 
 ' Oh, no, that is quite a different matter ; no one denies 
 that writing for the press is quite within a woman's province.' 
 
 ' Does it not seem rather a subtle distinction this, that 
 teaching or publicity are in themselves not in the least ob- 
 jectionable, but in conjunction deserve the strongest repro- 
 bation 1 That a woman may, in fact, open her mouth to sing 
 nonsense in public, but on no account to talk sense.' 
 
 I
 
 114 HEX, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 ' What is worth hearing,' said Professor Wray, ' is worth 
 hearing, the fact of a speaker's being a man or woman does not 
 make it so. For my part, I cannot see why a silly man should 
 be allowed to have his say in lecture-room or pulpit, and a wise 
 and thoughtful woman be enjoined in every case to keep silence.' 
 
 ' We shall look in vain for consistency amongst our op- 
 ponents,' said Mrs. Silverton ; ' for instance, the clergy, who 
 as a body profess the greatest horror of women's assuming the 
 position of religious guides, do not upon occasion scruple to 
 avail themselves of a woman's sermon to eke out their scanty 
 resources ; they do not object so much to her knowledge being 
 made available as to her getting any credit for it.' 
 
 ' Is not that rather a rash statement of yours, my dear, 
 about the clergy?' asked Miss Wynter. 
 
 ' It is the most undeniable of facts, auntie, as I can prove 
 to you. You remember Gertrude Leslie, Madeline 1 ' 
 
 ' Perfectly ; but she left Girton, if you recollect, at the end 
 of my first term.' 
 
 ' I met her on the Capston Parade quite by accident a 
 month or two since ; she had come here with her mother for a 
 fortnight's change ; we had some talks together after that. I 
 had jaot heard of her father's death, and I fancy his affairs 
 must have been much involved, for there appears to be very 
 little left, and I found that Gertrude had taken to writing 
 more for money, I think, than pleasure. And what do you 
 think she writes 1 Sermons principally. She has undertaken, 
 for a certain price, to supply a publisher with two or three 
 weekly. You remember she was always very conscientious in 
 her work, and I assure you she is getting quite a profound 
 theologian under the process of reading and digesting the 
 Fathers of the Church, or whatever it is she feels it her duty to 
 study. The said sermons are not printed, but written on 
 regulation paper, and sold retail in manuscript. The conclusion 
 is obvious.'* 
 
 * This is no fancy statement : a writer of snch sermons was known to 
 the author, though the preachers of them were not.
 
 THE EMPLOYMENT OF WOMEN. 115 
 
 ' I suppose,' said Madeline, ' that there must be some 
 clergymen whose consciences will allow them to preach sermons 
 that are not their own, for if there were no demand it would 
 not pay a publisher to keep a supply. It does not seem to 
 be exactly an honest proceeding, thoiigh.' 
 
 ' They think, probably,' replied her friend, ' that a good 
 second-hand discourse is likely to be more profitable to their 
 hearers than a bad original, or, like the clergyman in Punch, 
 they feel that a thing they have bought and paid for becomes 
 undoubtedly their own.'
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Se 0wyarp' (% KavQfi 
 "H TOffa QcinfiaKa ydi), oaa r/ol^st tvptia x^wj/. 
 
 Iliad xi. 739. 
 
 His eldest born hight Agamede with golden hair 
 A leech was she, and well she knew all herbs on ground that grow.' 
 
 PROFESSOR BLACKIE'S Translation. 
 
 . . . . Whoso cures the plague 
 Though twice a woman shall be called a leech.' 
 
 ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING, Aurora Leigh. 
 
 ' We do not understand why a working woman of full age should not 
 have the same liberty as an operative as an adult man.' 
 
 Times, Feb. 13th, 1878. 
 
 ' It is strange that men should be so anxious to confine and limit the 
 privileges of the companion who is avowedly the weaker vessel. The 
 Liliputians bound down Gulliver by a million of little ligatures, but that 
 was a proceeding full of sense and judgment since he could have 
 demolished a whole army of them. But if it had been a Liliputian hero 
 bound down by a larger race it would have been absurd.' 
 
 MRS. OLIPHANT, The Grievances of Women,' Fraser, May, 1880. 
 
 ' Parmi les progres de 1'esprit humain, les plus importans pour le 
 bonheur general, nous devons compter 1'entiere destruction des pr6juges 
 qui ont etabli entre les deux sexes, une megalith de droits funeste a celui 
 meme qu'elle favorise. On chercheroit en vain des motifs de la justifier 
 par les differences de leur organisation physique, par celle qu'on voudroit 
 trouver dans la force de leur intelligence, par leur sensibilit6 morale. Cette 
 inegalite n'a eu d'autre origine que 1'abus de la force, et c'est vainement 
 qu'on a essaye depuis de 1'excuser par les sophismes.' 
 
 CONDORCET.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE EMPLOYMENT OF WOMEN (CONTINUED). 
 
 ' I AM far from disagreeing with all the ideas which (as com- 
 plimentary chairmen say at a public meeting) have found such 
 able advocates,' said Sir Henry presently, resuming the dis- 
 cxission that had been momentarily interrupted, ' but I think 
 after all it is only to be expected that, just or unjust, there 
 should be great difficulties in the way of women's obtaining 
 admission to the higher professions, seeing that on the one 
 hand people will scarcely give them employment until they 
 have proved their capacity, and it is difficult to know how they 
 are to prove their capacity without getting employment.' 
 
 4 The only course, I think,' said Madeline, ' is to quietly 
 persevere ; the more they do and do well the more they will be 
 called upon to do, and the less opposition will they meet with 
 from all sensible people ; but I have seen something of how 
 sadly paralysing in its effect (even upon those who feel that 
 with a fair chance they could prove the contrary) is the 
 common notion that a woman's work must be inferior ; women 
 naturally resent the injustice of being judged not by ability 
 but by sex.' 
 
 ' Their being weaker is a strange reason for making the 
 battle of life harder,' said Mrs. Silverton ; ' and it is singularly 
 inconsistent to bring this fact forward as an objection only 
 when high class or well-paid employments are in question, 
 whereas women may toil in our factories, may work in the 
 fields, may stand hour after hour and day after day over the 
 wash-tub, a young girl may do the whole work of a large house 
 full of lodgers and carry up long nights of stairs heavy loads 
 that would tax even masculine muscles, and yet no one thinks 
 she is here out of her proper sphere.'
 
 120 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 ' But,' replied Sir Henry, ' if you prohibit men from 
 engaging in light employments such as you were speaking of 
 just now, and most of which I grant might be more ap- 
 propriately given up to your sex, I think in common fairness 
 you should not claim free admission to all the occupations in 
 which hitherto men exclusively have been engaged.' 
 
 ' Before this question can be settled,' said Professor Wray, 
 ' we shall have to define much more clearly than any one has 
 yet done, what is a man's and what a woman's work.' 
 
 'What are your ideas upon the subject; I suppose even 
 you draw a line somewhere 1 ' 
 
 ' It seems to me the only sensible conclusion is that such 
 mechanical employments as involve the greatest physical 
 labour should devolve exclusively upon men, the lighter, those 
 which require most delicacy and finish, upon women, that each 
 should do in fact without restriction what they are most 
 capable of doing, while all intellectual work should be freely 
 open to competition, without regard to sex. It is neither just 
 nor generous that men should shrink from free and open com- 
 petition and take advantage of their own political and civil 
 power to frame enactments, shutting in the face of women, 
 anxious to earn a living, the doors of all the most profitable 
 professions.' 
 
 ' It is curious to note the posts that have on rare occasions 
 been filled by women,' said Madeline, ' not excepting the office 
 of Grand Chamberlain, and that of Clerk of the Crown in the 
 Oourt of Queen's Bench. There is a place in Norfolk, for 
 instance, where a woman was once appointed parish clerk, 
 because, it was said, that in a population of six hundred there 
 was not a man who could read and write. Women, in ex- 
 ceptional cases, have been both soldiers and sailors, while I 
 remember seeing it asserted in a note to De Quincey's works 
 that many women, jn order to obtain fair wages and freedom of 
 labour, have from time to time, disguised in men's clothes, got 
 their living as bricklayers, grooms, or even navvies.' 
 
 ' One can scarcely be surprised at their undertaking even
 
 THE EMPLOYMENT OP WOMEN. 121 
 
 work so unsuitable as this,' said the Professor, ' when in most 
 cases you find, as we were saying just now, remuneration 
 apportioned to the sex of the worker rather than to the amount 
 or quality of the work.' 
 
 ' A propos of this,' said Madeline, ' a literary man told me 
 a few months ago that he was going to publish a series of 
 manuals on popular educational subjects, but, with a view to 
 economy, he meant to manage the business of printing, binding, 
 advertising, &c., himself, giving some publisher a commission 
 for pushing the books and for allowing his name to appear 
 upon the title-pages. " Do you think women-printers are to be 
 trusted to do the work as thoroughly as men ? " he asked. 
 " Certainly," I replied. " You see," he went on, " we think of 
 employing them, as no doubt they would do it for about half 
 the money." " That seems rather unreasonable," I said, " and, 
 under these circumstances, I could scarcely venture to guarantee 
 the quality of the work, as you would probably obtain only 
 second-rate hands, and then cite your experience as a proof of 
 the inferiority of women-printers in general." ' 
 
 ' The natural result of women's field of labour being so 
 limited,' said Professor Wray, ' is, that such occupations as are 
 open to them soon become overcrowded, and though their pay 
 is inadequate, they cannot say as a man would, " Unless you 
 raise my wages I shall leave." The profession of teaching is 
 one that is always supposed to be open to educated women, 
 but, except for those who have been trained and certificated, 
 the demand for governesses is still very far short of the supply, 
 a glance down the columns of any daily paper is sufficient to 
 show this.' 
 
 ' I heard of a case not long ago,' said Mrs. Silverton, 
 ' where, to an advertisement for a nursery governess who was 
 to have no salary, as many as three hundred replies were 
 received.' 
 
 ' I remember also some time since,' said Madeline, ' a 
 clergyman advertised at the same time for a governess for his 
 own children and a mistress for the village school, and though
 
 122 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 any candidate for the former post, while expected to be a lady, 
 was to receive a considerably smaller salary, for this he received 
 scores of applications, for the latter not a single one.' 
 
 ' I quite agree with you,' said Sir Henry, ' that the position 
 of women of the better classes when reduced to poverty is very 
 sad, but the parish schoolmistress, it is evident from your own 
 account, has not much to complain of.' 
 
 ' I am not so sure of that ; it is the almost universal testi- 
 mony of Government Inspectors, that women-teachers at least 
 equal men in ability and success, and yet they cannot command 
 the same salaries. I remember seeing in the Athenteum, not 
 long since, two advertisments ; a master and mistress were 
 wanted for an important school in Newcastle, the most the 
 latter could receive, including capitation-fees, was 1501. a-year, 
 whilst the former might get 3001. besides a house, and yet she 
 was no doubt expected to be equally capable. Even those 
 women who, thanks to Mr. Fawcett, are holding superior 
 appointments in the Post-Office Savings' Bank, are doing their 
 work, I believe, for about one-third of the salary received by 
 men of the same standing, and the same disproportion is to be 
 found in every department of industry.' 
 
 ' It is the old question of demand and supply, I suppose,' 
 said Sir Henry. 
 
 Exactly,' replied his sister, ' and so long as the supply of 
 women-workers is so out of all proportion to the demand, so 
 long is it the duty of every one who loves justice to do all they 
 can to enlarge this sphere of work.' 
 
 ' But, honestly,' replied her brother, 'you must acknowledge, 
 I think, that though old time prejudices may be to blame, you 
 do not generally, amongst men now-a-days, meet with any 
 active opposition to women who are anxious to work in some 
 hitherto untried field.' 
 
 'I know many men as unselfish as they are just,' said 
 Madeline, ' who would scorn to do it, but I am afraid they are 
 exceptions. Sir John Bennett was once mobbed, so I have 
 understood, for advocating the general employment of women
 
 THE EMPLOYMENT OF WOMEN. 123 
 
 in watchmaking ; a few years ago in Paris a firm of printers 
 wished to employ some women-compositors, but the men 
 banded themselves together to stop it, and the idea had to be 
 abandoned; only a short time ago at Kidderminster again, 
 although velvet-weaving in no way affects the carpet-weavers, 
 there was a strike of the latter against the employment of 
 female labour on looms for making velvet.' 
 
 'The attempt to employ women in London as jewel- 
 burnishers,' said Professor Wray, ' promised to answer well, 
 some girls earning as much as three and sixpence a-day, but 
 their master was unwillingly obliged to dismiss them owing to 
 the jealousy of his male employes. In the potteries for many 
 years men were so jealous of the competition of women- 
 labourers, that they brought the whole force of their trades 
 union to prevent women from using the hand-rest, which was 
 of the greatest service in producing both rapidity and precision 
 of work. ' 
 
 ' But they were not gentlemen,' said Sir Henry, ' in any 
 sense of the word ; I had not such fellows as these in my 
 mind.' 
 
 ' The conduct of the medical students in Edinburgh towards 
 the six ladies, who, in 1869 applied for admission there to the 
 regular course of study for medical graduation, was,' said Mrs. 
 Silverton, ' much more disgraceful than that of those " fellows " 
 whom you are, I am glad to see, inclined to be indignant with, 
 and yet I suppose they called themselves "gentlemen," and 
 any thing but trades unionists.' 
 
 ' I cannot help thinking,' said Madeline, ' that such men as 
 these must have a sort of latent consciousness that they are 
 themselves below the average, else why should they be afraid 
 of women's competing with them, since water does not find its 
 own level more surely than mediocrity either in men or 
 women 1 ' 
 
 ' And yet they have the audacity more often than not,' said 
 Mrs. Silverton, ' to bring forward the plea of women's incom- 
 petence against furthering their efforts to obtain work.'
 
 124 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 ' But we must not forget,' said Sir Henry, ' that em- 
 ployment being on the whole a fixed quantity, if women take to 
 the occupations of men, the result will be the lowering of men's 
 gains, which are often small enough as it is for the support of a 
 family.' 
 
 ' I think,' said Madeline, ' some better reason for excluding 
 women from any branch of work is required, than the wish to 
 keep up the price of labour by diminishing the number of 
 workers. It is scarcely creditable to those who have had the 
 making of our laws for some hundreds of years, that any steady 
 and industrious class of the community should still with all 
 their efforts often be unable to support themselves.' 
 
 'Besides,' said Professor Wray, 'it is a true principle of 
 political economy that those who have something should be, to 
 a certain extent, taxed for the good of the whole community ; 
 and so far from employment being a fixed quantity, we usually 
 find that any equalisation of property is accompanied by 
 increased production and more general prosperity. You might 
 just as well exclude from industrial pursuits any other body of 
 citizens on account of age or political or religious views, instead 
 of making employment as it does now, except in the case of 
 women, depend upon qualifications which cannot be decided 
 save upon fair trial ; there need be no fear that women will 
 monopolise what men can do better, work is always sure, sooner 
 or later, to fall out of hands that are incompetent; but, as Miss 
 Acton was saying, it is just those men who have only inferior 
 work to offer who are most jealous of their rights.' 
 
 ' But after all,' replied Sir Henry, ' it is the man who has 
 the household to maintain, and if, by increasing the crowd 
 of competitors who are choking up the avenues to the most 
 remunerative employments, you reduce the husband and 
 father's already scant means, his wife and daughters are the 
 chief sufferers, since he can no longer support them.' 
 
 ' If wife and daughters had all learnt a trade or profession 
 they would be self-supporting, and though what each individual 
 earned might seem comparatively small, on the whole the
 
 THE EMPLOYMENT OF WOMEN. 125 
 
 family would be more prosperous than with half its members 
 doing nothing.' 
 
 ' In that case you would impose a sort of tax upon bachelors.' 
 
 ' They must find their level like other men, and if they can- 
 not get profitable work in the old country, it is always open to 
 them in their youth and strength and independence to emigrate, 
 to build new towns, and cultivate new lands. They will find 
 no lack of employment in the Colonies ; in Queensland, for 
 instance, male labour is so much in demand, that it has been 
 found necessary to import South Sea Islanders to till the ground. 
 It would do much to relieve the pressure in this country if 
 Government were to offer greater inducements to both men and 
 women to emigrate.' 
 
 'We very frequently hear complaints against the Govern- 
 ment,' said Miss Wynter, 'and of its indifference to the interests 
 of women, and yet many recent enactments seem to have been 
 passed solely with a view to their advantage.' 
 
 ' Never was there a piece of more short-sighted and 
 mistaken kindness than that " Shop Hours Bill " and the 
 " Factory Acts Amendment Bill," for I presume it is to these 
 you refer,' said Professor Wray ; ' there are no more grievous 
 impediments to the employment of women extant. Why should 
 full-grown reasonable people be treated as infants 1 Surely 
 they have a right to a voice in the matter, but that is just what 
 is denied them.* The policy of interference which animates 
 many of our lawgivers allows women to stave off poverty by the 
 help of vice, and suffers them to run the risk of starving from 
 inability to obtain work, but having found something to do, they 
 must not on any account be suffered to injure their health by 
 long and exhausting tasks.' 
 
 ' But you cannot deny that over-work is bad,' replied the 
 old lady, ' especially for the wives and mothers of families.' 
 
 ' It is, no doubt, but there are worse things than this ; if 
 
 * Throughout the Bill to consolidate the Factory Acts, children, young 
 persons, and women are repeatedly put in the same category as people 
 who are alike unfitted to be free-agents.
 
 126 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 one of two evils is inevitable, all we can do is to choose the 
 least ; the hardest earned pittance is better than nothing to the 
 mother whose children's food and clothing depend perhaps upon 
 her labour ; if the supporters of these measures were prepared 
 to maintain all these women (and there are many thousands) it 
 would be a different matter, but as they are not asked to do 
 this, and probable would not or could not if they were, they 
 should think twice, it seems to me, before they put difficulties 
 in the way of poor women earning such scanty subsistence as, 
 even when free to make their own terms, is the best which in 
 most instances falls to their lot. I am sure you will agree with 
 me,' he said, turning to Miss Acton. 
 
 ' Yes, I have often thought that this treating women of full 
 age and fair intelligence as irresponsible beings, this refusing 
 them freedom to regulate their own time, and make their own 
 terms with employers, well-meant though it is, has worked 
 injuriously by depriving women of free competition in those 
 occupations which they have always shared with men. It is 
 strange that the would-be friends of women-workers in the 
 humbler classes cannot see that these artificial restrictions, 
 instead of increasing their power of earning, their power of self- 
 protection, force dependence upon them, put fresh difficulties in 
 their way, and oppress instead of relieving them.' 
 
 ' How is that 1 ' asked Miss Wynter. 
 
 'The result of the " Nine Hours Bill " is just this, that it has 
 led to many hundreds of women being dismissed from places 
 where perhaps they were working ten hours a-day, but were 
 kindly treated and receiving good wages, and has obliged them to 
 take to a lower class of work (which, not coming under the Acts, 
 involves perhaps twelve or more hours daily toil), while men are 
 taken on in their place, or if they are retained it is to have 
 their small salaries still further reduced. I know some firms of 
 printers where, since the passing of these Acts, the women- 
 hands have been all turned off; for, subject as printers are to 
 press of work, they must be free to make special arrangements 
 for extra time. In the smaller workshops, too, the busiest hour
 
 THE EMPLOYMENT OP WOMEN. 127 
 
 is after nine in the evening, so the owners are ready to pay 
 considerably higher wages to men so that they may keep their 
 shops open as long as they think fit and avoid the annoyance 
 of constant visits from inspectors. Thus women's earnings are 
 diminished, and the stamp of inferiority placed upon their labour 
 by their would-be benefactors.' 
 
 ' There is a grim irony,' said Mrs. Silverton, ' in providing 
 that women are to have a certain length of time during the 
 day for their meals, when the very fact of this prohibitory 
 legislation is to limit their power of obtaining food ; besides, if 
 long hours are so bad for women that the State must put aside 
 all considerations of personal liberty, and legislate for them as 
 though they were children, why confine their restrictions only 
 to shops where textile fabrics or wearing apparel are sold ? 
 It leaves untouched provision-shops, public-houses, restaurants, 
 lodging-houses, and other places where women toil, not ten, 
 but often as much as fifteen hours in the twenty-four ; whilst 
 the home-life of most labourers' wives proves conclusively the 
 truth of the popular proverb that "a woman's work is never 
 done." ' 
 
 ' I remember,' said Madeline, ' hearing not long ago of a 
 workman who had been very active in his advocacy of placing 
 restrictions upon the employments of women ; his own wife was 
 of a reticent and silent nature, but like the historical parrot, 
 she probably thought the more, and one evening when the 
 husband returned about supper-time he found her quietly 
 reading a book of travels. "Where is my supper 1 ?" he asked, 
 with some alarm. " I never knew you to miss getting it 
 before." " I tell you how it is," she said, "you are always 
 a-laying down the law that women shouldn't work but eight 
 hours a-day, just because you don't want to have them in the 
 factory, now I got your breakfast at six this morning and 
 worked hard till two, and that's eight hours exactly, and why 
 should I work longer than them?" This put the matter in quite 
 a new light, the husband, it is said, reconsidered his position, and 
 after talking over the subject with his wife whom he had never
 
 128 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 known to neglect her duty on any frivolous pretext, he finally 
 withdrew his support from those who were advocating the inter- 
 ference of Government with the liberty of working women. It 
 is strange, but I believe even some of those who recognise the 
 want of a larger sphere of work for women, are yet short-sighted 
 enough to believe in these Acts.' 
 
 'And so inflict upon them their crowning disability,' said 
 Mrs. Silverton, like the generous Sultan, who, on the entreaties 
 of his wives, was induced to allow them to walk abroad 
 provided they wore strong shoes, and forthwith forbad all shoe- 
 makers under the severest penalties to supply them with the 
 same.' 
 
 ' Whichever way we look at it,' said the Professor, ' this 
 interference is a great mistake ; I hear that in many factories 
 where women have still been retained, employers compensate 
 themselves for the compulsory short hours by making the work 
 harder while it lasts, so that the women ai-e really more 
 fatigued than under the old system. Plausible, too, as is the 
 plea that the future health of the nation demands that women 
 should be protected against their employers, it is clear that our 
 legislators cannot think protection desirable from the labourers' 
 point of view, or why, when it was proposed to make these re- 
 strictions apply only to married women, should they have 
 refused to consider the same on the ground that it would prove 
 a discouragement to marriage ? ' 
 
 ' You allow that it would be desirable in many cases,' said 
 Sir Henry, ' that the hours during which women labour should 
 be shortened, but how is this to be done except by legislation] ' 
 ' By the combined action of the workers themselves ; their 
 labour like that of men should be free to regulate itself by the 
 natural law of supply and demand ; at least, the Government 
 which takes upon itself to limit women's labour, ought in 
 justice to prevent men doing the work of women, especially 
 since it is the avowedly selfish object of a large number of 
 working men to use these restrictions as a means for driving 
 women out of their trade.'
 
 THE EMPLOYMENT OF WOMEN. 129 
 
 ' Whatever may have been the ulterior aims of their selfish 
 constituents, I really believe the Members of Parliament who 
 were most influential in the passing of these Acts,' said Made- 
 line, ' were as well-meaning as those faithful Court physicians, 
 who, in their anxiety about the King's digestion, starved him to- 
 death.' 
 
 ' They are, perhaps, political homceopathists,' said Sir Henry, 
 ' who, at least by your account, have acted on the similia 
 similibus curantur principle, and held fasting to be the best cure 
 for starvation.' 
 
 ' If you can afford,' said his sister, ' to ridicule the col- 
 lective wits of those Members of Parliament whose paternal 
 solicitude has done so much injury to its objects, I hope when 
 you take your seat you will vote for giving women liberty to 
 judge for themselves what they want and are able to do ; but 
 you have to obey laws, my dear boy, this afternoon, not to make 
 them. I know you are getting chilly from keeping so unusually 
 quiet, we will go into the drawing-room and have some tea, it is 
 nearly five o'clock.' 
 
 ' It seems a shame to go indoors this lovely afternoon, but 
 if my medical adviser thinks it expedient I suppose I have 
 nothing to do but to submit.' 
 
 ' Your medical adviser ! Oh, you mean Madeline ; I am 
 glad our. conversation has had such a salutary effect that your 
 royal highness is ready on the spot to promote a w r oman to the 
 post of physician in ordinary ; if Madeline only had a diploma 
 what an advertisement you might be to her; I am glad, though, 
 that you believe in women doctors, I did not expect to find you 
 so orthodox.' 
 
 ' If your friend were a type you are not supposed to hear 
 what we are saying, Miss Acton I should; but even were I to 
 declare myself ready to put as much faith in them as in 
 doctors of my own sex it would not be saying much, for I am 
 inclined to share Abernethy's opinion that "the fewer doctors, 
 the fewer deaths, the less medicine, the less illness," and to 
 agree with the old writer who solemnly warned his generation
 
 130" MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 " Trust not thy body to a physician. He'll make thy foolish 
 bones go without flesh in a fortnight, and thy soul walk with- 
 out a body a sennight after." ' 
 
 'How very profane,' said Madeline, laughing ; ' at this rate 
 you will want to do away with doctors altogether.' 
 
 ' No, I do not go so far as that, but I think our plan of 
 making sickness instead of health a physician's gain a very bad 
 one, the best of them are too much inclined to encourage 
 malades imaginaires as it is.' 
 
 ' Have you any improvement then to suggest 1 ' 
 ' Yes ; if I had my way our "medicine-men " should be paid 
 fixed salaries for watching over the health of the community, 
 just as clergymen are for looking after its spiritual well-being. 
 In some parts of China (they are a wise people) doctors are 
 paid so long as their patients are well, as soon as they fall ill 
 the payment ceases ; it is astonishing how little sickness they 
 have in those regions.' 
 
 ' Are the inhabitants guaranteed against accident also 1 ' 
 asked Madeline, unable to repress a mischievous smile as she 
 compared the speaker's ' prave orts ' with the pitiable condition 
 in which she had found him not many hours ago, ' for if not. it 
 seems rather hard that the unfortunate doctors' income should 
 be taxed for burns, bruises, and broken limbs, things they cannot 
 by the utmost stretch of the imagination be made accountable 
 for.' 
 
 ' I've taken tea in, if you please, ma'am.' 
 ' " 'Tis the voice of the butler, I hear him complain," ' said 
 Sir Henry, as momentarily forgetting his injured foot, he 
 attempted, with his usual impetuosity, to rise ; he fell back 
 quickly again, however, with a smothered expression of pain 
 which he attempted to hide by murmuring with closed eyes and 
 affected accents, as though the whole matter was simply a jest, 
 ' " Died without the aid of a regular practitioner, such instances 
 of death are rare." ' This by way of retaliation for Madeline's 
 last remark. 
 
 ' We don't want an epitaph for you yet, please do not
 
 THE EMPLOYMENT OF WOMEN. 131 
 
 suggest such a melancholy topic,' exclaimed his sister, as with 
 pretended indignation, but real solicitude, she flew to his side. 
 ' Really, Harry, you are disgracefully careless to attempt to 
 walk alone,' but his only answer was to sit up. 
 
 ' Give me your shoulder, little tyrant,' he said, laughing at 
 her alarmed expression, ' and I will show you that I am not so 
 lame as my arguments yet. Fancy Miss Acton defending men- 
 doctors after the way in which, from all accounts, many of 
 them have behaved to the ladies who are anxious to enter their 
 profession,' he added, in short jerky sentences, as they hobbled 
 through the low French window into the drawing-room. 
 
 ' A stern sense of justice to which I cannot attain,' replied 
 his sister ; ' for myself,' she continued, as the rest of the party 
 followed, ' I am not at all sure that I do not, for the reason 
 you name, enjoy hearing you run down the doctors even though 
 I know you are in fun ; I am so angry at the mean way in 
 which several of them have behaved in regard to the admission 
 of women to medical degrees.' 
 
 ' It is true,' said Professor "Wray presently, as he handed 
 the cups of tea which his hostess was pouring out, ' that there 
 has been a spirit of trades unionism shown by a certain set 
 which is anything but creditable to men of education, and 
 so-called gentlemen, but there are many honourable exceptions 
 to this rule ; I have heard doctors myself acknowledge that 
 with such aptitude as women show in attending the sick and 
 curing slight ailments, there is no good reason for refusing them 
 every chance to acquire the training which would substitute 
 scientific knowledge for what at best must without it be a 
 species of empiricism. 3 
 
 ' A propos of amateur doctoring, Miss Cobbe, in one of her 
 Essays,' said Madeline, Hells an amusing story about her 
 grandmother, who, like many elderly women, had obtained no 
 small repiitation as an unlicensed practitioner. Asking an Irish 
 labourer his name one day, he replied, " Och, and don't ye 
 know me, my lady, and didn't yer ladyship give the dose to me 
 wife, and she died the next day Long life to yer ladyship ! "
 
 132 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 There is though, joking apart, always a certain element of 
 danger, as every one knows, in amateur practice, and seeing 
 that many women are born with such instincts that they are 
 bound to be either doctors or quacks, I think the country 
 ought to congratulate itself on the opening of the London 
 School of Medicine for Women, which, if it does not show that 
 doctors are developing a more generous spirit, is at least a 
 testimony to the gradual change in public opinion.' 
 
 ' But whatever attitude the profession, as regards its male 
 members, may ultimately assume,' said Mrs. Silverton, ' it will 
 not read very creditably in the medical annals of the nine- 
 teenth century, that after so many years in which women have 
 been knocking at the doors of the medical schools, entreating 
 for a training which will enable them to lead useful, self- 
 supporting lives, they have only just, in this country at least, 
 succeeded in obtaining a fair chance.' 
 
 ' This change shows, at any rate,' said Sir Henry, ' that the 
 prejudices you complain of are gradually dying out.' 
 
 ' And yet at the medical congress only the year before last, 
 though some of the profession were in favour of admitting 
 women-doctors, the majority were opposed, while one of our 
 leading physicians went so far, I believe, as to say that if any 
 lady-practitioners were admitted he would walk out of the room. 
 This of course was enough, but could intolerance go further ] ' 
 
 ' Now women have a school of their own,' said her brother, 
 ' we shall hear less, I suspect, of this active opposition, which 
 has been, I fancy, in a great measure due to a dislike of men 
 and women studying medicine together.' 
 
 ' This has often no doubt been made an ostensible motive, 
 as has the assumed dread of women's incapacity, but the real 
 source of most of the opposition has been, I am convinced, just 
 an unworthy fear of rivalry, no more.' 
 
 ' I know one doctor at least who had the grace to 
 acknowledge as much,' said Professor Wray ; ' in fact, he 
 declared that if women were admitted without restriction to 
 medical degrees, his diploma would be of next to no use to
 
 THE EMPLOYMENT OF WOMEN. 133 
 
 him ; and as for the plea of its being unfitting for women to 
 attempt the study of medicine with men for examiners and 
 fellow-students, the commonest understanding should be able 
 to grasp the fact that until they can get training institutions 
 and licensing bodies of their own there is no other course open 
 to them. Besides, I do not see how any sensible, right-minded 
 person could consider that an insuperable obstacle ; in Paris, at 
 Zurich, the sitting side by side with men, where all were 
 diligently engaged in the pursuit of science, does not seem to 
 have been subversive of women's, best qualities, their modesty 
 and gentleness, ultra-prudery is never a good sign, the most 
 corrupt are generally the most severe, which leads me to think 
 that it is not the noblest members of the medical profession 
 who have raised this cry as a plea for excluding women ; the 
 students who find amusement in questionable stories, or 
 subjects not enjoined by the exigences of their profession, 
 are likely to be loudest in their protest, because the presence 
 of women in the schools would necessitate that tone of manly 
 purity which ought to, but does not always, animate students 
 of the art of healing, noble in itself though it is.' 
 
 ' I quite agree with you in thinking,' said Sir Henry, ' that 
 the profession of medicine is one eminently suited to women, 
 but I doubt if as surgeons they are equally likely to succeed, 
 from the mere fact of their wanting the physical strength 
 necessary for many operations.' 
 
 ' In this, as in everything else, science is superseding mere 
 brute force ; in these days of anaesthetics, it is skill rather 
 than strength that is needed, and therefore I see no reason 
 why women should not succeed equally well in this branch of 
 the profession.' 
 
 ' Perhaps ; but I do not like the idea, somehow ; it is true 
 enough, I suppose, what, I think it was Lord Sherbrooke once 
 said, that an Englishman shies at a new idea like a horse at a 
 perambulator, we must get thoroughly accustomed to a thing 
 before we can be brought to tolerate it ; to be respectable, it 
 must have existed a hundred years at least.'
 
 134 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 ' And yet I do not think the idea of women-doctors is so 
 absolutely new,' said Madeline, 'it may be a revival, but it 
 cannot be called an invention of the present age ; for among 
 the Gothic nations women commonly practised surgery, and is 
 there not some mention of a woman-leech in the Iliad ? ' 
 
 ' You mean " fair Agamede with golden hair," ' replied Sir 
 Henry. 
 
 ' And there is Agnodice, the Athenian lady,' said Professor 
 Wray, ' who, for the benefit of her own sex, was so determined 
 to study medicine that she disguised herself in men's clothes in 
 order to attend the classes of the physician Hierophilus. 
 Masculine jealousy, it seems, is no new thing either, for it is 
 said her success was so great that she suffered much persecution 
 at the hands of certain male doctors, who summoned her before 
 the Areopagus, and accused her of violating the law which 
 forbad the study of medicine to women and slaves. But it is 
 half past five,' he added, looking at his watch, ' and if I am to 
 get back by seven, I must tear myself away and not delay the 
 walk to Rapparee Cove I have been promising myself all day ; 
 I wish,' turning to Sir Henry, ' that you could have come too, 
 but of course that is out of the question.' 
 
 ' Unfortunately, yes ; but I can walk, I think, as far as the 
 library door with you, if you will kindly lend me an arm. I 
 must write a letter before dinner, and I shall never get away 
 unless I go now. Perhaps you will give me some credit this 
 time, Miss Acton,' he added, turning to her, ' for having been 
 interested in our discussion when I tell you that, although my 
 letter was rather an important one, I literally forgot it until 
 this moment.' 
 
 ' I really believe he is in earnest,' said Mrs. Silverton, as the 
 door closed and the ladies were left alone, ' he has been so 
 preternaturally patient and quiet for him all the afternoon ; 
 but auntie, I have been watching you while we were talking, 
 and wondering, as you said nothing, whether you class women- 
 doctors amongst the inventions to which you object, or whether 
 you are inclined to tolerate them.'
 
 THE EMPLOYMENT OF WOMElf. 135 
 
 ' My dear, you know without asking, I am sure, which side 
 I shall take ; nothing I have heard yet has convinced me that 
 women have a right to usurp the functions of a physician ;. 
 their place in the sick-room is that of a nurse, and they ought 
 to be content with this ; why, there are hundreds of medical 
 men now who cannot make a decent living.' 
 
 ' Is no woman then to be allowed to earn a maintenance 
 till every man in the world is provided for 1 ? But that is 
 always the way, anything that offers no opportunity of earning 
 either money or Kvbos women are welcome to, they may be 
 nurses and nearly break their backs in lifting heavy men in and 
 out of bed, they may be in perpetual contact with the foulest 
 diseases, and act as midwives to the poor, who cannot afford to 
 pay heavy fees ; but doctors no, that is not to be thought of, 
 it is quite unnatural and, in short, improper.' 
 
 ' Well, I can only say it would make no difference to me/ 
 exclaimed Mrs. Knagge, ' however many women-doctors there 
 were in the world, I would not employ one on any account ; I 
 should have no faith in them.' 
 
 ' I think/ replied Madeline, ' if you were only once attended 
 by any of the women-doctors whom I am fortunate enough to 
 know, you would change your mind as others have done ; for 
 although granting that the conditions of training and ex- 
 perience are about equal, there might not be much choice 
 between the average woman and the average man in point of 
 ordinary intelligence and skill, yet the very fact of women 
 having had so many difficulties to overcome and the earnestness 
 this has required and developed, must have, I think, raised 
 them above the average practitioner of the other sex. There 
 is no law to compel us to employ a woman-doctor if we do not 
 like it, but on the other hand it is at least equally hard that 
 those who from principle, or the nature of their complaint, 
 prefer to consult one of their own sex, however much they may 
 desire the services of a skilful medical woman, are, in nine 
 cases out of ten, unable to obtain them. Many a valuable life 
 has been sacrificed to the natural delicacy which, in certain
 
 136 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 cases, has made women shrink from employing the services of 
 a man, or if she has, at the solicitation of her friends, at last 
 given in, made her fail to tell him all the facts necessary for a 
 complete diagnosis of her condition, where she would gladly 
 have employed and spoken freely to one of her own sex.' 
 
 ' I should say it was nothing but false modesty that,' 
 replied Mrs. Knagge, ' which the sooner it is shaken out of a 
 woman the better ; the question of sex ought to be entirely 
 dgnored in such cases.' 
 
 ' I should rather say that it is only custom and habit 
 which have ever reconciled women to the idea of men attending 
 them in sickness. Modesty is often spoke of as a characteristic 
 peculiarly feminine, at any rate men are not, as a rule, more 
 than their equals in natural delicacy and reservej and yet. how 
 would they like to be arbitrarily prevented from employing 
 physicians of their own sex 1 How would they feel at being 
 compelled in all cases to reveal their physical ailments to a 
 woman 1 How would they like to be the subjects of an object- 
 lesson (as women are every day at our hospitals) to classes 
 of young women-students'?' 
 
 ' Of course,' said Mrs. Silverton, ' if their nature revolts at 
 the idea, ours must surely have a right to do so. But, 
 Madeline, I did not know you felt so strongly on this subject 
 before.' 
 
 ' I did not at one time, in fact I had not thought much 
 about this view of the question, but within the last two years 
 I have seen something of what women will endure in trying to 
 hide their suffering in certain diseases rather than submit to 
 the anguish and shame of outraged modesty involved in male 
 medical and surgical treatment. About a year ago I undertook 
 to nurse a respectable young woman who seemed to be far 
 gone in consumption, and after a time she confided to me that 
 the real basis of her illness was a serious internal complaint, 
 the symptoms of which, in remembrance of certain past ex- 
 periences, she had hidden from the doctor, who, of course, 
 working in the dark, could do her no good. I began to
 
 THE EMPLOYMENT OP WOMEN*. 137 
 
 remonstrate, but she stopped me, covering her face and 
 shuddering " Oh, please miss, don't ! I'm not afraid of pain, 
 hut I went to the hospital for it once, and if you knew you 
 would not ask me to go thiwigh that again I'd rather die 
 twice over I thought I should never hold up my head again." 
 As she entered into further particulars I began to understand 
 and appreciate her feelings. " But," I said, " if I can get you 
 the services of a lady-doctor who is specially skilled in cases 
 such as yours 1 " "I did not know there were any," she said, 
 gratefully accepting my offer to move her out of the smoky 
 town into purer air, and put her under the charge of my friend. 
 I am glad to say that the treatment was quite successful, and 
 she is now a strong woman, thanks to the medical knowledge of 
 one of her own sex. I do not think any stronger argument 
 than this is wanted to prove the necessity for women- 
 physicians, this poor woman would, undoubtedly, have died, 
 as many others have done, victims to their own reticence 
 aud I cannot call it false modesty ; not only individuals but 
 the medical profession and the whole human race would profit 
 by the removal of every prejudice-constructed barrier against 
 the free study and practice of medicine by women, who, seeing 
 that they must have, when once prejudice is overcome, greater 
 facilities for making observations and discoveries in this field 
 than men, an increased and more widely-spread general 
 knowledge of the diseases of their own sex must be the 
 result.' 
 
 ' But,' said Mrs. Knagge, ' when it was a question of men 
 and women studying together, you insisted that the nobility 
 and purity of science should raise the mind above any questions 
 of sex.' 
 
 ' True, where they are labouring earnestly together, their 
 sole aim and idea being to fit themselves for the relief of their 
 sad and suffering fellow-creatures, the qiiestion of sex would 
 not, I should think, be very likely to intrude itself, though I 
 am sure every one would agree that, where possible, separate 
 schools are to be desired. But the case is scarcely parallel.'
 
 138 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 ' Certainly not. It has been often, and I think truly, 
 asserted,' said Mrs. Silver ton, ' that the medical man who 
 cannot banish from his work all personal ideas of sex is unfit 
 for his profession. But you cannot expect the patient, whose 
 knowledge of and interest in her complaint is the reverse of 
 scientific, to banish from her mind all personal sensations of 
 bitterness, pain, or repugnance ; as M. Dupre said, in lecturing 
 at the London School of Medicine for Women, a wish so reason- 
 able as that expressed by many girls and women to be attended 
 by physicians of their own sex, ought at all risks to be com- 
 plied with.' 
 
 ' And yet I do not see,' said Miss Wynter, ' that there is 
 such a very urgent demand for them ; in fact, I have heard a 
 great many women declare, as Mrs. Knagge did just now, that 
 however many doctors of their own sex there were they would 
 always employ a man from choice.' 
 
 ' The force of habit, auntie, that is all,' said Mrs. Silverton. 
 ' Most of them have never seen a cultivated and able woman- 
 physician ; she is, to the majority, a new experience ; and we 
 know what that means, when conventional prejudices are at 
 stake. And yet, when I say " new," we ought to remember that 
 until comparatively recent times women were attended, at 
 least in their confinements, by members of their own sex ; it is 
 the presence of men at such times that is an innovation.' 
 
 ' Professor Wray spoke just now,' said Madeline, ' of Agno- 
 dice, and of the study of medicine being prohibited to women 
 and slaves ; I thought at the time that there are several 
 allusions in classical writers, showing how strictly limited was 
 the attendance of male-physicians on women.' 
 
 ' Men-midwives are a disgrace to civilisation,' said Mrs. 
 Silverton, warmly ; ' I can quite believe what a friend of mine 
 told me not long ago in speaking of this subject ; there is no 
 prudery or mock-modesty about her whatever ; in fact, she is 
 one of the most natural and unaffected of women ; and yet she 
 declared that when her first child was born, the feelings of 
 horror and repugnance she experienced at having to endure
 
 THE EDUCATION OF WOMEN. 139 
 
 the presence and services of a man almost a stranger, at a time 
 when it was especially necessary that her mind should be kept 
 as calm and her spirits as cheerful as possible, if they did not 
 endanger her life, at any rate retarded her recovery. Madam 
 Romanoff, in her Rites and Customs of the Graeco-Russian, 
 Church, says that child-birth in Russia is much less frequently 
 fatal than with us, and I have often thought that this may be 
 due less to the superior skill of the ladies who, according to 
 the same authority, chiefly practise midwifery, than to the 
 probability that the patients are, by the mere fact of being 
 attended by one of their own sex, saved from much mental 
 misery and disquietude.' 
 
 ' I am glad,' said Madeline, after a moment's pause, ' it is 
 beginning to be recognised, even in this country, that medical 
 women are wanted ; but when it comes to a question of 
 India, there can be, I think, but one opinion. Where there 
 are some fifty millions of native women who, debarred by 
 national custom and religion from medical aid because they 
 cannot obtain it from those of their own sex, suffer miserably 
 and often perish in consequence, the case becomes urgent, 
 and I am glad to see that it is beginning to be so recognised 
 by Government.' 
 
 ' That appeal, sent a year or two ago to the Queen by the 
 Maharanee of Punna,' said Mrs. Silverton, ' has done much 
 service in calling public attention to the condition of Indian 
 women, and to the necessity which exists that there should be 
 established in that country a medical branch of the public 
 service, by whose means they may have the aid of physicians 
 and surgeons of their own sex.' 
 
 4 1 remember seeing something about it in the Times, 1 said 
 Miss Wynter ; 'but I have almost forgotten the circumstance.' 
 
 ' " Things happened in this wise," as the old story-books 
 say ; it being strictly forbidden, as you know in the East, 
 that the inmates of a zenana should be seen by any man except 
 their nearest relations, and the princess of whom I was 
 speaking just now having for a long time suffered from a pain-
 
 140 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 ful internal complaint, her husband, in great distress, sent two 
 hundred miles to Miss Beilby, a medical missionary at Luck- 
 now, to beg her assistance. She went, and the result of her 
 skill and care was that the Maharanee ultimately recovered. 
 Some time later, when Miss Beilby was 011 the point of return- 
 ing to England, the princess sent for her, and solemnly en- 
 treated her to tell the Queen, the Prince and Princess of 
 Wales, and the people of England, what Indian women suffer 
 when they are sick. The Maharanee was convinced that if the 
 Queen were only told of their condition she would feel for, and 
 try to help them ; so she begged Miss Beilby to write down her 
 message lest it should be forgotten. " Write it small, Doctor 
 Miss Sahiba," she said, giving her pen, ink, and paper, " for I 
 want to put it in a locket, and you are to wear this locket 
 until you see our great Queen, and you are to give it to her 
 yourself; you are not to send it through another." Miss 
 Beilby had some doubt whether she would be able to comply 
 to the full with these conditions. But the Queen having 
 heard something of the message, sent for her soon after her 
 arrival in England, and I am glad to say expressed warm 
 interest in the question, entrusting Miss Beilby with a personal 
 message for the Maharanee, and saying she wished it to be 
 generally known that she would sympathise with every move- 
 ment made to relieve the suffering condition of Indian women.' 
 
 'That I am sure she would,' said Miss Wynter, 'but at 
 the same time the Queen is one of the last to approve of 
 women, as a rule, stepping out of their proper sphere.' 
 
 ' That most ill-defined of terms,' said her niece, sotto voce. 
 
 ' You recollect what she says,' the old lady went on, without 
 heeding the interruption, ' in the first Journal of Life in the 
 Highlands, " Albert grows daily fonder and fonder of politics 
 and business, and I get daily to dislike them more and more ; 
 we women are not made for governing, and if we are good 
 women we must dislike these masculine occupations.'" 
 
 ' If every utterance of the Queen were to be taken as 
 divinely inspired,' said Mrs. Silverton, ' your argument, auntie,
 
 THE EDUCATION OF WOMEN. 141 
 
 would be unanswerable, severe though it is upon some of the 
 noblest of our sex.' 
 
 ' I have heard that quoted before,' said Madeline, ' in opposi- 
 tion to the earnest desire of many good women for a, wider sphere 
 of usefulness ; but I do not think it is fair to take an isolated 
 expression of what was probably a momentary impatience at a 
 hard-worked and no doubt very trying position, and to cite it 
 as a proof of the Queen's deliberate opinion in regard to the 
 incapacity of women for such high duties as she herself has 
 fulfilled in a manner which sufficiently disproves any modest 
 assumption of inferiority contained in the remark quoted.' 
 
 ' Besides, I am sure, during her whole career,' said Mrs. 
 Silverton, ' no one could have been more rightly jealous of her 
 royal prerogative ; had she really, as some have tried to prove, 
 thought it unfitting that a woman should have public duties, 
 she would long ago have made the mistake of resigning in 
 favour of the Prince of Wales, who, man though he is, few 
 sensible people would venture to say could, with all his well- 
 deserved popularity, make a better sovereign than his mother. 
 But I hear Fred's voice ; please excuse me, I must go and see 
 what sport they have had. By the way,' she added, stopping 
 in the doorway, ' did I tell you the other day of that child in 
 the Board School, who, in his reading-lesson, would persist in 
 calling the patriarchs " partridges," and was put into disgrace 
 by a pupil-teacher for making game of the prophets ? But I 
 must not loiter, it is, as even you will allow, auntie, quite 
 within a woman's sphere to look after the furnishing of the 
 dinner-table. ' 
 
 ' Quite right, my dear, quite right,' said the old lady, 
 nodding her head approvingly, and then turning to thank 
 'Madeline, who had just picked up a long row of stitches in her 
 knitting, and was now winding up the ball of wool, which, as 
 though with a sense of fitness, while its owner was entangled 
 in argument, had been busy entangling itself around the legs 
 of sundry chairs and tables.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 ' HUMAN Nature is not a machine to be built after a model and set to 
 do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree which requires to grow 
 and develop itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward 
 forces which make it a living thing.' MlLL> Qn Liberty 
 
 Si), tlirov, irapa TO tQoQ yeXota av <j>aivoiro TroXXd irepi TO. vi' 
 , it Trpd&rai, 7} Xsytrai. PLATO 
 
 ' Let us once see one hundred women educated up to the highest 
 point that education at present reaches, let them be supplied with such 
 knowledge as their faculties are found to crave, and let them be free to 
 use, apply, and increase their knowledge as their faculties shall indicate, 
 and it will presently appear what is the sphere of each of the hundred.' 
 HARRIET MARTINEAU, Letter to Paulina W. Davis, 1851. 
 
 ' I would contend as earnestly as any one for the domestic duties of a 
 woman. I question if you do not cripple her in the performance of these 
 duties and lower her conception of their grandeur when you teach her not 
 to regard herself as a citizen.' 
 
 REV. F. D. MAURICE, Spectator, March 5th, 1870. 
 
 ' The outcome of twenty-five years experience, thought, and feeling 
 upon this point, is that I have been led to something more than a sus- 
 picion, I may almost say to a conclusion, that one principal cause of the 
 failure of so many magnificent schemes, social, political, religious, which 
 have followed each other, age after age, has been this that in almost 
 every age, they have ignored often utterly, all of them too much the 
 rights and the powers of one half of the human race, viz., women.' 
 CHARLES KINGSLEY, Speech at a Woman's Suffrage Meeting in July, 1869. 
 See Report.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 WOMAN'S 'SPHERE.' 
 
 ' IT is a pity women are not contented to do- their own work 
 and leave that of men alone/ said Major Knagge, on Sir 
 Henry's, soon after the ladies left the dining-room, referring to 
 the afternoon's discussion ; ' it would be er much more 
 sensible if they would occupy themselves in learning their 
 present duties thoroughly, instead of trying to change them 
 for others. You can no more emancipate a woman in the 
 sense dinned into our ears by the shrieking sisterhood, than 
 you can er recreate her ; her destiny has been established 
 since the foundation of the world, and she only causes misery 
 to herself and others when she tries to alter it.' 
 
 ' But, excuse me,' said Professor Wray ; ' before we accept 
 that dictum we must first be made clearly to understand what 
 condition has been fixed from the foundation of the world. Is 
 it that of women in Turkey, amongst the Red Indians, with 
 ourselves, in the United States, in ancient times, in the Middle 
 Ages, or in the nineteenth century 1 for there is, I believe, some 
 variation in the accepted definition of a woman's sphere at 
 these different places and periods ; and I must say, I find dis- 
 courses upon this theme are generally about as inconsequent 
 as that of the worthy magistrate who, addressing a sturdy 
 tramp, said, " Prisoner, Heaven has blessed you with health 
 and strength, instead of which you go about stealing sticks." ' 
 
 ' All sensible people,' replied Major Knagge, ' however they 
 may er differ on particular points, are agreed that a woman's 
 proper sphere is home, that she should be content to keep her 
 own place, and not try to take that of men.' 
 
 ' I must say I was very much of that opinion myself,' said 
 Sir Henry, ' until this afternoon, but I was obliged ultimately 
 
 L
 
 146 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 to acknowledge that there is much to be said upon the other 
 side ; I begin to think it is not fair that a girl should be kept 
 waiting upon the chances of marriage for a maintenance, till 
 youth and energy are gone, and then be told that she is a 
 failure, that there is no place in the world for such as she. In 
 this case it is not women but unmarried men, I think, who 
 should be severely punished as the bachelors were in the 
 ancient festival, by being dragged round an altar and beaten by 
 women for neglect of their sex.' 
 
 ' Those,' said Professor Wray, ' who object to women 
 leading independent, active lives, and talk vaguely of home 
 being their only proper sphere, must be prepared to answer such 
 questions as " How about those who have no homes, who 
 must depend on their own exertions and even provide for the 
 maintenance of others ? How about those whose fathers, 
 though now in a good position, have not means to provide a 
 sufficient income for the support of his daughters throughout 
 life 1 " " Let them marry," you say, but how if they are not 
 sought in marriage, or do not wish to become wives and 
 mothers 1 Are they to be forced into that, or worse, for want 
 of the means of living ; for in many cases it comes to this 1 ' 
 
 ' It will be, I am afraid, a long time,' said Mr. Silverton, 
 ' before current theories upon woman's sphere become reason- 
 able rather than emotional ; sound arguments against her 
 freedom to choose there are none, the most we hear is " I do 
 not like the idea of women doing such and such things," or 
 " It does not seem natural," or " My feelings revolt at the idea 
 of women's working," or " Women are meant to be the orna- 
 ments not the toilers of a community" ; and it is really quite 
 sickening to see the way in which modern literature, in a large 
 number of cases, assumes, as a matter of course, that marriage 
 is all but indispensable to the, respectability, independence, or 
 usefulness of a woman ; only the other day I came upon a 
 comparatively modern French work in which the author de- 
 clares in speaking of marriage : " L'existence de la femme est 
 la. . . . Le c61ibat hors de la retraite religieuse est un long
 
 WOMAN'S ' SPHERE.' 147 
 
 martyr pour une fille de moeurs pures. . . . Un homme, au 
 contraire, peut demeurer c61ibataire sans faillir entierement a 
 sa destinee ; il a un etat, une situation des affections, des 
 compagnies, des amities, sans lam ariage" ; again, "Toute 1'exis- 
 tence des femmes est dans la mariage Les hommes perdent 
 au mariage ce que les femmes y gagnent, independence,"* and 
 so on, I thought at the time, whatever truth there may be in 
 this farrago is due, not as the writer implies, to natural con- 
 ditions, but to the artificial restrictions placed upon the in- 
 dependence of girls and women.' 
 
 ' Your writer is not much in advance of his countryman, De 
 Maistre,' said Sir Henry, ' he declares somewhere I recollect, 
 that the idea of a woman asking for a wider sphere is just as 
 absurd as if his little dog were to clamour for a saddle and 
 bridle that he might carry him into the country.' 
 
 ' Precisely,' said the Major ; ' I cannot understand there 
 being two opinions amongst men upon this subject.' 
 
 ' Two thousand,' said Professor Wray, ' would not exhaust 
 the category of attempted definitions of that mysterious thing 
 " a woman's sphere," in fact it seems to mean practically any- 
 thing and everything which man's caprice and prejudice in 
 every age and country have assigned her. The Chinese at 
 any rate formerly taught that when a girl was born she 
 should sleep upon the ground, be wrapped up merely with a 
 cloth, and play with a tile, she being incapable from her 
 natural inferiority of being trained to act either virtuously or 
 viciously. Their neighbours, the Japanese, have been making 
 rapid strides, but in their national code of morality it is laid 
 down (according to Miss Bird) that " The minds of women are 
 as dark as the night and more stupid ; they do not notice what 
 is before them," and so on. It is easy again to see what 
 position women held formerly in some parts of Russia where 
 it was the custom for a bride upon her wedding-day to present 
 her husband with a whip of her own making in token of sub- 
 mission and her liability to chastisement.' 
 
 * La Figure Feminin au XlXme Siecle. Par Edouard Chantepie.
 
 148 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 ' It is too horrible to think of that sort of thing,' said Sir 
 Henry, with a look of unfeigned disgust ; ' but I presume that 
 Major Knagge, in asserting the general unanimity of opinion on 
 the subject of women's place in nature, did not refer to ancient 
 or foreign ideas.' 
 
 ' Certainly not,' replied that gentleman, ' what. I say and 
 what I maintain is, that amongst er civilised Englishmen, 
 there is no great diversity of opinion upon the question.' 
 
 ' I cannot agree with you,' said the Professor ; ' it appears 
 to me that many men's ideal of womanhood is pretty help- 
 lessness and dependence, their conviction that to do nothing 
 gracefully is her highest vocation ; a notion which has kept in 
 a state of wretched poverty and unhappiness thousands of 
 women who, with a wiser training, might have been contentedly 
 earning an honourable livelihood. Others think that a 
 woman who toils in the field, or nurses in the male wards of 
 hospital or workhouse, is quite within her sphere, while others 
 again who see no call for protest in women's singing ques- 
 tionable songs or dancing half-clothed upon the stage, or 
 having their photographs in every shop window, yet think it 
 subversive of all delicacy and modesty for her to stand upon 
 a platform and speak quietly and sensibly on any social topic. 
 She may serve as a barmaid, or sell fruit and flowers at a 
 street-corner ; only when high and well-paid work are in ques- 
 tion does publicity become an insuperable obstacle. A woman 
 who spends her life in ornamenting and displaying her person, 
 in selfish amusements, or useless trifles, is quite within her 
 sphere, society has nothing to say against her ; but if. having 
 time at her command, she takes up some earnest occupation 
 arid works for the advancement of any portion of the com- 
 munity, especially of her own sex, though a few may applaud 
 and others silently approve, no words are strong enough to 
 express the disgust which the majority feel at her uufeminine 
 proclivities. In short, if you come to analyse popular pre- 
 judice against women stepping out of their proper sphere so- 
 called, you will find selfishness is at the bottom of it; for
 
 WOMAN'S 'SPHERE.' 149 
 
 where do men draw the line 1 Not at what is really best for 
 a woman's welfare and happiness, but at what they like best 
 themselves ; ignorance, innocence, and unreasoning submission 
 are consequently often preferred to knowledge, self-reliance, 
 and enlightened sympathy. Even Coleridge, who might have 
 known better, held that the perfection of a woman's character 
 was to be characterless, that every man would like to have an 
 Ophelia or a Desdemona for a wife. Did it ever strike him to 
 inquire, I wonder, if every woman would like to have such a 
 life and such a death as Ophelia or Desdemona? Probably 
 not, for those who would see the light of truth must blow out 
 their own small candles. It is nothing but egotism and selfish- 
 ness which enacts that a woman may do what she will so long 
 as she does not interfere with the labour-market, or what we 
 are pleased to think our prerogative of power ; she is always 
 within her sphere, I find, so long as she is ministering to man's 
 enjoyment, biit to be independent or self-sufficing is the un- 
 pardonable sin.' 
 
 ' I have heard of a man,' said Mr. Silverton, ' who chose his 
 wife, not as Mrs. Primrose did her wedding-gown, for qualities 
 that wear well, but solely and simply because she harmonised 
 with his drawing-room furniture ; there was no mistake about 
 her vocation, clearly it was to contribute to the decoration of 
 her husband's house, a most worthy ambition for a woman of 
 intellect. Jean Paul, on the other hand, wanted a wife who 
 could " cook him something good," and I find a very large 
 number of men share his limited ideas of a woman's part 
 in life.' 
 
 'Miss Acton was telling me a stoiy just now,' said Sir 
 Henry, ' of a young lawyer in Philadelphia who, when told 
 that Mrs. Coe was studying law and hoped to be in practice 
 by the following Christmas, declared that he should never 
 see her in Court without thinking of mince-pies and of how 
 much better she would be employed in making them. " All I 
 can say," said the friend to whom he was talking, " is, do 
 not go into Court as her antagonist, or she will certainly
 
 150 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 remind you much more forcibly of mince-meat without the 
 pastry." ' 
 
 ' It might have been a wholesome lesson for him if he had 
 been demolished in argument,' said Mr. Silverton ; ' I often 
 wonder at the cool presumption of shallow-brained men who 
 dare to say of the sex which can produce a Mary Somerville, a 
 George Eliot, a Madame de Stael, " let them, if they must work, 
 keep to my definition of their proper sphere, which is to cook, 
 darn stockings, teach children their A B C." And supposing 
 Florence Nightingale, or Miss Carpenter, or Harriet Martineau, 
 or any of the other numerous women who have given the 
 strongest proof of their claim to leadership had, taking it for 
 granted that the opinion of the majority must be right, sat 
 down saying softly, with crossed hands and eyelids meekly 
 lowered, " my strength is my weakness, my true vocation is to 
 look nice, to be agreeable to men, needlework and accomplish- 
 ments are my only legitimate occupations ; woman is born to 
 be a wife and mother, failing these, my life must be more or 
 less a wasted one," how ridiculous we should think it, and yet 
 they would only have been carrying out popular ideas of what 
 constitutes a woman's sphere.' 
 
 ' Applied to such exceptionally gifted women,' said Sir 
 Henry, 'they do seem, of course, very absurd, the world could 
 ill afford to have lost their services.' 
 
 ' Nor can it spare the services of any one of their less gifted 
 sisters,' said the Professor ; ' it is only by freedom to seek 
 knowledge, wisdom, and a true conception of her real place and 
 duty, that woman tentis towards her highest destiny. The 
 fact is, men have grown so accustomed to rule and control 
 women, to say what they may or may not do, that they have 
 come at last to think themselves authorised by nature to define 
 the boundaries of her sphere with exact mathematical precision, 
 and to lay down an unalterable law as to her capacities, duties, 
 rights, and social destiny. Can anything equal the egotism of 
 this assumption of a divine right to say to women, " thus far 
 shalt thou go and no farther ; here is your proper place, if
 
 WOMAN'S 'SPHERE.' '151 
 
 you desire my support and favour you will find your happiness 
 in the manner in which I point out, and no other " ] And yet, 
 with all this would-be infallibility, we have, in point of fact, no 
 more inherent right to decide a woman's destiny than she has 
 to decide ours ; self-abnegation is no more a natural law with 
 women than with us.' 
 
 ' I must acknowledge,' said Sir Henry, ' that we are too apt 
 while claiming for ourselves license to do whatever we are able, 
 to think that women should be limited to what we think right 
 for them ; but there is one thing, whereas in former times only 
 a very few exceptional women ventured to think for them- 
 selves, a very large number do so now, and I am inclined to 
 think that the man who draws a line and says, "Advance 
 beyond this at your peril," stands as much chance of having 
 his boundary overstepped as the poultry-fancier who made a 
 white chalk mark across the path to his garden thinking his 
 fowls would be simple enough to take it as an insurmountable 
 barrier.' 
 
 ' That is very true,' said the Professor, thoughtfully ; ' none 
 but women themselves can define what belongs to true woman- 
 hood, and this only when they have obtained the same chances, 
 the same freedom of choice as men ; this is the only true way 
 of finding out what is their proper sphere the one most for 
 their own advantage and that of others. The hand most fitted 
 to do a thing is the one (whether man's or woman's) which does 
 it best ; and both sexes would much sooner shake themselves 
 into their right position of mutual relationship if there were 
 fewer regulations and restrictions which, while meant to im- 
 prove upon nature, really distort it.' 
 
 ' It has often struck me,' said Mr. Silverton, ' in looking 
 into articles professedly treating of woman's sphere, how extra- 
 ordinarily common is the assumption that she was meant to be 
 a mere appendix to man ; that collectively, if not individually, 
 he is to be her master, legislator, judge, the unerring and all- 
 powerful Zeus who is the arbiter of her destiny, as if she had 
 no soul, character, or conscience of her own.'
 
 152 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 'The average mind finds it next to impossible to grasp a 
 broad, general idea,' said Professor Wray ; ' and so instead of 
 looking at the question of justice in the abstract, instead of 
 asking themselves, " Is this, stripped of all sophistry, right or 
 wrong, fair or unfair 1 ? " the majority of men begin by saying, 
 " Do / wish it 1 will it be convenient to me ? if not, what 
 objections can I find?" And thereupon they proceed to stum- 
 ble from one proposed difficulty to another, all of them more 
 remarkable for lameness than logic, since any argument is good 
 enough to support a foregone conclusion.' 
 
 Sir Henry glanced at Major Knagge, expecting to see him 
 goaded by such plain speaking, and unable as usual to refrain 
 from rushing with the snort of a war-horse into the melee of an 
 exciting conflict ; but the gallant officer was not without his 
 little weaknesses, and with olives upon his plate, his mind for 
 the moment was unable to get beyond it. 
 
 ' But this selfishness brings its own punishment,' said Mr. 
 Silverton. 
 
 ' No doubt,' replied the Professor, ' as long as women are 
 taught that a comparatively idle life is superior to one of 
 honourable work, that their place is to be cared for and to 
 depend altogether upon men ; as long as a brave spirit which 
 refuses to become the slave of conventionalism is sneered at as 
 "strong-minded " or " eccentric " ; as long as a woman's sphere 
 of labour is so limited ; as long as marriage is looked upon as 
 a social necessity instead of a possible alternative, so long will 
 women make men miserable in avoiding celibacy by contract- 
 ing mercenary marriages as their only means of obtaining, as a 
 rule, any status in society. The correction of the abuses of 
 marriage is the starting-point of all reforms ; but under present 
 conditions, true marriage, which involves on the woman's part 
 no siibjection, and completes instead of absorbing her individu- 
 ality, is rare indeed.' 
 
 ' But I think you are a little hard upon our own sex,' said 
 Sir Henry, seeing that Major Knagge was still busily engaged. 
 ' Many men who are Conservative on these women questions
 
 WOMAN'S ' SPHERE.' 153 
 
 are really, I am convinced, actuated by unselfish and kindly 
 motives.' 
 
 'The foolish Greek,' said Professor Wray, 'who, to save 
 his bees the trouble of flying to Mount Hymettus, clipped their 
 wings and brought flowers to their hives, no doubt meant well 
 by them ; but his policy was none the less short-sighted, for 
 they rewarded him by making no honey. Seeing that it is not 
 in oxir power to save the whole sex from sorrow and suffering, 
 sickness and death, we ought, at least, to remove from their 
 pathway all unnatural restraints which impede free action, and 
 encourage any natural tendency to weakness or timidity. 
 Plants grown in the shade are generally feeble and colourless ; 
 disused limbs are apt to become helpless ; a child kept always 
 in leading-strings will hardly learn to walk alone ; and the 
 same rule applies to women kept, metaphorically speaking, in 
 a glass case, hidden away from all contact with the realities of 
 life, they have no fair chance of development ; the strife and 
 burden of existence are only made doubly hard to those who 
 have been trained to clinging dependence instead of self-help 
 and self-reliance.' 
 
 ' And yet,' said Sir Henry, ' women are so nice as they are, 
 that I cannot get over a sort of latent dread that any change in 
 them must be for the worse.' 
 
 ' If you believe, as I know you do,' replied the Professor, 
 ' in the blessings of moral free agency, the advantages of re- 
 sponsibility, you cannot seriously think that the substitution of 
 independence for subjection, of a wide circle of interests and 
 duties for a narrow one, is really hurtful or deteriorating. Those 
 who fear that the removal of artificial restraints will reverse the 
 order of nature cannot, I think, in their heart of hearts, have a 
 very firm belief that woman's present condition is the only 
 one for which nature intended her.' 
 
 ' And yet it is very often argued,' replied Sir Henry, ' and 
 that not by shallow, but by thoughtful, sensible persons of 
 both sexes, that this perfect freedom which you claim would 
 end in producing not good women but bad imitations of men;
 
 154 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 that those women who fearlessly enter the arena of public life, 
 seeking the same work as men, have too often cultivated their 
 minds and sharpened their intellects at the expense of those 
 gifts and graces which belong especially to their sex, that their 
 very dress becomes an index to their character, is apt to lose 
 its feminine charm, and approximate in a greater or lesser 
 degree to that of men.' 
 
 ' I am not ashamed to own,' replied his brother-in-law, 
 ' that I once, in my ignorance, had some undefined, though 
 very real fears in this direction ; but it is impossible to know 
 such women as your sister and Miss Acton and yet doubt that 
 the highest feminine attributes may coexist with the fullest 
 mental culture tenderness with strength of mind, modesty 
 with courage, broad views with reverence, good dressing with 
 deep thinking.' 
 
 'Yes, I quite grant that in their case,' replied Sir Henry, 
 thoughtfully ' 
 
 ' It may be so, my dear sir ; it may be so,' interrupted the 
 Major, who seemed to have just awoke to the necessity for 
 some interference on his part, ' but certainly the er great 
 majority of the women I have talked to upon the subject have 
 expressed the er greatest horror of being classed with the 
 strong-minded sisterhood, and deprecate any change iu the 
 er status which they at present enjoy.' 
 
 ' Possibly,' replied the Professor, ' such sentiments are due 
 to the very want of free development we have been lamenting. 
 These women have not cut their wisdom teeth yet, they have 
 not learned to feel their feet, and their opinions are something- 
 like those of the slaves in the Southern States of America who 
 used to speak with the utmost contempt, I have been told, of 
 "free niggers." ' 
 
 ' They know quite as much as any women need know,' 
 answered the Major ; ' and though Mrs. Silverton and Miss 
 Acton are in themselves er very charming, I do not deny, 
 some other women whom I coxild name as sharing their 
 opinions are men in petticoats, nothing more.'
 
 WOMAN'S 'SPHERE.' 155 
 
 ' No doubt,' said Professor Wray, ' the reaction from long 
 years of servitude, dependence, and irresponsibility has pro- 
 duced some abnormal types of womanhood, and it is not to be 
 wondered at. The pioneers in any cause those engaged heart 
 and soul in any earnest work have not always time to con- 
 sider the art of being agreeable. But when all is said and 
 done (I speak from a wide experience) there are many charm- 
 ing and withal very womanly women amongst the most ad- 
 vanced advocates of feminine emancipation. Though two 
 plants may be unlike in many important particulars, they are 
 almost sure to resemble each other in their need of light and air ; 
 you may depend upon it freedom will only make a man more 
 manly, a woman more womanly. As Thoreau says somewhere, 
 " Men are always complaining that women are not more w r ise, 
 women are always saying to men, Why are you not more un- 
 selfish and loving ] " but until each is both wise and loving 
 there can be no real growth. I cannot help thinking that a 
 greater interchange of the best qualities of the two sexes would 
 be for the advantage of both ; the noblest man is he who has 
 most womanly tenderness, the finest natured woman is she who, 
 without being hard or rough, has some manly courage and 
 decision of character. Women will not cease to look up to 
 men, nor will men reverence women the less for it.' 
 
 ' But,' said Sir Henry, ' though the natures of men and 
 women may be parallel, they are scarcely similar, and there- 
 fore it seems but natural that they should have to a great 
 extent different spheres.' 
 
 ' Certainly, but this does not make it right,' said Mr. Sil- 
 vertoii, ' that the one sex should legislate for the other in this 
 matter. If you wish a woman to be womanly, in the truest 
 sense of the word, it stands to reason that you will be nearer 
 to obtaining this result by giving her every possible chance 
 of free development than by fettering nature and creating false 
 and artificial standards. The capacities and tastes of women 
 themselves, as Professor Wray was saying, ought to be the 
 only limit to the development and employment of their
 
 156 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 faculties. At present, while a man's field of labour is bounded 
 only by his power or inclination, that of a woman is shut in by 
 a thousand legal restrictions and social prejudices.' 
 
 ' And that,' said the Professor, ' in open defiance of the 
 fundamental principle of true progress, which decrees that 
 every human being, whether man or woman, has an inalienable 
 right to the fullest development and freest exercise of his or 
 her energies, that each individual who has come to years of 
 discretion should without question be allowed to choose his 
 or her sphere of usefulness. You cannot expect to get full or 
 perfect harmony if you try to play a musical instrument with 
 your left hand only, or if the bass overpowers the treble, so it 
 is with men and women in all the affairs of life, co-operation is 
 the only true principle of success.' 
 
 ' But,' said Sir Henry, ' to follow out your metaphor the 
 treble has her own part, the bass his, they do not interfere with 
 each other's work.' 
 
 ' True, but both are occupied with the same theme. What 
 I mean is, that by limiting a woman's sphere, by shutting her 
 out in a great measure from the larger interests of life, by 
 giving her little or no share in politics in government, in the 
 higher professions, by ignoring the necessity for her co-opera- 
 tion in all the affairs of life, we have been just as wise as a 
 musician who should say, " The bass and the treble are quite 
 different, therefore the right hand and the left must not on any 
 account attempt to work out the same subject on the pianoforte 
 or organ ; the best effect will be obtained by the treble gently 
 tuning ' Home, sweet home,' while the bass thunders out ' Rule 
 Brittannia,' or ' Die Wacht am Rhein.' " Those who assert or 
 think that political morality and economy have not suffered 
 through the exclusion of woman's direct influence, must have 
 studied the subject superficially, or come to it blinded by 
 prejudice.' 
 
 ' And do you agree with this?' asked Sir Henry, turning to 
 his brother-in-law. 
 
 ' In all essential points, yes,' was the reply ; ' there seems
 
 WOMAN'S ' SPHERE.' 157 
 
 to me to be an aim in distinctions of sex far beyond the mere 
 perpetuation of our race. The one sex is the natural comple- 
 ment of the other surely, intellectually and morally as well as 
 physically ; and as no true home can be formed without the 
 common aid of father and mother, so in no sphere can either 
 the masculine or feminine element be ignored with impunity.' 
 
 'I have known dabblers in science/ said Professor Wray, 
 ' declare its pursuit particularly unfitted for the feminine mind, 
 and yet a woman's power of recalling impressions, her fidelity 
 in detail, would be, as many eminent professors have recog- 
 nised, invaluable in scientific research ; in fact, I know of no 
 branch of intellectual work which would not gain by the co- 
 operation of women. The very existence of different tempera- 
 ments in the two sexes proves it a most short-sighted policy to 
 waste those valuable feminine attributes which are necessary 
 to the world's progress, and whose neglect has already too 
 much retarded the onward flow of civilising influences. There 
 are some public duties indeed for which women are pre-emi- 
 nently fitted, such as the authorised visitation of prisons and 
 reformatories, of schools as government inspectors, to say 
 nothing of the administration of the poor-law.' 
 
 ' I have no doubt,' said Sir Henry, ' women are well quali- 
 fied, 'indeed better qualified than we are for all exercises of 
 benevolences ; but ' 
 
 ' But,' replied the Professor, smiling, ' I generally find that 
 by this is meant indiscriminate almsgiving, rather than well- 
 considered schemes for helping the poor to help themselves. 
 Yet it is in this work as guardians of the poor that women are 
 most wanted ; how best to relieve the sick and helpless, to 
 bring some sunshine into the lives of little pauper children, to 
 the bedsides of the aged and infirm ; who can deny that this is 
 part of the duty of every Poor-law Guardian, and at the same 
 time one peculiarly feminine ? Seeing that women and chil- 
 dren form the majority of paupers, it is not right or natural 
 that the board which controls and takes care of them should be 
 composed entirely of men. What do they know about the
 
 158 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 management of invalids or infants 1 What experience can they 
 have had of the feeding and clothing of girls, or of training 
 them for domestic service 1 A clever and designing matron 
 could any day hoodwink if she pleased a whole board of men 
 in these matters. The failures of the past, the mismanage- 
 ment of the ratepayers' money, tell their own story. Women 
 are obliged to study economy in outlay more than men, and 
 their aid upon Boards of Guardians is much wanted in the 
 constant supervision and checking of unnecessary expenses.' 
 
 ' I quite see that,' said Sir Henry ; ' but there is some 
 difference between the duties of a guardian of the poor and those 
 of the governor of a jail.' 
 
 ' Certainly, but in America women have filled the latter 
 office with great success ; simplicity and effectiveness, I am 
 told, has distinguished most of the work done by them, while 
 their superior imagination has in many instances proved of the 
 most striking advantage. We shall never, I feel convinced, 
 have a faithful and efficient administration of our poor-law 
 system, or a thoroughly satisfactory management of our prisons 
 and reformatories, until they come more fully under direct 
 womanly oversight.' 
 
 ' I think the advantage of women-guardians is becoming 
 generally recognised now,' said Mr. Silverton, ' for the number 
 is certainly increasing.' 
 
 ' In England, yes,' replied the Professor ; ' but I suppose 
 you know that in Ireland neither ladies nor clergymen (who 
 are decidedly better qualified for the office than most other 
 men) are eligible; nor even with us are married women allowed 
 to act,* though I know several ladies eminently fitted for, and 
 willing to undertake the work if the law would allow them.' 
 
 ' The law recognises what a great many women fail to do,' 
 said Major Knagge, sententiously, ' that whatever er 
 vagaries a spinster may be allowed, a married woman's place 
 is certainly her home.' 
 
 * [At least it appears not during the lifetime of her husband : widows 
 are eligible. ED.]
 
 WOMAN'S 'SPHERE.' 159 
 
 ' Her duties may begin, but they do not end there,' replied 
 the Professor, gravely. ' Because some women are wives and 
 mothers, shall all women concentrate their every thought upon 
 this subject, and is it impossible for those who are mothers to 
 be anything else I Before being a wife or mother one is a 
 human being, and neither conjugal nor maternal duties absolve 
 an unselfish woman from what she owes to humanity at large. 
 Those who work most thoroughly are not the persons who 
 understand but one thing; and as I said before, the whole 
 community will benefit when women obtain the free and un- 
 restrained exercise of all their talents. It is a curious idea 
 that large interests and duties are only for those who have 
 nothing else to occupy them. Mending, making, housekeeping, 
 visiting, are all very well in their place, but they should not be 
 made the chief business of life. When a woman has attended 
 to all her domestic affairs, what right has any one on the plea 
 that she is going beyond her sphere, to deny her absolute 
 freedom to choose her own pursuits'? the chance to turn 
 away occasionally from the petty cares and worries, the close 
 atmosphere of every-day life, wherein trivial things rise into un- 
 natural proportions, and to seek in larger interests the rest and 
 strength which every one needs, and women perhaps most of all.' 
 
 ' It is very certain,' said Mr. Silverton, ' that no marriage 
 can be a thoroughly happy one where the husband does not 
 centre all his keenest interests in his home, and where the wife 
 is so taken up with her household and family cares that she 
 cannot with a spirit of fellowship enter into all her husband's 
 tastes and pursuits ; where, in fact, the man's interests are 
 outside their home, the woman's bounded by it.' 
 
 ' That is a state of things by no means " devoutly to be 
 wished,'" said Sir Henry; 'but I do not see that a wife need 
 sympathise the less with her husband's pursuits because she 
 takes no active part in them. I would give women the widest 
 culture possible, and I think single women should have some 
 chance of an independent career if they desire it, but with a 
 wife and mother I think the case is different'
 
 160 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 'If there is any real incompatibility,' replied Professor 
 Wray, 'between domestic life and professional pursuits, or 
 philanthropic work, it will take care of itself without providing 
 by law against women attempting to combine the two. As a 
 fact, in a well-ordered household the domestic functions of a 
 woman as wife, mother, and housekeeper, cannot exhaust her 
 powers, and therefore it means a sinful waste of material to 
 insist upon her doing this or nothing; by "nothing" you 
 understand I refer to the enormous amount of time (beyond 
 that which nature demands in the form of recreation) wasted 
 by the upper classes in amusement, novel-reading, visiting, 
 dancing, eating, dressing, sleeping; by the lower in gossip, or 
 mere dawdling.' 
 
 ' I can only say for my part,' replied Major Knagge, ' that 
 I should be very sorry to marry a lady-doctor, or lawyer, or 
 merchant, or even authoress, to be known as Mrs. So-and-so's 
 husband, aud to have one's dinner and er one's home 
 comforts waiting on the interests of her patients, or her clients, 
 or her customers, or her last new book. What a man seeks in 
 a wife,' he continued, waxing eloquent with his subject, 'is 
 some one who will er sit gracefully at the head of his table, 
 entertain his guests, who will, in short, make a home where he 
 may find, find er repose after his struggles with the world, 
 calm after a tempest. Her, duty is to refresh the heart of 
 man, not to share his toil and troubles, or meddle with his 
 affairs ; yoa do not love a woman any the better for being 
 learned or strong-minded.' 
 
 ' You have given us a very full exposition of a woman's 
 vocation viewed from one standpoint,' said the Professor, 
 quietly, ' but how about a man's duty ? Is not her happiness 
 in the married relation as important a consideration as his? 
 She has as many difficulties to battle with, as many wounds to 
 be bound up as he. It is not fair that the wife should be 
 expected to do all the consoling ; their attitude towards each 
 other should be one of mutual respect, mutual forbearance, 
 mutual tenderness; to bear one another's burdens should be
 
 WOMAN'S 'SPHERE.' 161 
 
 the rule of their life if it is to be a happy one. Indeed, I think 
 the majority of men are much to blame here; they expect 
 their wives to be always ready in season and out of season to 
 cheer them and help them to support the weight of their 
 particular grievances, but rarely are they prepared to take 
 their fair share of domestic cares and anxieties. You de- 
 clare, and I have heard others do the same, that you would on 
 no account be the husband of a lady-doctor, or lawyer, or even 
 writer for the press, but I have seen something of the home- 
 life of authoresses, professional women, or those engaged in 
 philanthropic work, and I can honestly say I never saw better 
 ordered houses or happier family circles anywhere ; indeed, I 
 believe if we could get at the opinions of those husbands whose 
 wives have some aims, interests, and activities beyond their 
 homes, we should find each one congratulating himself upon 
 his exceptional good fortune. A man with a wife who is a 
 purely receptive being, a mere reflection of himself, loses all 
 the benefit of intellectual friction ; for intercourse, to be im- 
 proving, must be between two active minds, not between an 
 active and a passive.' 
 
 ' I do not doubt,' said Mr. Silverton, ' that the higher the 
 aim of a woman's existence, the more likely is she to perform 
 the most trivial domestic duties conscientiously. In the first 
 place she brings more intelligence to bear upon them, while 
 the principle of thoroughness necessary for all who would 
 succeed in any profession is naturally carried into the routine 
 of every- day life.' 
 
 ' It is extraordinary to me,' exclaimed Major Knagge, with 
 some impatience, 'that sensible men can be found to support 
 women in their revolt against nature, for this hankering after 
 the pursuits of men is nothing more nor less. It is nature 
 which has er created women's disabilities ; both the pre and 
 post natal functions of motherhood are quite enough argument 
 against admitting women to men's professions, to to offices 
 of State or whatever it is they want. " The trial must be 
 postponed to-day, for Mrs. A., the forewoman of the jury, is
 
 162 MEN, WOMEX, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 feeling faint, and the consequences might be serious if she were 
 compelled to remain " ; or " the er proceedings of the court 
 must be suspended for a time, as the infant of Mrs. R., the 
 leading counsel for the defence, requires her attention." That 
 is the er sort of thing we should be encountering at every 
 turn. Why, why the business of the world would never 
 go on.' 
 
 ' Ridicule is not argument,' said Professor Wray, ' and 
 satire is a weapon which needs very careful handling, or it will 
 sooner or later prove fatal to the one who wields it.' 
 
 ' And as you said just now,' added Mr. Silverton, ' we have 
 certainly no right to decree that women shall or shall not 
 undertake wider responsibilities than were considered fitting 
 for her in the past. The compatibility or incompatibility of 
 any particular duties should be left to the decision of the 
 women concerned ; their judgment in the matter is likely to be 
 at least as correct as any arrived at by the amalgamated wits 
 of our sex. No true woman ignores the claims of motherhood, 
 and because they are already in a measure handicapped in the 
 race of life is a curious reason to give for not removing a 3 far 
 as possible all difficulties from their path. 1 
 
 ' Besides,' said the Professor, ' a great many women either 
 from chance or choice are not mothers, and I think it most 
 probable that as society advances motherhood will be less and 
 less of a tax upon women's physical resources. For one thing, 
 pressure of population, as Herbert Spencer* points out, must 
 disappear with all its attendant evils, since the particular kind 
 of evolution which man is destined hereafter to undergo must 
 cause a decline in his powers of reproduction ; for another, 
 when the rule of common-sense now gaining ground with regard 
 to women's physical development has had time to work, the 
 bearing of children ought to be as free from danger and long 
 disability as it is now amongst savage tribes who lead more 
 natural, healthy lives.' 
 
 * Principles of Biology.
 
 WOMAN'S 'SPHERE.' 163i 
 
 ' The duties of maternity are not considered a bar to the 
 chief office of State being held by a woman,' said Mr. Silverton. 
 ' Our Queen has shirked none of her duties as a sovereign, and 
 in no reign have they on the whole, perhaps, been performed 
 so successfully. The same may be said of her home duties as 
 of public affairs, and there is no reason, so far as I can see, 
 why other women should not fill other posts of less importance 
 with equal success. Men are as subject to being laid aside by 
 temporary indisposition as women, and yet even in cases where > 
 this has been perhaps brought about by their own imprudence, 
 it has never been thought a motive for excluding them from 
 political life or public offices. The very fact that during 
 nearly half a woman's life she is no more capable of bearing 
 children than a man, ought, I think, to be proof enough that 
 she has other duties in the world besides those of mother-., 
 hood.' 
 
 ' And yet there have been men,' said Professor Wray, ' who 
 have not blushed to ask what business a woman no longer 
 young has in the world ; it is only going a step further. To 
 me, there is nothing more insulting, more disrespectful to a 
 being of equal mental and moral attributes with our- 
 selves, and indeed more refinement and delicacy of feeling, 
 than this looking upon a mere animal function as her chief 
 vocation ; and yet many worthy people, from force of habit I 
 suppose, still do so. I recollect hearing an eminent man in 
 the course of a lecture some years since addressing his audience 
 thus : " That boy may be a Wellington, a Shakespeare, a 
 Bacon, a Cromwell ; that fair-haired girl may be not a Joan 
 of Arc, a Vittoria Colonna, a Sappho, a Roland but she may 
 be the future mother of," &c., &c. Her object in life was not to: 
 develop all her faculties that she might use them for the benefit 
 of humanity, but to marry as soon as possible, and pray to be 
 the mother of heroes.'
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 ' AMONG unequals what society? 
 . . . Of fellowship I speak.' 
 
 Paradise Lost. 
 
 ' Either sex alone 
 
 Is half itself, and in true marriage lies 
 Nor equal nor unequal : each fulfils 
 Defect in each, and always thought in thought, 
 Purpose in purpose, will in will they grow 
 The single pure and perfect animal 
 The two-cell'd heart, beating with one full stroke.' 
 
 TENNYSON, The Princess. 
 
 ' Wherever man and wife are really happy together it is by ignoring 
 and despising, not by asserting the subordination of women to men which 
 they hold in theory. ' 
 
 CHARLES KINGSLEY to JOHN STUABT MILL, Life, vol. ii., p. 330. 
 
 ' No reason then hath man to slight or flout her, who could not live 
 in Paradise without her. The blessing was bestowed for the woman's 
 sake, but the law given to the man ; to him was forbidden the fruit of that 
 unhappy tree, which set all posterities teeth on edge ; not to the woman 
 who was not then so much as created .... If strength alone must 
 give the pre-eminence, let men give place to their horses, confess their 
 oxen their masters, and pay homage to elephants. ' Female Pre-eminence, 
 or the Dignity of that Sex above the Male. An Ingenious Discourse. 
 Written originally in Latin by Henry Cornelius Agrippa. Done into 
 English with Additional Advantages by H. C. 1670. 
 
 ' C'est done en toute sympathie, mon cher Dumas, que je vous felicite 
 d'etre venu courageusement grossir le nombre de ceux qui comme moi 
 pensaient et pensent que le jour ou la femme sera legalement et legislative- 
 ment 1'egale de l'homme, ce jour la sera un grand jour pour 1'humanite, 
 sera un grand jour pour la civilisation.' EMILE DE GIRABDIN to ALEXANDBE 
 DUMAS on the publication of Les Femmes qui tuent, et les Femmes qui 
 votent. 
 
 ' Cancel from your minds every idea of superiority over woman. You 
 have none whatsoever.' 
 
 MAZZIHI, On the Duties of Man.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE EQUALITY OP THE SEXES. 
 
 'THE letter-bag, may it please your laziness, has just arrived,' 
 said Mrs. Silverton, as re-entering the dining-room the following 
 morning she found her husband, long after every one else had 
 finished breakfast, still lingering over his last cup of coffee and 
 his Plymouth and Exeter Gazette (the London papers not 
 arriving until afternoon) ; ' they say there has been some slight 
 accident on the line which delayed the mail, I am glad you will 
 not have to go without your letters. Had you not better give 
 me mine and Mrs. Knagge's, and distribute the rest after you 
 have started ; for the waggonette is at the door and if you 
 mean to get to the Cresswell's by luncheon-time, you really 
 ought not to loiter 1 ' 
 
 ' Bless my heart ! why it is actually half-past ten,' exclaimed 
 Mr. Silverton, looking at his watch, ' where are the rest of the 
 party ? ' 
 
 ' I think I had better go and see ; ' and Mrs. Silverton was 
 turning away, when her husband stopped her. 
 
 ' Now this is really too bad, Nellie,' he grumbled. ' Do you 
 really mean to say that you are going to stay at home ; you 
 know I hate to go anywhere without you. I don't see why you 
 shouldn't come with us ? ' 
 
 ' I must really not allow myself to be tempted, dear,' she 
 answered, stooping to kiss the pucker of discontent on his brow, 
 by the aid of which he contrived to look alarmingly stern, ' let go 
 my hand and finish your coffee like a good boy, and I will give you 
 three full, true, and unanswerable reasons for my decision ; in 
 the first place, even though you are driving, the waggonette 
 cannot be persuaded to take us all ; in the second, poor Mrs. 
 Knagge has a dreadful cold, and I must stay to look after her
 
 168 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 don't make such a face ; and thirdly, though Mrs. Cresswell 
 asked us all, the party will be quite large enough.' 
 
 ' Well, if it must be so it must, I suppose,' said Mr. 
 Silverton rising and throwing his table-napkin with some 
 impatience upon the seat he has just quitted, ' I shall get back 
 as soon as possible though. Ah !' as they went into the hall, 
 ' I see Miss Acton and Professor Wray are there, and Major 
 Knagge is already on the box. Here, Watson, put this extra 
 rug under the seat. Good-bye, darling, take care of yourself 
 as well as of Mrs. Knagge there is no chance of our wanting 
 the top on I think 1 ?' 
 
 ' Oh, no, it is such a lovely day, and see how high the 
 glass is. Here comes auntie, looking quite radiant. Now, 
 Madeline,' she continued, as the two ladies, followed Ly Sir 
 Henry and Professor Wray, got into the carriage, ' you must 
 make the best use of those bright eyes of yours, dear, for 
 I do not think there is a lovelier drive in the kingdom than 
 that between Ilfracombe and Barnstaple ; and so, if Professor 
 Wray and my argumentative brother begin to talk of "shoes, 
 and ships, and sealing-wax, and cabbages, and kings," be sure 
 you recall them to a sense of duty by exclaiming, " Do you 
 admire the view?" Good-bye!' and in another moment the 
 impatient horses had their way, and were dashing down the 
 drive, only just restrained by their master's strong arm and 
 familiar voice. 
 
 ' You seem to have been more fortunate than we are as 
 regards the interest of your despatches,' said Sir Henry, by-and- 
 by, as Professor Wray at length put down the magazine he 
 had been reading. 
 
 ' It is a copy of the Englishwoman's Review,' was the reply, 
 ' not a new number, but interesting to me, as there is an article 
 in it which I had not seen before, written by a lady I know. 
 It is founded on three old tracts, published early in the last 
 century, which she came upon so she told me almost by 
 chance in the British Museum Library. It is a curious record 
 of one of the many controversies upon the claims of women to
 
 THE EQUALITY OP THE SEXE3. 169 
 
 educational, civil, and political privileges similar to those en- 
 joyed by men, which have taken place at intervals ever since 
 the days when Plato in his Republic argued that in the adminis- 
 tration of a State neither women as women, nor men as men, 
 have any special function, the gifts of nature being equally 
 distributed (Rep, 5); and Aristophanes, in his Ecclesiagusce, 
 levelled his keenest satire at women who aspired to a share in 
 the Government.' 
 
 ' I see,' said Sir Henry, who had just taken up the maga- 
 zine and was glancing at the article in question, ' that the 
 authoress of the first tract, /Sophia, a Woman of Quality, plants 
 her feet firmly at once upon the ground she means to occupy ; 
 and after the uncompromising premise, " Woman not Inferior 
 to Man," proceeds to give her pamphlet the further title of 
 " A Short and Modest Vindication of the Rights of the Fair Sex." 
 The two qualities claimed, however, so far as I can judge from 
 a hasty glance, appear rather conspicuous by their absence.' 
 
 ' I have seen the original tracts,' said Madeline ; ' I looked 
 them up in the British Museum after reading that article, and 
 it struck me that Sophia, uncomplimentary though she is, has 
 the advantage in politeness and certainly in argument over her 
 antagonist, the author of " Man's Natural Right to Sovereign 
 Authority," who (on the lucus a non lucendo principle, I suppose-,) 
 signs himself "A Gentleman."' 
 
 ' Sophia's claim to complete equality of course meets with 
 your entire sympathy ] ' said Sir Henry. 
 
 ' How can it do otherwise 1 ' replied Madeline ; ' I do not 
 know that there is much to be gained by asserting a fact that 
 in course of time must prove itself, but meanwhile I cannot 
 help feeling that those who hold women as some do still to 
 be mentally, morally, and physically inferior to men are wanting 
 as much in judgment as in justice. I have seen so much of 
 the sad way in which women, who are forced to struggle with 
 the world, have had their self-respect lowered, their energies 
 blighted, their wages diminished, by the assumption, without 
 proof, of their necessary inferiority.'
 
 170 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 ' And yet the notion is a very generally received one.' 
 
 ' It takes most people a long time,' replied Madeline, ' to 
 grow up to a height that will enable them to see over the walls 
 of selfishness, superstition, and prejudice by which they are 
 hemmed in. We are horrified to hear of the youth of a savage 
 tribe being so imbued from infancy with the idea of a woman's 
 inferiority, that as soon as he is old enough he gives practical 
 expression to his belief by chastising his aged mother ; we 
 think ourselves, and no do\ibt we are, far ahead of these 
 Hottentots in civilisation, but I have myself seen parents treat 
 it as a mark of charming precocity when their son and heir, 
 albeit the youngest and not two years old, has taken, and been 
 allowed to take, some one or other of his little sisters' treasures, 
 saying, "la boy," evidently thinking this quite reason enough 
 for retaining, in spite of them, whatever he has a fancy for. 
 I have known eldest sons, not by any means exceptionally 
 selfish men, who have thought themselves very hardly treated 
 that not only their younger brothers but even their sisters 
 have received an equal share of unentailed property with them- 
 selves.' 
 
 ' Perverted ideas of justice,' said Professor Wray, 'are the 
 natural outcome of our laws of primogeniture, and of many 
 others which preach only too distinctly the doctrine of woman's 
 inferiority, and which are themselves, no doubt, a survival of 
 notions that have come to us from the East, where to this day 
 women are treated as domestic animals with no soul, no 
 conscience, no intellect. To judge of the Oriental conceptions 
 of womanhood it is sufficient to note a few of their wise sayings, 
 such as " A man of straw is worth a woman of gold," or the 
 proverb of Vishnu, " A woman's virtue is founded on a modest 
 countenance, precise behaviour, and a deficiency of suitors." 1 
 
 1 But do you not think,' asked Sir Henry, ' that much is due 
 to the influence upon men's minds of the Biblical story of the 
 Creation, that Eve was formed from a bone taken from Adam's 
 side, and St. Paul's argument for woman's subordinate place in 
 nature that Adam was first formed, then Eve 1 '
 
 THE EQUALITY OF THE SEXES. 171 
 
 ' Very likely, but to be logical he might with equal force 
 have said, " I. suffer not a man to usurp authority over the 
 beasts, for the beasts were first formed and then Adam.'" 
 
 ' But it is not so easy, I think,' said Miss Wynter ' to argue 
 away the fact to which St. Paul also calls attention, that Adam 
 was not deceived but the woman.' 
 
 ' Which only makes him the more guilty, I think,' said 
 Madeline, ' since in that case he sinned with his eyes open.' 
 
 'But consider the strength of his temptation,' said Sir 
 Henry. 
 
 ' Weakness is, I suppose, a legitimate excuse,' was the 
 reply, ' but it can scarcely be used in support of a claim to 
 superiority.' 
 
 ' Ludovico Domenichi,' said Professor Wray, 'in his Dialogue 
 on the Nobleness of Women, goes so far as to maintain that Eve 
 did not sin at all, because when Adam received the command 
 she was not even created, and therefore it is literally " in Adam 
 all sin." ' 
 
 ' I remember,' said Madeline, ' hearing of an old woman 
 who was very indignant at the leading place Adam is given in 
 the story of the Creation, " And as for his naming of all 
 them animals," she said, " I don't see much in that ; why, I 
 should have called a pig a pig myself." ' 
 
 ' I see,' said Sir Henry presently, as he glanced at the 
 magazine in his hand, ' that Sophia's antagonist has a new 
 and ingenious theory of the Creation by way of proving his own 
 the nobler sex, " Man was formed," it seems, " a good, noble, 
 and intelligent creature to lord it over this vast universe," so 
 that he might have something in common with the other 
 creatures, however, he was made of the dust of the ground, 
 " but his Maker finding that alloy too strong for the perfection 
 He designed to give him, extracted from the rest of his body 
 whatever He found of mean, imperfect, and favouring too much 
 of the animal, and confined it to a single rib, which had 
 undoubtedly been annihilated but for the wisdom of this 
 all-powerful Contriver, which is capable of assigning a use to
 
 172 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 the most useless things." So woman, " this pretty expletive of 
 nature," as he calls her, was endowed with a fair exterior, but 
 so many are her frailties and follies that he is convinced 
 
 " Heaven took man sleeping when He woman made, 
 Had he been waking he had ne'er consented," 
 
 this is rather too bad,' continued Sir Henry, ' almost as uncom- 
 plimentary as the Persian theory.' 
 
 ' What is that ] ' asked Madeline. 
 
 ' They say that Adam being desirous of a companion in his 
 solitude, an angel was sent with instructions to make a woman, 
 as we read in the Biblical version, out of the man's rib ; after 
 having extracted the rib he became tired with his exertions, 
 and lying down under a tree fell fast asleep. Presently a 
 monkey espied him, and creeping up seized the rib and was 
 hurrying off with it when the angel awoke and pursued him. 
 The monkey climbed a tree and the angel had only just time to 
 catch hold of his tail, one pulled, and the other pulled, and 
 finally the monkey escaped carrying off the rib but leaving his 
 tail in exchange ; whereupon the angel thought the best thing 
 to be done was to utilise his prize, and so woman was formed 
 after all, not from the man's rib, but from a monkey's tail, 
 " hence," says the legend, " her propensity for mischief." ' 
 
 ' Do you believe then,' asked Madeline, laughing, ' that 
 women are the chief originators of all the trouble in the 
 world 1 ' 
 
 1 Not exactly, but of most of the heartburnings, though I 
 grant, involuntarily, and if I do agree with a certain learned 
 judge that a woman is at the bottom of every quarrel, I endorse 
 much more heartily the reply that there is nothing else in the 
 world so well worth quarrelling about. I am too lazy to be 
 any other than a peace-lover except under very strong pro- 
 vocation, but with such a motive I can well believe that even 
 I might be roused,' and Sir Henry gave a half-comical, half- 
 questioning glance from Madeline to Professor Wray who has 
 just picked up a letter she had dropped, and was the recipient
 
 THE EQUALITY OF THE SEXES. 173 
 
 of a smile by way of thanks, which Sir Henry would have done 
 something much more difficult to win, neither of them, how- 
 ever, appeared conscious of any possible personal application of 
 his words.' 
 
 ' One of the rabbinical legends/ said Professor Wray, 'asserts, 
 as perhaps you know, that the gentle Eve had a predecessor, 
 named Lilith, who gave Adam so much trouble with her 
 puzzling questions and decided views that he banished her 
 from Paradise for venturing to maintain her own individuality, 
 a fault for which the historians were not content with expelling 
 her, but furthermore declared her to have been handed over to 
 the keeping of that personage whom Oliver Wendell Holmes 
 politely describes as " the leader of the lower house." In the 
 early days of barbarism, when physical strength was every- 
 thing, and polygamy was universally recognised, no punishment 
 was considered too great, I suppose, for a woman who dared to 
 claim equality with man, or even ventured to think for herself. 
 Solomon, for instance, with his seven hundred and odd wives 
 was not likely to have a very thorough knowledge, or a very 
 exalted idea of womankind, or to believe in their having any 
 individual character or natural rights ; in fact, I think you will 
 generally find that although he praises a virtuous woman, 
 he takes care to let it be understood that she is an extreme 
 rarity. Even Turtullian * who, as a Christian, might have 
 been expected to hold gentler views, declares that a woman 
 ought always to be bathed in tears for having lost the 
 human race, and for having thus indirectly caused the death of 
 Christ.' 
 
 4 But if,' asked Miss Wynter, ' it is not meant that woman 
 is to be under the authority of man, what is the intention of 
 such words as those addressed to Eve, " He shall rule over 
 thee " 1 ' 
 
 ' This utterance, so often interpreted a curse, may much 
 more reasonably be held simply as an announcement of what 
 should happen, viz., that the stronger should rule the weaker, 
 De Cultu Faminarum.
 
 174 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 a state of things which existed as we know for ages to tha 
 injury of both oppressor and oppressed.' 
 
 'And yet,' said Miss Wynter, 'St. Paul and St. Peter also 
 enjoin obedience upon wives.' 
 
 ' True ; but counsels are not commands. St. Peter, in 
 addressing Christian women, was naturally anxious that they 
 should give no handle to their enemies ; and that the heathen 
 husbands, as he said, might be won by the conversation of their 
 wives. The apostles did not aim at being social as well as 
 religious reformers ; the aim of their teaching was to spread the 
 knowledge of Christianity, and if they had tried to abolish 
 ancient customs and prejudices, to do away with slavery or the 
 subjection of women, they would in those half- civilised times 
 and countries, have obtained no chance of a hearing.' 
 
 'I never could understand,' said Madeline, 'why obedience 
 to a husband, supposing that to be binding, should involve 
 obedience to every other woman's husband, why the advice 
 given to women of those days should be considered suitable 
 for all times.' 
 
 ' People seem unable to use such common-sense as they 
 possess in these matters,' said Professor Wray, 'they con- 
 sequently fail to recognise that these are not theological 
 questions at all, and if they were, there is nothing in the 
 teaching of Him they follow giving authority to the one sex 
 to enforce submission upon the other. There was a curious 
 tradition current in early times, that Christ on being asked 
 once when the Kingdom of God should come, replied, " When 
 the male shall be as the female, and the female as the male " ; 
 that is to say, that although nature has marked out certain 
 specific duties for men and for women, the more civilised the 
 world becomes the more common territory do they find on 
 which to meet ; with whomsoever the saying originated never 
 was there a truer prophecy uttered, for as men and women 
 become more and more real companions, in his greater refine- 
 ment and gentleness will be found the guarantee for her 
 womanliness, in her greater strength, force of character, and
 
 THE EQUALITY OP THE SEXES. 175 
 
 higher intellectual development, will be found the guarantee 
 for his manliness. It is a great pity that while nature, as 
 Darwin shows us, is always striving to equalise the sexes by 
 making sons for the most part turn after their mothers, 
 daughters after their fathers, society and tradition do their best 
 to widen the difference and lessen the real sympathy between 
 them by the cultivation of diverse qualities, as if women did not 
 need enterprise, courage, firmness, as much as men, as though 
 men could afford to dispense with delicacy, tenderness, purity, 
 unselfishness, patience, any more than women. There is no 
 special class of masculine or feminine virtues as man, in his 
 vanity has assumed, taking for himself courage, ambition, 
 dignity; imposing upon her resignation, submission, silence, 
 self-sacrifice ; saying practically, " I am a man, it is for me to 
 create my own destiny, you are a woman, you must therefore 
 take uncomplainingly whatever is given to you " ; and yet both 
 have the same wants, the same passions, the same sensitiveness 
 to praise or blame, they both live the same chequered life of 
 pain and pleasure, good and ill-repute, therefore all that is 
 allowed to men shoxild surely be equally granted to women ; 
 whatever is justly forbidden to women should be equally 
 denied to man, for good and evil are of no sex, what is virtue 
 in the one is virtue in the other, what is vice in the one is vice 
 in the other ; to make self-abnegation on the one side a duty, 
 on the other to claim it as a right, is utterly false morality, 
 especially when imposed by those who profit by it.' 
 
 ' And yet,' said Madeline, 'how common it is to find people, 
 who although they may not put their ideas into so many words, 
 are yet very evidently of Rousseau's opinion that the quality of 
 all others estimable in a woman is gentleness, a submissive and 
 yielding spirit, that having without question to obey a being so 
 imperfect as man, she may learn to suffer injustice and to bear 
 wrongs without protest or complaint.' 
 
 'Fortunately for themselves and for us too,' said Sir Henry, 
 laughing, ' there is not much fear of the majority of women 
 erring on the side of excessive meekness, your Griselda is not
 
 176 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 a common type in the present day, I think there are exceptions, of 
 course, though,' he added, hastily, 'and no doubt the idea of in- 
 feriority carried to extremes has drawn after it many absur- 
 dities; for instance, formerly a census in Japan took in only 
 men, leaving out women and children as too unimportant for 
 numeration ; the ridiculous assumption that women have no 
 soul, or at least, that they can only attain an inferior paradise 
 is generally supposed to be a product of Eastern barbarism. 
 But I remember once coming upon a book in which the writer, 
 commenting on that text in the Revelations which says, " There 
 was silence in heaven for the space of half an hour," remarks 
 that you need little further proof of there being no woman 
 there, and since charity forbids him to think, he says, that the 
 whole sex has gone to a worse place, it follows that they are 
 not immortal, happily for them, he considers, since in this case 
 they will not have to account for all the noise and disturbance 
 they have caused in the world/ 
 
 ' These sly hits at women for their supposed love of talking,' 
 said Professor Wray, ' are very common both in ancient and 
 modern literature, even amongst the legends of the Creation 
 there is one which declares that the name of Eve comes from a 
 word signifying "to talk," because very soon after life had been 
 breathed into her, there fell from heaven twelve baskets full of 
 words, and of these, being quicker than Adam, she succeeded in 
 securing nine baskets, leaving only three for him.' 
 
 ' If there is one thing,' said Madeline, ' which provokes me 
 more than another, it is to hear women spoken of in that way 
 as a class, and summarily disposed of in some such sweeping 
 judgment as " women must talk, they cannot help it, or women 
 have no humour though they often possess wit, or you cannot 
 argue with a woman, she never reasons, she is only guided by 
 her feelings," just as if human I beg your pardon, woman 
 nature were a thing to be treated in the aggregate with 
 scientific certainty, as if nature, everywhere so varied in design, 
 so rich in resource, so lavish of fresh forms, considered women 
 of such infinitely small importance, that in their case to save
 
 THE EQUALITY OF THE SEXES. 177 
 
 trouble one mould was made to serve for the whole sex, just 
 as if 1,600,000 or more of human beings did not differ infinitely 
 from one another in tastes, qualities, and powers ; it seems 
 to me this class of reasoning is no better than that of 
 Voltaire's famous traveller who, happening to have a drunken 
 landlord and a red-haired landlady at the first inn at which he 
 stopped in Alsace, wrote down in his note-book, " all the men 
 of Alsace drunkards, all the women red-haired." ' 
 
 ' People who argue in this homogeneous fashion,' said Pro- 
 fessor Wray, 'show that their logical and intellectual faculties 
 are only imperfectly developed, that their minds are, in fact, in 
 the primitive condition which cannot think of human beings 
 as individuals, but only in tribes ; it does not require an ex- 
 ceptional intelligence one would think to discover that there is 
 as much difference between woman and woman as between man 
 and man, or between two individuals of either sex, and it is quite 
 possible to see this and yet to recognise that there are char- 
 acteristic differences which make the two sexes absolutely related 
 to and dependent on one another; in fact, we want no better plea 
 to establish, not identity of resemblance, of faculty, of function, 
 but perfect equality, since each must serve as the complement of 
 the other, if the two imperfect units are ever to make one har- 
 monious whole. I believe it to be the absence of women's counsel 
 and vote which has rendered our laws less just and humane than 
 with their co-operation would have been the case, for in all things 
 the best wisdom of the man without the woman, of the woman 
 without the man, is incomplete; the two sexes being, as Benjamin 
 Franklin aptly says, just " the two halves of a pair of scissors," 
 perfectly effective when well-conditioned and working har- 
 moniously together, but apart, or not properly united, of little 
 value.' 
 
 ' I remember,' said Sir Henry, ' seeing it somewhere, I think 
 in the Pall Mall Gazette, solemnly asserted that the best women 
 really like to be ruled and guided instead of having to use 
 their own judgment in matters of importance, but I do not 
 know that I am prepared to endorse this statement.' 
 
 N
 
 178 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 ' It would not have been for the advantage of the world,' 
 said Professor Wray, ' if the best and wisest women in every 
 generation had assumed that their unalterable rdle was to 
 be always the humble followers and never the guides and 
 advisers of men, many of whom must necessarily be inferior in 
 ability.' 
 
 ' I think/ said Madeline, ' it can only be ignorance of the 
 real questions at issue which makes any one think that to claim 
 justice and equality for women means antagonism to the rights 
 of men, as if there could be any hostility in desiring to co- 
 operate more fully with them in their efforts for the world's 
 improvement. How is it that people cannot, or will not, see 
 that the interests of men and women are identical, that a 
 woman's place is not to lead the way as a superior, nor like an 
 inferior to hear at every few steps the command " to heel," but 
 to walk side by side with man as his friend and true helper, to 
 receive equal chances, equal consideration, but no more, being 
 on the whole neither better nor worse than he is, neither a 
 wingless angel nor an unreasoning doll 1 ! There is only one 
 pathway, I think,' she added, more seriously, ' in which women 
 could not, and ought not, to walk side by side with men, and 
 that is the evil one of war.' 
 
 ' It is very hard though,' said Sir Henry, 'for any one with a 
 grain of imagination or poetry in his nature to give up the 
 beautiful idea of woman as a graceful, clinging plant, which 
 takes its support from, but gives all its attraction to the strong 
 rough stem round which it twines. An independent, self- 
 reliant woman deprives one of all the pleasure of helping and 
 supporting her.' 
 
 ' These ideas of the mutual relation of the sexes,' said Pro- 
 fessor Wray, ' are very pretty from a poetical point of view no 
 doubt, but utterly false and unpractical when we come to the 
 hard facts of every-day life.' 
 
 ' No one,' said Madeline, ' can afford to be entirely inde- 
 pendent, but the other extreme of blind reliance upon the judg- 
 ment and utterly leaning upon the will of another is enough
 
 THE EQUALITY OP THE SEXES: 17? 
 
 to enfeeble any character; I am quite sure your theory has, in 
 this way, been the source of much mischief to women, and I do 
 not know that men either are the better for it ; I fancy there is 
 perhaps in one sense more truth in the metaphor than its 
 admirers suppose, for however fair to the eye a parasite may 
 be, it is no omen of health for the tree to which it clings; 
 indeed, you will, as I have heard suggested, generally find the 
 said tree inclined to be feeble at the top. But another thing,' 
 she added, more seriously, ' I think if women are ever to take 
 their true place they must get over the idea of a quasi-sacred- 
 ness attaching to them as women rather than as human beings, 
 they must learn where they are to blame, and to prefer winning 
 by their conduct the honest respect and reverence which are 
 due to nobleness of aim and action, rather than the foolish 
 exaggerated flattery that sometimes takes their place, and 
 which, though perhaps a remnant of the picturesque days of 
 chivalry, has about it, I always think, a ring rather ef senti- 
 mentality than of true sentiment, else how could such in- 
 jurious laws have existed side by side with the most exalted 
 and romantic professions of devotion 1 ' 
 
 'The claim on the part of women,' said Professor Wray,. 'to 
 a certain amount of independence does not, so I take it, mean 
 an ignoring of all reliance upon others, it only asserts that the 
 dependence between man and woman should be mutual ; that 
 of equals, in fact, not of the tree and creeper type, but like the 
 two sides of an arch meeting in mutual support, bridging th 
 difficulties of life and keeping above them by each other's help. 
 If they are to join in one common effort towards all that is- 
 noblest and best, they must be equal in position, consideration, 
 education, opportunities, and freedom, to undertake whatever 
 work they feel themselves best fitted for. It is perfectly just 
 what you were saying,' he continued, addressing Madeline, 'that 
 the one-sided theory of dependence is bad alike for man and. 
 woman, if he only is treated as a substantive while she is 
 simply the adjective to agree with him in everything, the 
 tendency in the one case is, to crush all individuality and self-
 
 180 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 reliance, in the other to foster any natural tendency to tyranny 
 and selfishness.' 
 
 ' But,' said Sir Henry, with a twinkle in his eye that 
 belied his assumed seriousness, ' what does Shakespeare say, 
 <l An two ride of a horse one must ride behind." ' 
 
 ' You surely will not quote Shakespeare as an authority for 
 sentiments he puts into the mouth of Dogberry,' replied Made- 
 line. ' In a business partnership, for instance, as an example of 
 voluntary association, it is not thought to be necessary that the 
 one partner should have entire control, and the other be bound 
 to obey ; in fact, such a condition of things would be absurd, 
 and is it not equally so in marriage 1 Do you think,' she added, 
 smiling ' I know equine similes will appeal to your feelings 
 do you think if Mr. Silverton had attempted to drive tandem 
 with those two horses, that they would have been able to drag 
 us up hills almost as steep as the one we are coming to; or, 
 indeed, to have brought us here with so little effort ] I have 
 had no practical experience in the matter, but I am told that 
 the leader under such circumstances is apt to be troublesome.' 
 
 ' As usual you have the best of the argument,' replied Sir 
 Henry, good-humouredly, 'I see I must keep my heresies to my- 
 self, unless I wish to be severely handled.' 
 
 ' I sometimes think,' said Madeline, ' that you are really 
 more liberal in your views than you will acknowledge, that 
 you are inclined to agree with us now and then even when 
 arguing against us.' 
 
 ' Yes, and no ; I have not allowed myself to form any very 
 definite opinions, but this I will acknowledge, that you have 
 succeeded in overturning some of my half-defined ideas, and 
 given form to others. But I see,' he continued, as the carriage 
 stopped, ' tandem or otherwise, Jack and Stella will not have 
 to drag us up this hill of difficulty. What an incline, an angle 
 of something like 20 I should think. I shall be glad of ten 
 minutes' walk, one gets so stiff with sitting.' 
 
 'Are you sure your foot will allow you]' asked Madeline. 
 
 'Oh, yes, I hardly feel it at all now, thanks; if you will
 
 THE EQUALITY OF THE SEXES. 181 
 
 come too I will show what an apt pupil I am by adopting and ex- 
 emplifying in my mode of progression the true principle of equal- 
 ity, neither lagging behind nor attempting to lead the way.' 
 
 ' That is a great concession.' And Madeline, when Sir Henry 
 jumped down and held out his hand to help her, looked half 
 inclined to follow, but seeing that Miss Wynter did not move, 
 while Mr. Silverton leaned back and said, ' You will see the 
 view much better from where you are,' she decided to remain 
 in the carriage, a fact that Miss Wynter evidently appreciated, 
 and put down in the list of small personal attentions of which 
 she kept careful note, and whieh were already inducing her 
 to look with more favourable eyes upon the fresh type of 
 young womanhood revealed in the persons of her new niece 
 and Miss Acton. Theories, too, which at first had startled 
 and shocked many an old-fashioned prejudice, appeared to the 
 old lady less alarming upon a closer inspection ; and although 
 she still found it impossible to help protesting against notions 
 that seemed to possess elements of dangerous novelty, she yet 
 confessed to herself that if the times would not allow young 
 women to be what they were in her youth, those with whom 
 she was now brought into contact, with all their pronounced 
 ideas and love of discussing every sort of subject with men 
 upon equal terms, yet were in their intelligence, consideration for 
 others, and absence of self-consciousness, an improvement on 
 such girls of the period as she had met once or twice in 
 society. It was evident, at a glance, that in spite of dis- 
 parities of various kinds, the basis of a good understanding 
 was already formed between the older and the younger woman, 
 as the latter, in answer to her companion's questions, began to 
 tell her in a perfectly simple and unaffected manner some- 
 thing of her life in London, of her visits to the hospitals, of 
 her night-school, of the small musical entertainments got up 
 in some of the poorest districts in the East End, of winter 
 weekly dinners for little half-starved children, of summer ex- 
 peditions for the same into the country for a day or longer, 
 that the poor little mites for once in their life, at least, might
 
 182 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 leave the smoke, and crowds, and dirt, and noise, behind them, 
 and make acquaintance with what one of these small waifs 
 described as ' the yard where the rich people live.' 
 
 ' I must say I think it is very unselfish of you, my dear,' 
 said the old lady, presently, ' to leave that pretty place of 
 yours that Nellie showed me the photographs of, and to live 
 such a life as this in town.' 
 
 ' I am afraid there is no unselfishness in it,' and Madeline 
 smiled at the absurdity of the idea ; ' to tell the truth I like 
 the country very much for a month or two in the summer, 
 but I much prefer to live in London. For my own sake, I 
 mean it really,' she continued, in reply to Miss Wynter's in- 
 credulous look ; ' in the country one's life is not so full, one 
 seems more or less to vegetate, whereas, as Charles Kingsley 
 says, "A mere walk through the streets of London is an in- 
 tellectual tonic." To me men and women are much more in- 
 teresting than cabbages.' 
 
 ' But you have something better than cabbages at Brance- 
 peth.' 
 
 Madeline laughed ; ' I did not mean that literally, of 
 course, but I have let it to some very old friends of my 
 father's, who are glad to see us whenever we like to go down 
 for a few days or a week, and we have hampers and hampers 
 of fruit and flowers for ourselves and for the poor sick people ; 
 if we lived in the country these might be sent up, of course, to 
 the hospitals, but then we should lose all the pleasure of 
 distributing them. Yes, indeed, I must not take any credit 
 for unselfishness in my choice ; there is always something 
 stirring in town, the latest news, lectures, debates, concerts, 
 new books, new plays, the most thoughtful and intelligent 
 people always at hand if you choose to seek their society, to 
 say nothing of the British Museum Library where you can find 
 anything and everything you want in the shape of books ; you 
 see the limits of my philanthrophy.' 
 
 ' I see that you make no merit of giving up three parts of 
 your time to others, to to '
 
 THE EQUALITY OF THE SEXES. 183 
 
 ' To doing what I like, in fact,' replied Madeline, smiling. 
 'I cannot see that there is any very great amount of self- 
 renunciation involved in that ; no, indeed, I am no ascetic, not 
 even a Sister of Mercy, I go about everywhere, and read every- 
 thing and see every thing I can, and, in fact, enjoy life most 
 thoroughly, almost too well sometimes, I think, when there is 
 so much misery in the world still unrelieved.' 
 
 ' Your aunt accompanies you, I suppose, everywhere, my 
 dear.' 
 
 ' Oh, no ; ' and Madeline laughed, ' that would be rather 
 hard upon poor Aunt Helen ; I go about mostly alone, except 
 sometimes in the evening if there happens to be a party, or 
 a concert, or anything of that sort, she goes with me, partly 
 because she likes it, and partly well, I suppose, as a tribute 
 to certain conventionalisms which one cannot infringe with 
 impunity.' 
 
 ' And do you really go about here, there, and everywhere 
 alone ? ' asked the old lady incredulously, glancing with real 
 concern at Madeline's graceful figure and strikingly pretty 
 face. ' Is not that very imprudent 1 Why, in my young 
 days, when we were in town every year, I never stirred outside 
 the door without a footman or, at least, a maid accompanying 
 me.' 
 
 ' How dreadful ! ' exclaimed Madeline, naively. ' I do not 
 know what I should do if tied in that way; why, even my 
 little cousin, Katie, walks a mile through the London streets 
 to Queen's College School every day just as naturally as she 
 takes her breakfast. It seems to me part of a necessary 
 training in independence. I do not think that a brave, self- 
 respecting girl, or woman, need, in these days, fear to go any- 
 where alone, when you hear to the contrary, I cannot help 
 thinking that there must be a want of these qualities.' 
 
 Meantime, Sir Henry had joined the Professor and Major 
 Knagge, who were already walking up the hill. ' But how 
 are your ideas of equality,' he said, addressing the former, 
 ' likely to work in married life 1 you cannot very well have
 
 184 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 two heads to a house ; I know the theory is that husband and 
 wife are one, but are there not always likely to be cases in 
 which the question arises " Which one 1 " with whom, in any 
 debated point, is the final decision to rest 1 ' 
 
 ' Where there is true sympathy,' was the reply, ' where 
 both husband and wife are mutually respecting and prepared 
 to make concessions, there need, I am convinced, be no such 
 difficulty as you anticipate; the more nearly equal are the two 
 sexes in public freedom and educational advantages the nearer 
 do wedded love and fidelity promise to approach the highest 
 ideal, for no true marriage can exist unless the husband is 
 ready, practically, if not theoretically, to abandon those claims 
 to authority over his wife which no legal support, social usage, 
 or religious sanction can make any other than a relic of bar- 
 barism 
 
 " When mastery cometh, then sweet love anon 
 Flappeth his nimble wings and soon away is gone." 
 
 " One man ruleth another to his own hurt," if injustice does 
 harm to women it recoils upon men and injures them still 
 more. Absolutism in the State or the family, in short, is out of 
 date, and belongs to a lower state of society.' 
 
 ' You may be right,' replied Sir Henry, ' but still there is 
 no doubt that both the law and the Church support a man's 
 claim to the chief authority.' 
 
 ' No doubt, but none the less am I convinced of its 
 falseness ; society amongst the educated classes is practically in 
 these matters far in advance both of Church and State, but 
 the law follows suit, witness the recent Married Women's 
 Property Act ; and that the Church itself is forced in some 
 measure to keep up with the times is proved by the change 
 which has taken place in the attitude of the clergy with regard 
 to women's education since the days when Bishop Burnet 
 prevented the founding of a woman's college proposed by Mary 
 Astell, and regarded with some favour by Queen Anne. As 
 with science, clericalism began by ignoring its discoveries and
 
 THE EQUALITY OF THE SEXES. 185 
 
 persecuting its exponents, but now bends all its efforts towards 
 bringing its creeds into harmony with scientific teachings ; so, 
 since thoughtful men and women have begun to say, " if your 
 Bible and your Church preach the subordination of one half 
 of the human race to the other, I will have none of them," 
 religious teachers have wisely reconsidered their position, and 
 many of them not worthy to hold the candle to such men as 
 Kingsley, or Stanley, or Wilberforce, are yet beginning to 
 recognise that to preserve their own vitality it will be necessary 
 to enlarge their borders.' 
 
 ' You are severe.' 
 
 ' Not more so, I think, than the occasion warrants. If the 
 majority of bishops and Church dignitaries held far-sighted and 
 liberal-minded views upon this question, do you think the 
 Prayer-book version of the Marriage Service would have re- 
 mained to this day unrevised? Some portions of it, no doubt, 
 are very beautiful and poetical, while others may have been 
 less unsuited to the times in which it was compiled than to 
 the present day, but until we have an expurgated edition of 
 the Marriage Service, as we have of the early dramatists, it will 
 certainly sink more and more in the estimation of all right- 
 minded people who are not in the habit of thinking by proxy. 
 I had the unspeakable blessing for one short year,' continued 
 Professor Wray, in a low tone and with an altered manner 
 Major Knagge had stayed behind to take a piece of gravel 
 from his boot ' to share the deepest feelings and innermost 
 thoughts of one of the brightest, noblest, and tenderest women 
 that ever breathed, it was from her I learnt what many of 
 her sex feel about these matters.' Sir Henry was surprised, 
 he did not know that Professor Wray had ever married, but 
 his only reply was to lay his hand for a moment sym- 
 pathetically upon the arm of his companion, who presently 
 went on ' Do you think it can be either pleasant or profitable 
 to a modest, reserved woman, in whose eyes I believe marriage 
 almost invariably appears as a sort of ideal state, the union of 
 twin-souls, to hear it declared in the presence of a large con-
 
 186 MEN. WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 gregation that its chief end is " the procreation of children," 
 and by way of motive for her marrying that she does not 
 " possess the gift of continence," such language which has not 
 (in the woman's case at least) the merit of truth to palliate its 
 coarseness is a disgrace to our so-called " advanced " civili- 
 sation 1 ' 
 
 ' It never struck me in that light before,' replied Sir Henry, 
 ' but I believe we often from sheer indolence go on accepting, 
 or, at least, tolerating customs which our finer instincts shrink 
 from, simply and solely because we have become used to 
 them ; but really, as you say, that sort of thing is only fit to 
 be classed with some of the unseemly marriage customs of the 
 Middle Ages, such as our forefathers, I suppose, found amusing, 
 but which we should not for a moment tolerate.' 
 
 ' Then again,' said Professor Wray, ' it can hardly be a 
 source of pleasure to most women or to a man of small means, 
 whose loyalty and love for his bride do not take the form of 
 desiring a large family, to be told that his " wife shall be as a 
 fruitful vine, his children like the olive-branches," to be ex- 
 pected to pray, and the congregation with them that they may 
 " be fruitful and multiply." ' 
 
 ' These ideas, of course,' said Sir Henry, ' have come down 
 to us from patriarchal times, when to have no children was a 
 disgrace and humiliation ; but what do you mean by the 
 " falseness " of certain portions of the service ] ' 
 
 ' I mean that for centuries bridegroom after bridegroom 
 was made solemnly to endow his bride with all his worldly 
 goods, and that this was a mere parody of the real state of 
 affairs, the law reversing their position and instead of en- 
 riching her, making marriage literally a confiscation of every- 
 thing she possessed, all her goods, even to her very wedding- 
 presents, becoming absolutely the property of the husband 
 to do exactly what he pleased with it, the only thing she could 
 claim from him being a bare maintenance. It is only lately, 
 a,s you know, that married women have had any control over 
 their own money or earnings, and even now they have legally
 
 THE EQUALITY OF THE SEXES. 187 
 
 none over their own person or children. It says a great deal, 
 I think, for the high moral instinct of our women, something 
 perhaps also for their want of thought, that so few have 
 deliberately preferred a less binding contract to that of 
 marriage, seeing the disabilities it has entailed.' 
 
 ' I remember,' said Sir Henry, ' reading in some American 
 work upon slavery, that when on the emancipation of the 
 negroes in that country, men and women who had been living 
 together were urged to marry legally, the women, with tears 
 in their eyes protested, "We don't want to be married, be- 
 cause when we are married in church our husbands treat us 
 just as ole massa used to, and whip us, but when we ain't 
 married in church they knows if they does we go and lief 
 'em " ; while the men said, " They earns jest as much as we 
 does, and then goes and spends it without so much as sayin' by 
 yer leave now we want 'em married in the church caus' then 
 we makes 'em mind." ' 
 
 ' It did not take these poor darkies long,' said Professor 
 Wray, ' to learn the lesson of inequality and tyranny from 
 which they themselves had suffered, and which had been 
 equally under the protection of Church and State.' 
 
 ' I cannot er understand,' said Major Knagge, who had 
 joined them a few moments before, ' your being so indignant at 
 certain portions of the Marriage Service, while you er 
 advocate women's studying the classics and getting their minds 
 imbued with the filth of old civilisation, which is er quite 
 quite sufficient to destroy the modesty of any woman.' 
 
 ' Do you then think it impossible,' asked the Professor, ' to 
 learn Greek and Latin without assimilating the most unwhole- 
 some portions of Ovid, of Juvenal, or Aristophanes 1 You 
 might on the same principle prohibit German for fear of their 
 seeing and understanding some passages in Goethe, or French 
 lest they should come across certain works of Zola or De 
 Balzac, or Italian in like fear of Boccacio's Decameron.' 
 
 ' Oh, I am not er concerned to uphold those portions of 
 the Marriage Service which you condemn,' said Major Knagge,
 
 188 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 ingeniously shifting his ground ; l but I do think the ex- 
 hortation to a woman to obey and serve her husband, and 
 the exaction of a promise from her that she will do so, are as 
 much needed now as ever they were ; a woman will be er 
 either tyrant or slave, if you treat her as an equal she will 
 become your judge, there is no no middle course, if we wish 
 to be er free we must keep her in subjection; besides you 
 cannot do away with the fact that St. Paul says distinctly, and 
 without mincing the matter, "wives obey your husbands.'" 
 
 ' He also says with equal distinctness,' replied Professor 
 Wray, ' " slaves obey your masters," a text formerly much 
 quoted by the upholders of slavery ; but as I was saying the 
 other day, the apostles were no crusaders against existing 
 social institutions, they found certain men in a state of 
 bondage, they found all women in a state of subjection, and 
 framed their counsels accordingly.' 
 
 ' But subordination is natural to a woman,' said Major 
 Knagge, ' the fact of their having remained in subjection so 
 long proves it.' 
 
 ' It has been said many times,' was the reply, ' that slaves 
 had a natural gift for servitude ; but it stands to reason that 
 no human being not intended to govern him- or herself would 
 have been endowed with the power of self-government.' 
 
 ' To a certain extent I think you are right,' said Sir Henry ; 
 ' no man having the respect he ought to feel for his wife 
 would assume supreme rule over her in all the affairs of life ; 
 but at the same time it seems natural that the money getter, 
 the worker, should be considered the head of the household 
 and have a certain authority.' 
 
 ' I do not see the basis of this claim ; are there not two 
 workers in their common life, has she not the anxieties and 
 cares of housekeeping, the management and dispensing of their 
 common earnings ? you might just as well say that those who 
 administer the finances of a country are inferior to the tax- 
 paying community; but I see the carriage is waiting and we 
 shall have to adjourn our discussion.'
 
 THE EQUALITY OF THE SEXES. 189 
 
 'Why should we not walk the rest of the way?' said 
 Major Knagge, ' I know the house, it is just the other side of 
 Barnstaple, not more than two miles further ; if we go across 
 the fields we shall be there almost as soon as they will,' so 
 while Sir Henry whose ankle, though he made light of it, was 
 still apt to give in occasionally, resumed his seat in the 
 waggonette, his companions, leaving him to explain matters, 
 turned off into a cross-road and in a very few minutes had 
 taken up the dropped threads of their discourse, for the Major, 
 though dialectics were not his strong point, loved a controversy 
 none the less. ' As I said just now,' he resumed, ' the fact of 
 women having from er time immemorial remained in a 
 subordinate position is proof sufficient of their er I may say 
 inferiority.' 
 
 ' Rather I should think,' replied the Professor, ' of the 
 prejudice, superstition, and selfishness of men ; but thank 
 heaven we are growing year by year further away from those 
 early ages of human history when the perpetual struggle for 
 existence made it necessary that men, having to bear the brunt 
 of the battle against physical dangers and difficulties, necessarily 
 assumed a more important position. I believe that just as 
 the majority of people now ridicule the crude ideas of past 
 times in regard to women's education, so our grandchildren 
 will smile at the notions still generally current upon questions 
 dealing with women's civil and political status, their supposed 
 unalterably fixed " proper sphere." ' 
 
 ' All I know is,' replied Major Knagge, ' that if women go 
 on asserting themselves and claiming equality, they will lose 
 a great deal more than they gain, we show deference to to 
 their weakness, not to their strength.' 
 
 ' Deference to be worth anything,' said Professor Wray, 
 ' should be given, not out of pity but respect ; no doubt, 
 childish helplessness and dependence on the part of a woman 
 is very nattering to a man's pride, but she whose com- 
 panionship will raise and profit him is the woman who retains 
 to the fullest her self-reliauce and self-respect.'
 
 190 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 ' I do not think so,' replied the Major, ' and it seems to me 
 that women, instead of complaining of their subordinate 
 position, ought to be grateful for their safe and sheltered 
 position, for the care which saves them from a publicity and 
 er responsibility, that could only be hurtful to them- 
 selves and others. I maintain that a woman's chief strength, 
 if she only knew it, is in her weakness.' 
 
 ' I have heard that saying before, but I must beg leave to 
 doubt its truth ; if you look at facts do you find in any of our 
 large cities that an attractive girl because she is innocent and 
 ignorant, poor or friendless, is on that account the safer ? 
 Alas ! to the disgrace of our sex be it spoken No. Read in 
 any paper you choose to take up, the police reports of wives 
 dragged by the hair, kicked, beaten to death by those who 
 have vowed to love and cherish them, where is their " safe and 
 sheltered sphere ? " Is their legal and physical weakness 
 a source of strength 1 ' 
 
 ( If it comes to that, the wife is as often as not to blame.' 
 
 ' It may be so, I do not assert with some philogynists that 
 women are perfect beings or even of a higher type than men, 
 and I have no desire to see my own sex abdicate altogether in 
 their favour as they are supposed to have done in that amusing 
 but somewhat shallow book the Revolt of Man, that would be 
 quite as bad as the old regime, but I do maintain that in nothing 
 except physical strength, for which they have compensating 
 qualities, can women justly be considered inferior to men.' 
 
 ' It seems to me,' replied Major Knagge, ' that in this er 
 very fact lies the refutation of all and every claim on a 
 woman's part to equality, they never were, never are, and 
 never will be our equals in strength.' 
 
 ' Did you ever hear,' said Professor Wray, ' of the beautiful 
 Cymburga, wife of Duke Ernest of Austria, who could crack 
 hard nuts with her fingers, or drive in nails with her hand 
 as though it had been a hammer, or of the fair Brunhilda who 
 bound her offending lover with her girdle and slung him up to 
 a beam in the ceiling 1 '
 
 THE EQUALITY OF THE SEXES. 191 
 
 ' But these are exceptional cases ; the rule remains the 
 same that the weakest man is stronger than the strongest 
 woman.' 
 
 ' You remind me,' said the Professor, ' of a true story I once 
 heard about a well known lady-physician ; on one occasion 
 when she was quite a young girl, a gentleman and his wife 
 who were on intimate terms with the family were spending 
 the evening with her parents, when the conversation turned 
 upon the relative strength of men and women. Mr. X., a 
 small man, who was rather inclined to overrate the power of 
 his muscles, asserted that not only was the male sex as a 
 whole stronger, a proposition not to be questioned, but that 
 the weakest man was stronger than the strongest woman. 
 " That must be a mistake, for Elizabeth," exclaimed her 
 brothers, " is, when she chooses to exert her strength, more 
 than a match for either of us in wrestling or lifting, and can 
 carry either of us about with perfect ease." " She could not 
 lift me, no woman living could lift me," replied Mr. X., with 
 contemptuous incredulity. " Do try it," he continued, turning 
 to the girl and settling himself resolutely into his seat, with 
 feet pressed firmly on the floor. " Do your utmost. I defy 
 you to move me out of my chair ! " Thus challenged, Elizabeth 
 walked slowly across the room, lifted Mr. X. from his chair, 
 seated him on her left arm, and holding him firmly with the 
 other, walked three times around the room with the utmost 
 deliberation, and as she replaced him in his chair, quietly re- 
 marked amidst an outburst of irrepressible merriment in which 
 the visitors heartily joined, " You see Mr. X., that some women 
 are quite as strong as some men." ' 
 
 ' Such women are unnatural specimens of their sex,' said 
 Major Knagge, ' no one in their senses ever thinks of denying 
 that that the great body of the sex are infinitely our in- 
 feriors in physical strength.' 
 
 ' And as a rule in nervous organization they are as in- 
 finitely our superiors ; if men have more capacity for exertion, 
 women possess more endurance ; an athlete in perfect training
 
 192 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 could scarcely bear sitting up night after night for the best 
 part of a week with a refractory patient, as many a woman has 
 done ; the same equality in difference of supplemental qualities 
 runs all through the mental and physical nature of the two 
 sexes. It strikes me as a curious instance of men's injustice, 
 that those who are most emphatic in their assertions of 
 women's inherent feebleness are the very ones to put 
 difficulties in their path towards self-development ; they bind 
 up a healthy limb until it has nearly withered, and then say 
 nature has made it weak and helpless; while approving of 
 athletic sports and muscular exercises for boys they protest 
 against giving girls the same chance of physical development. 
 But those men who base their claim to superiority upon mere 
 strength of muscle, are condemning the best laws of the most 
 civilised countries, whose object is to protect the weak and 
 restrain the powerful, to recognise as their vital principle the 
 claim of right, irrespective of might.' 
 
 ' But however we may turn and twist er the facts of 
 the case, I do not see how we are to get over the simple truth 
 that muscle always has and always will rule in the end.' 
 
 ' Indeed ; and what horse-power would be your standard of 
 influence ? If you come to that, women engaged in hard or 
 outdoor labour develop greater physical strength than that of 
 most studious men ; " the Northumbrian women," so says 
 one of the Reports of the Agricultural Commission, " lift huge 
 heavy sacks that it would puzzle many a man to move, and 
 carry them from place to place with the greatest ease." I grant 
 you that in savage times the reign of might was supreme, but 
 mark the world's advance step by step as the years roll on, 
 and it is one long story of mind subduing matter, science 
 superseding mere physical strength ; and remember, to follow 
 the muscular argument to its logical conclusion, you must 
 place a navvy or a prize-fighter higher in the scale of being 
 than a high-souled, but feeble-bodied man of intellect ; Tom 
 Sayers or your typical village blacksmith, for instance, would 
 rank far above such men as Darwin, Carlyle, or Stuart Mill.'
 
 THE EQUALITY OF THE SEXES. 193 
 
 ' But then women are not our superiors, but generally our- 
 inferiors in intellect also.' 
 
 ' I do not see how you are to prove that, for until women 
 have been allowed to share freely in every educational ad- 
 vantage, and been given every opportunity in common with 
 men, it is impossible to gauge their mental capacity. It is im- 
 possible to say how much of the difference between men and 
 women is due to training and popular .opinion, or inherited 
 from habits acquired by former generations. If women's 
 mental deficiency was so obvious, why, in the past, were not 
 more schools and colleges founded for her benefit with the 
 object of counteracting so far as possible this radical in- 
 feriority ? I should say that under the circumstances equality 
 of attainment would argue that women were not only men's 
 peers but their superiors, for they would have solved the 
 difficulty of making bricks without straw, if with so little 
 teaching and encouragement as they have had in the past, 
 women were all as well-informed, as thoughtful, as logical, as 
 men.' 
 
 ' Haven't celebrated men had difficulties ? ' asked Major 
 Knagge, with some impatience, 'and yet in er painting 
 music, poetry, you find distinguished men er twenty to 
 one woman who has done anything worth looking at. What 
 discoveries have women made ? What have they invented 1 ' 
 
 ' Here, if anywhere, preparation and adequate stimulus are 
 wanted, but until recently the study of mathematics, the best 
 possible training for concentrated thoughts has been denied to 
 women; surrounded by distractions at home, met by pre-' 
 judice abroad, hemmed in on every side by the conditions of 
 their life, the restraints of custom and prejudice, how should 
 women have done much in the way of discovery and invention 1 ? 
 They have been shut out, to a great degree, in the past from 
 the wider fields of science and art, ignored by learned societies, 
 denied admission to their meetings, still more to any honorary 
 or pecuniary distinetions.it was in their power to confer, what 
 
 o
 
 194 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 chance have they had? The mind needs stimulus of some 
 sort to arouse its energies ; to arbitrarily decree that whatever 
 any individual's genius or force of character she must not 
 exercise these except within very narrow limits, that she can- 
 not expect perfect freedom of choice as though she were a 
 man, is the most effectual way of extinguishing any natural 
 gifts she may possess. Mary Somerville's account of the dis- 
 couragements to solid studies which she had to encounter in 
 early youth is not unique; Mendelssohn's gifted sister possessed 
 a musical genius second only to his, but her works, a tribute to 
 whose excellence he has given in more than one private letter, 
 were only allowed to be published under his name, it was not 
 fitting that a woman should be known as a musical composer ; 
 some of Miss Edgeworth's works were for a like reason pub- 
 lished in her father's name. That most important fact in 
 scientific discovery, that certain flowers emit light after sunset, 
 was first observed by Elizabeth Christian Linn6, but this again, 
 in most quarters, was attributed to her father, the celebrated 
 naturalist ; I could give you many more instances in which 
 women, in spite of innumerable disadvantages, have been the 
 real originators of useful inventions for which their male 
 relatives have got the credit ; though Sir Henry Bessemer 
 himself, I believe, never made a secret of it, it is not, I think, 
 very widely known that one of the most useful inventions 
 generally attributed to him, viz., the simple plan of dating 
 stamps to prevent fraud, which, it is considered, has saved the 
 Government some millions, was really the idea of his wife. 
 Several years ago, women in America obtained from the 
 Government on an average about sixty patents per annum, and 
 this number, I understand, is steadily increasing ; in a patent- 
 lawsuit in 1880, a woman, Helen M. McDonald, conducted her 
 own case and won it, planting an injunction on a bold infringe- 
 ment, and utterly routing one of the most distinguished of the 
 patent-law barristers.' 
 
 ' I don't deny,' said Major Knagge, ' that there are women 
 of talent, but I er maintain that they are the exception,
 
 THE EQUALITY OF THE SEXES. 195 
 
 that that on the whole, in fact, woman's intellect is inferior 
 to man's.' 
 
 ' Do not commit the injustice of assuming that a person is 
 incapable of performing any given task, while you are with- 
 holding the only tools with which that work could be satisfac- 
 torily accomplished. Where the sexes have had equal chances, 
 as, for instance, on the stage, and to some extent in literature, 
 they have distinguished themselves equally with men ; indeed, 
 I doubt if in some branches of literature they are not already 
 surpassing us, while some have even triumphed over the par- 
 tiality of our laws and the prejudices of society sufficiently to 
 shine in lines from which the majority of women have been 
 carefully excluded.' 
 
 ' I must say,' replied the Major, ' I fail to see either the 
 partiality of the one or the prejudices of the other.' 
 
 ' It is not necessary with us, I grant you, as it is in some 
 parts of China, to put up near our ponds and ornamental 
 waters : " Notice No girls to be drowned here ; " nor are we 
 taught, like the Jews, to give thanks in our churches that we 
 were not born girls ; but where do you find the man or boy 
 who does not secretly congratulate himself upon the accident 
 of his sex, not that women are in any single particular their 
 inferiors, but solely and simply because unjust laws and social 
 conditions, combined with ignorance of the true physiological 
 interests of the race, sedentary occupations, false and super- 
 stitious theories on the subject of population, have made the 
 lives of women less bearable than those of men 1 Every student 
 of nature ought to know that the highest development comes 
 latest on the scene ; the question is not so much what women 
 have done in the past, but whether they are not now actually 
 gaining upon us.' 
 
 ' But hard facts,' said Major Knagge, ' are stubborn things 
 to deal with, and we all know that women's brains are smaller 
 than those of men.' 
 
 ' A whale's brain weighs double that of a man, yet it has 
 never been asserted that it has the advantage over us in point
 
 196 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 of intellect ; the weight of brain tells us nothing except as com- 
 pared with the size and power of the body ; the mere propul- 
 sion of the muscles requires a large amount of nerve-force, and 
 animals with large muscular development have correspondingly 
 large brains ; thus it is in the elephant tribe that the maximum 
 size of brain is reached, for while a man's brain on the average 
 
 , ~ 
 
 weighs 49^ ozs., that of an elephant weighs from 8 to 10 Ibs. ;* 
 tall men usually have larger brains than short ones, and an 
 average woman's brain, though it weighs a few ounces less than 
 an average man's, is not relatively smaller when compared with 
 the body, but, if anything, larger. Size, like physical strength, 
 is, I am sure you must know, so far from being a proof of in- 
 tellectual power, that the strongest races are not by any means 
 the most intelligent ; the greatest minds in every age and 
 country have dwelt more often than not in small or feeble 
 bodies ; the huge extinct beasts, the mammoth, the mega- 
 therium, the deinotherium, were lower in the scale of being 
 than their less powerful successors ; and can the strongest man 
 compare himself with the animals whom, by his superior intel- 
 ligence, he has tamed and brought under control ; there is 
 more actual strength in the arm or leg than in the eye, and yet 
 who would not rather lose limbs than sight ? In short, the 
 " want of physical force argument," as applied in detraction to 
 women, is quite beside the mark.' 
 
 ' Oh, I am not er intending or, or wishing to say any- 
 thing disrespectful of the ladies,' replied Major Knagge ; ' they 
 are very charming and er all that sort of thing, no doubt, 
 but still I hold that their claim to equality is preposterous, 
 and can never er be maintained.' 
 
 At this point Professor Wray changed the subject, and 
 would not be led into it again during the remainder of their 
 walk ; while Major Knagge was inwardly congratulating him- 
 self upon having, by his acute reasoning powers, made some 
 impression upon a man whom (although he considered him 
 very misguided) he could not, on the whole, help respecting. 
 * Bain's Mind and Body,
 
 THE EQUALITY OF THE SEXES. 197 
 
 It was well, perhaps, for his self-love that he did not look over 
 Professor Wray's shoulder, or know what was running in his 
 mind that evening as he wrote to his sister in town : 
 
 ' Amongst other burning questions, we have had some very warm 
 discussions upon what, for want of a better name, may be called 
 Women's Rights. Madeline Acton is as charming and sensible as 
 ever, and I begin to think that between us we shall make a convert of 
 Sir Henry Tregarthen, Mrs. Silverton's brother, a fine young fellow 
 with good brains of his own, who means shortly to enter Parliament 
 in the Liberal interest. I think we shall win him, though he chooses 
 at present to sit on the opposition benches ; he is open to conviction, 
 as he may well be, since it is only mediocrity that has reason to fear 
 what it is pleased to call " the rivalry of women." " A wise man 
 changes his mind, a fool never will ; " I think the Spanish proverb is 
 likely to prove true in the present instance, as it has done before, for 
 Major Knagge (you remember my mentioning him) is hopeless ; of all 
 the dense, pig-headed, arguers in a circle ! Well, 1 had better say no 
 more, for I have not quite got over a discussion which he almost 
 thrust upon me this morning, and which I ended abruptly, only by a 
 special effort refraining from Johnson's polite clincher, "I can give you 
 a reason, Sir, but I can't give you an understanding." '
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 ' THERE is some deep unsoundness in the time, 
 When it stares ever at the sins of women, 
 And lets its men alone.' 
 
 4 Did He whose name we bear, the Man Divine 
 Teach this, when woman outcast, lost, and lone, 
 And broken-hearted, came and wept away 
 The baneful storms of passion at His feet? 
 
 Are we His followers or the Pharisees ? ' 
 
 A VISION OF TO-DAY. 
 
 icat yvvaiKog 17 avrfi open). 
 Virtue in man and woman is the same. 
 
 ' Antisthenes ' in Diogenes Laertius, vi., 1, 5.
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 SOME SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 
 
 As each day passed on, a better understanding, an increasingly 
 cordial feeling appeared to be growing up between Sir Henry 
 and Professor Wray ; the latter being a good oarsman, the 
 former still more or less disabled for long walks or rides, they 
 had fallen into the habit of going out frequently together in a 
 small b^yit, which Mrs. Silverton, from its exclusiveness, had 
 not inappropriately named the Tete-&-tete. It was just possible 
 for a small third person to sit on a cushion in the bows, and 
 sometimes one or other of the ladies thus accompanied them ; 
 \)i\t to-day they were alone, and for once appeared more occu- 
 pied with the subject of their conversation than with the idea 
 of exploring creeks and caves, or hunting up, as was their wont, 
 fossils, shells, sea-anemones, or whatever else nature might 
 have hidden away in the recesses of that bold and romantic 
 coast. 
 
 The Professor was resting on his oars, while his companion 
 appeared to pay little attention to the guidance of their craft, 
 which had drifted out some distance from the shore ; but it did 
 not much matter, for the wind had gone to breathe defiance or 
 whisper hope elsewhere, and the sea showed only a ripple here 
 and there dancing in the sunlight. 
 
 Sir Henry, unlike himself, was, however, not to be shamed 
 into responsive brightness ; there was more than a shadow of 
 discontent in his voice as he said gloomily, 
 
 ' Miss Acton is about the last person I should have expected 
 to care for the companionship of such a woman as Mrs. Wylde ; 
 there is scarcely a lady in Plymouth who will visit her.' 
 
 ' And cannot you conceive that this may possibly be one 
 of her strongest motives for going there? ' asked his companion.
 
 202 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 ' But you do not know ' 
 
 ' I know this, that it is not the largest natured and the 
 purest minded women who shrink from contact with an erring 
 sister ; naturally so, for they are just the ones who need have 
 no fear that the world will say, " There is some fellow-feeling 
 at the root of this sympathy." ' 
 
 ' Oh, I did not mean to imply,' qualified Sir Henry, ' that 
 there was anything very wrong about Mrs. Wylde, though she 
 has no doubt been very imprudent and got herself in conse- 
 quence much talked about.' 
 
 ' And you can hardly wonder at it ; she is young and very 
 pretty, so I understand ; it does not enter her head, probably, 
 to dream that the fact of her husband's absence with his 
 ship calls for extra circumspection on her part, and so she 
 has accepted the admiration and attention which idle men 
 who abound in garrison towns are always ready enough to 
 bestow.' 
 
 ' And does it seem to you that a woman who has made 
 herself notorious, as she has done, is a fitting friend for a girl 
 like Miss Acton ] ' 
 
 ' I do not see that we are called upon to decide in the 
 matter ; she is old enough and sensible enough to be the best 
 judge in such a case; there may not be much in common 
 between them, perhaps, but Mrs. Wylde (who is some con- 
 nexion of Madeline's by marriage, I believe) is, from what I 
 hear, just hovering on that borderland between safety and irre- 
 trievable disgrace, when it may make all the difference to her 
 if even one of her own sex stretches out a friendly hand to 
 hold her back, instead of helping to build up a wall which 
 renders hopeless any progress except a downward one. It is 
 because Miss Acton feels this, I am convinced, that she has 
 gone to Plymouth to our cost, and probably against her own 
 personal wishes. There seems to me more true womanliness in 
 the charity which is not afraid of soiling its garments by con- 
 tact with evil, than in the ignorance which ignores the exist- 
 ence of vice and calls itself innocence, or the virtue which
 
 SOME SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 203 
 
 bases its claim to consistency upon the severity with which it 
 visits the slightest infringement of outward propriety.' 
 
 ( That is certainly no uncommon feature in the character of 
 even seemingly kind-hearted women.' 
 
 ' Mostly among the thoughtless and frivolous, I think, who 
 do not know, and would not care to know, the temptations and 
 trials to which some less fortunate women are subjected ; and 
 it may be that here and there, even amongst those of Madeline's 
 school, we may find some who, in spite of higher culture and 
 more liberal views, are inclined to be a little hard in such 
 matters ; but they are few, I think, and she is certainly not of 
 their number. When the saving of a fellow-woman from a 
 coarse which may end in lifelong misery and disgrace is in 
 question, she would be the last to trouble herself about what 
 the world or even some of her so-called friends might say, 
 though where no principle is involved, I have often seen her, 
 for the sake of others, conform to conventionalisms that I know 
 have been irksome to her.' 
 
 ' No doubt she is right,' said Sir Henry, frankly ; ' I was 
 more selfish than consistent, I think, in what 1 said just now, 
 for I have often blamed women for being so hard upon their 
 sex in this particular.' 
 
 ' With mere fashionable butterflies, as I said just now, this 
 may be the case, but I could name hundreds of good, true 
 women who feel nothing but tender pity for their erring sisters, 
 and indignation at a social system which has made their down- 
 ward way so easy, the road back to honesty and happiness so 
 all but unattainable. " One false step and you are lost for 
 ever," is the cruel sentence which confronts them at every 
 turn, and yet never was there a greater mistake than this 
 assumption, that the instincts of purity in a woman's nature 
 cannot survive one false step, or even more. I remember 
 hearing Mrs. Butler give a touching account of a young French 
 girl who had been decoyed from her home by offers of employ- 
 ment in England, and finally was driven by want and despair 
 into a life of deepest ignominy. After the lapse of two years
 
 204 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 she was brought in a dying state to one of our larger hospitals, 
 there her ravings were only of France, of the sunny hills of 
 Burgundy, of her father's vineyard, her mother's cottage, in 
 fact her every thought seemed to the last innocent and sweet ; 
 her life was spoiled, poor child, but who could say that her 
 moral nature was utterly corrupt? and is not this the case, 
 perhaps, with thousands of others whom society turns from with 
 loathing and contempt 1 ' 
 
 ' Very likely, but after all what are men to do in such a case? 
 It is women who really have the making of public opinion.' 
 
 ' Upon the soul of every responsible member of society rests 
 some portion of the guilt ; the most urgent need of our times 
 is the united action of men and women in their conflict with 
 these social evils. We may at least help those noble-hearted 
 women who are working for justice, for honesty, for a loftier 
 purity, by going to the root of the mischief, and while not 
 ignoring their unfortunate or guilty sisters, are devoting their 
 chief energies to obtaining work for the destitute, training for 
 the ignorant, to raising their whole sex, in fact, by teaching the 
 self-respect which is a natui al result of leading active, useful, 
 independent lives.' 
 
 ' But has it not in some instances been a too great love of 
 independence which has led girls into difficulties ]' 
 
 ' Rather, I think, emptiness, frivolity, and self-indulgence in 
 the case of the rich, ignorance and want amongst the poor. It 
 is time women should take a fresh start in the direction of self- 
 reliance, since the reign of man's protection has brought the 
 wretched outcasts of society so low.' 
 
 ' I must say,' replied Sir Henry, ' I have always thought it 
 hard lines that a woman who has erred through ignorance and 
 inexperience should be thrust outside the pale of humanity, 
 while the blackguard who has taken advantage of her ignorance, 
 or weakness, or tenderness to betray her, gets off scot free ; 
 but the position is rather reversed, I think, with a woman who 
 is leading a notoriously vicious life.' 
 
 ( Are not men collectively more to blame even here 1 It is
 
 SOME SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 205 
 
 demand which creates supply, the action and reaction of cause 
 and effect are inseparable; but which party in a disgraceful 
 league, think you, is most to blame, the one who possesses 
 means, education, position, or the one who is probably goaded 
 by want and despair into defiance of the world's opinion 1 ' 
 
 'But subjective as well as objective influences must be 
 taken into consideration ; a man's nature is so entirely different 
 from a woman's.' 
 
 ' Men have strong passions it is true, but they are supposed 
 to have the stronger wills, and though it is widely believed 
 that the natures of men and women differ so radically as to 
 make the same moral law inapplicable to both, yet it is an un- 
 safe doctrine for any man who values his physical powers and 
 intellectual development, and desires to preserve that self-respect 
 and reverence for womanhood which are the only basis of a true 
 and happy marriage, it is impossible that the voice of nature 
 unperverted could have made the virtues of modesty and 
 purity becoming to and necessary for a woman alone ; right 
 and wrong are in no way dependent on sex, and I am fully 
 convinced that the general assumption of a man's not being 
 bound by the same law of purity as a woman has been the 
 cause of the most widespread evils, and is at the root of some of 
 the most unjust and barbarous laws that ever defiled the statute- 
 roll of countries calling themselves free and enlightened, not to 
 say moral and religious.' 
 
 'You refer to ' 
 
 ' To those most unrighteous and infamous laws which, in 
 the face of strong protest from the admittedly most moral half 
 of the community, have for the protection of men's dissipation, 
 put into operation a system of organized bodily outrage upon 
 women. I should like to know where is the justice, the morality 
 of a Government, which, in order that it may maintain a healthy 
 standing army, drives its unfortunate daughters down deeper 
 and deeper into the abyss of infamy, not that its sons may 
 grow wiser, or better, or purer men, but that they may be able to 
 sin with impunity ?'
 
 206 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 ' But,' said Sir Henry, ' it seems to me that these laws 
 which you condemn so strongly, though not actually repealed, 
 have become in a great measure inoperative through the 
 censure and vote in Parliament last year.' 
 
 ' I am glad that England has taken the initiative even to 
 this extent ; but incredible as it may seem, there is a powerful 
 clique, including many influential names, which has pledged 
 itself to uphold, by every means in its power, a law that lite- 
 rally makes magistrates and doctors accomplices in vice, by 
 facilitating the means through which it is carried on. This makes 
 it all the more necessary, in the interests of public morality, 
 that those who feel these laws to be an insult to every woman, 
 a dishonour to every man in the country, should not cease to 
 protest against them, until the resolution of last year (1883) 
 is confirmed and established by Act of Parliament,' and Professor 
 Wray, dipping his oars into the water, pulled vigorously 
 for some minutes as a sort of safety valve for his indignant 
 feelings. 
 
 ' But those who most strongly support this Act, both in 
 England and abroad, so I have understood,' said Sir Henry, 
 ' while deploring the same, yet maintain its necessity ; they have 
 to meet a very palpable and present evil, they say, and their 
 object is, I suppose, to make it the source of as little mischief 
 as possible.' 
 
 ' And so by way of raising the tone of public morality, a 
 law is put into operation whose whole tendency is solely and 
 simply to give an immense impetus to vice, which all the peni- 
 tentiaries, refuges, and labours of social reformers are powerless 
 to stem.' 
 
 ' But,' said Sir Henry, ' has not the law a right to prevent 
 any individual from becoming a source of evil to others ?' 
 
 ' The only legitimate way in which the law could step in 
 (though I do not think it is practicable) would be by making 
 impurity and its results on both sides a legal offence, certainly 
 it has no right to spare the man at the expense of the woman, 
 and in regard to the benefit alleged to have been derived from
 
 SOME SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 207 
 
 the State regulation of vice, statistics show that in those 
 districts where registration has been abolished disease in all its 
 forms has largely decreased.'* 
 
 ' I understand long rows of figures have been brought for- 
 ward to prove the contrary, at any rate we must give the 
 supporters of these Acts the credit of thinking themselves the 
 champions of public health and morality.' 
 
 ' It may be so, and yet never was there a more infamous 
 piece of class legislation ; I wonder what the more thoughtful 
 amongst the poor think of a " necessity " which involves the 
 dishonour of their daughters; I wonder if these laws would ever 
 have existed if the wife, or sister, or daughter of a Member of 
 Parliament could at the will of a policeman be subjected to 
 such indignities as her poorer but it may be not less virtuous 
 sisters are liable to 1 ' 
 
 ' But surely it is only women of notoriously bad character 
 who are reported.' 
 
 ' Unfortunately not, for where these Acts are in operation, 
 mere suspicion on the part of a policeman is sufficient, and 
 though the whole force could not produce one man capable of 
 being actuated by an unworthy motive, they are, like all of 
 us, fallible, as many a sad mistake has proved. I could give 
 you more than one instance in which, to my own knowledge, a 
 perfectly well-conducted girl has thus suffered through mis- 
 apprehension, and the worst of it is, that when once taken by 
 the police, the burden of disproving their suspicion rests with 
 her, and though her innocence be proved, not only has she to 
 bear the imprisonment, shame, and exposure, but also the cost 
 of her own defence. One would really think to judge from the 
 different light in which both law and society look after impurity 
 in men and women, that the fact of her erring in a large 
 majority of cases only through want or wretchedness, while he 
 has the powerful motive of self-indulgence, makes her guilt out 
 of all proportion greater than his.' 
 
 * See Report of the Congress of the British and Continental Federation 
 f or the Abolition of State Regulation of Vice at the Hague, Sept. 1883.
 
 208 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 ' It does seem unfair, and yet many doctors argue on sani- 
 tary grounds, as you know, that the same moral restraint 
 should not be expected from men as from women.' 
 
 ' I know, but I can only say that those who argue thus are 
 unworthy members of an honourable profession. What would 
 these doctors say, do you think, if called upon to sacrifice their 
 own daughters to this supposed necessity ? They would tell 
 a different story I imagine. But the same false conception of 
 the relative virtue of the two sexes is to be found in many of 
 our social usages ; for instance, it is evidently not thought an 
 unmeet vocation for a pure and innocent girl to be the wife 
 of a man whose past life may have been grossly immoral, 
 " a reformed rake," we are told, " makes the best husband," 
 while society would be horrified at the thought of an honour- 
 able man marrying a magdalen, and yet where is the difference 1 ? 
 Next to the difficulties put in the way of poor women who 
 would gladly earn an honest livelihood, I believe that this laxity, 
 which winks at and condones immorality in men, is the chief 
 cause of our social corruption, for its logical outcome is, that a 
 large section of our women who might be leading happy, useful 
 lives, are set aside to minister to men's irregularities, while 
 natural, healthy intercourse between boys and girls, men and 
 women, is discouraged as dangerous. There is much truth in 
 what an American said to De Tocqueville when asked on one 
 occasion why there was so much less flagrant immorality in 
 that country than in England, he replied, because we have much 
 freer intercourse"with our women, and boys and girls being in a 
 great measure taught on the same lines, they have numerous 
 interests and pursuits in common beyond that of flirtation or 
 serious love-making ; you may depend upon it, the more that is 
 done to bring young men and women, boys and girls together 
 in rational pursuits, the sooner we shall see the worst evils of 
 our social system disappear ; indeed, I think it is impossible to 
 calculate how much good is lost, how much evil results from 
 the too common notion that love and marriage are the only 
 safe means of intercommunion betweeen the two sexes. I only
 
 SOME SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 209 
 
 wonder that things are not worse where men have so com- 
 paratively little intercourse with pure cultivated women. At 
 school, at college, in their clubs, in barracks, this refining 
 influence is wanting, and as a natural consequence they acquire 
 a lower tone of moral purity, which is a stepping-stone in many 
 instances to the formation of profligate habits, whose evil effects, 
 unfortunately, do not pass away with one generation or two. 
 And so it will be while rulers and philanthropists alike keep 
 nipping at the branches of our social upas-tree instead of 
 striking at its roots. It is useless to build up with one hand and 
 pull down with the other, to weep over and bewail the general 
 laxity of morals, so long as boys and young men are allowed 
 only too much license, while girls instead of being taught the 
 dignity of independence are supposed never to be in a position 
 to take care of themselves, so long as they are trained on the 
 false principle that virtue and ignorance of evil are one and the 
 same thing, so long as vice, which in the one sex means life- 
 long disgrace, in the other is actually encouraged by protective 
 legislation. Upon my word, I do not think we have advanced 
 greatly since the days when Chrysostom was considered a 
 dangerous innovator because he taught that men should be 
 pure and women brave. We male legislators and voters are not 
 unlike the Hindoos who punished the crime of adultery with the 
 most stringent severity in all those who were not of the Brahmin, 
 that is, the law-making class, while these for the same offence 
 escaped with only the loss of their hair.' 
 
 ' By the way/ said Sir Henry, 'did you see that account of the 
 last census in Rangoon, where a certain supervisor was astonished 
 by finding all the grown up female population of one street 
 described as "adulteresses;" when inquiry came to be made, 
 however, into the cause of this deplorable frailty, it seems the 
 native enumerator was under the impression that adultress was 
 the feminine form of adult. But joking apart,' he continued, 
 more seriously, 'you have put this subject before me in a new 
 light, if I do not agitate for the entire repeal of the Act you 
 condemn, I shall never join its supporters.' 
 
 p
 
 210 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 ' These are not pleasant themes for discussion,' said Professor 
 Wray, ' but I do not think that on this account we have any 
 right to ignore them. "It is very easy," as Charles Kingsley 
 says,* " to turn away our eyes from ugly sights, and so consider 
 ourselves refined"; but I never will believe that a man has 
 a real love for the good and the beautiful unless he attacks the 
 evil and the disgusting the first moment that he sees it. I only 
 wish more women of position, of intellect, of culture, had courage 
 to face these questions in the interests of justice and morality. If 
 a starving beggar obtains a copper under false pretences the law 
 punishes him heavily, but what punishment is awarded to a 
 man, who, under false promises of marriage, deceives a trusting 
 girl and then deserts her 1 Maternity is a woman's special 
 mission, so some people assert, and yet who so degraded if, 
 though it may be through small fault of her own, she become 
 a mother outside marriage ? Her loss of reputation makes it 
 doubly hard for her to support herself, much more her child, 
 and what is she to do ] It is only by means of the shame and 
 exposure of a prosecution that the father can be forced to pay 
 some paltry weekly pittance of a few shillings towards its 
 support, and this they frequently avoid by changing their place 
 of abode. Every girl on the point of becoming a mother knows 
 something of this, something of the disgrace and want and 
 pitiless scorn that await her ; and when perhaps, without being 
 naturally either cruel or unloving, but driven almost mad with 
 pain, and terror, and disgrace, she kills or deserts her infant, the 
 law comes down upon her crushing what little hope, or life, or 
 chance of better things remains. And where is the father of her 
 child all this time 1 Unfortunately, I sometimes think, paternity 
 carries with it no physiological responsibilities, he is not answer- 
 able ; he is happy ; he is prosperous ; he is an estimable member 
 of society. The Brahmins are the law-making class you know, 
 what is mortal sin in others is venial in them.' 
 
 ' " The prayers of the congregation are desired for an old 
 woman who is anxious to become a new man"; I suppose,' said 
 * May 21st, 1844. Life, vol. i., p. 121.
 
 SOME SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 211 
 
 Sir Henry, ' the old lady in question did not mean a change in 
 that sense, but one often hears girls wishing they had been 
 born boys, while an eminent anatomist once declared that it 
 appeared to him a cruelty in nature to have produced such a 
 being as a woman, and I begin to think there is really some- 
 thing in that view of the question.' 
 
 ' But it is not nature which has made the virtues of 
 modesty and chastity obligatory for women only, it is the 
 egotism and selfishness of a privileged class. None can say 
 that men have made a just use of their political ascendency 
 while such inequalities and abuses as I have named exist ; the 
 fact is, no man can possibly put himself in a woman's place, 
 feel all the hopeless misery of an ill-used wife, the anguish of a 
 mother robbed of her children, the helplessness of a girl 
 betrayed.' 
 
 ' I quite agree with you,' said Sir Henry, ' that in the case 
 of a single woman who has been guilty of any indiscretion the 
 punishment is often cruelly severe, but I do not think it can 
 be denied that immorality in a married woman is, for obvious 
 reasons, much more serious than in a man.' 
 
 ' I know the argument, that the legitimacy of the race is 
 imperilled, but I do not see that any sophistry will justify the 
 condoning of an immoral act in the one sex and utterly con- 
 demning it in the other ; and yet this is what our law does, 
 when it allows a man to divorce his wife for unfaithfulness 
 alone, but will not release her unless he has been guilty of 
 absolute cruelty as well as adultery, whereas in my opinion 
 either one or the other ought to legally justify a woman in 
 seeking a separation ; the fact that a cruel and brutal husband 
 knows that so long as actual unfaithfulness cannot be proved 
 against him, he may go very great lengths in ill-treating the 
 victim whom he calls his wife, without the law giving her any 
 redress, and without her having the power to escape, is an 
 encouragement to him to persevere in his evil courses; in 
 short, the too frequent result of our present system is to 
 multiply irregular connexions between the sexes ; the woman,
 
 212 MEN", WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 under these circumstances, knows that she is free to leave any 
 day, and the man under fear of this behaves himself "My 
 Tom brings me some of his wages now," said one poor woman, 
 on being urged by a visitor to marry the man with whom she 
 was living, " but if I married him he'd be like the rest " ; and 
 this is no uncommon story, indeed the same person told me 
 at the time, that a wide experience had proved the children of 
 the unmarried in manufacturing districts to be actually better 
 fed and attended to than those of the married, so much so that 
 women for their sakes often refuse to marry when the men 
 wish it. Does not this of itself prove the need of some reform 
 in our marriage laws ? By not allowing a marriage contract to 
 be dissolved, however undesirable, save and except for actual 
 adultery, they in a manner hold out encouragement to the 
 unhappy husband or wife to the commission of this crime as 
 the only hope of release. I know, unfortunately, of more cases 
 than one which prove this. What can be more unreasonable 
 than to force two people, who have learned to despise or hate 
 each other, to live together in the closest intimacy ? Is it any 
 wonder that the worst crimes are often the result ? On the 
 abrogation of the law of divorce in France, the Marquis d'Her- 
 bouville said in the tribune, that since the abolition of 
 divorce, the number of husband and wife -murders had be- 
 come so frequent that it seemed as if the elements of poison 
 had in many instances been mingled in the wedding-feast itself.' 
 
 ' But there is another cause allowed to be sufficient ground 
 for divorce.' 
 
 { The more disgrace to us that it is so ; it is an insult and 
 a mockery to all true respecters of marriage in its highest 
 sense, that a physical misfortune should be considered cause 
 sufficient, while drunkenness or any other sign of mental or 
 moral deterioration is on no account suffered to be a plea for 
 release.' 
 
 ' I suppose,' said Sir Henry, ' this view of the subject, 
 which I agree with you in thinking a false one, is a survival of 
 the old theory that marriage was a mere fleshly union and
 
 SOME SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 213 
 
 defilement, denied utterly to the priesthood, and even in the 
 laity looked upon as a state much inferior to celibacy. But 
 about this question of divorce. Of course there can be nothing 
 in life more wretched than an ill-assorted marriage, but at the 
 same time, so long as our laws are supposed to be founded 
 upon the teaching of the Bible, so long as Church and State 
 are united, I do not see how we can consistently countenance 
 divorce save from the one cause.' 
 
 ' Then the sooner we get a fuller understanding and a more 
 reasonable interpretation of the Divine laws of the universe the 
 better. For instance, I quite endorse such injunctions as this, 
 " Whom God hath joined together, let no man put asunder," 
 but unless you mean to imply a failure on the part of the 
 Deity, unless you mean to acknowledge that He has done His 
 work very badly, you cannot maintain that heaven has had 
 the making of all our ill-assorted, mercenary, loveless 
 marriages, whose miserable results fill the records of the 
 Divorce Court, swell our police intelligence, and afford endless 
 material to the writers of sensational fiction, though they must 
 be ever a source of indignation and grief to all right thinking 
 persons. Again, you often hear it said by the opponents of 
 divorce " But you know we are told and they twain shall be 
 one flesh," Does it ever concern them to remember, I wonder, 
 that where any portion of the body has become a source of 
 pain and danger it is universally held the wisest plan to 
 get rid of it as soon as possible ? Why are so many good 
 people not content to take the general teaching of the 
 gospel of kindness, of mercy, of forgiveness, of purity, but 
 must wrest particular texts to suit their own notions of what is 
 fitting, often to the utter subversion of all logic and common- 
 sense.' 
 
 ' But a great many,' said Sir Henry, ' would reply to this 
 that they do not approve of private judgment except within 
 very narrow limits ; that they take, in fact, the Church's in- 
 terpretation of the Bible as their safest guide.' 
 
 ' I know ; but then arises the question, what Church, or
 
 214 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 what period of its history, or what exponent of its teaching 
 are they to rely upon to save them the trouble and respon- 
 sibility of exercising their own judgment upon any debateable 
 question 1 In the earliest, and presumedly the purest days of 
 the Christian religion, other causes of divorce were allowed 
 besides that of adultery ; St. Ambrose, for example, held 
 apostacy sufficient cause ; the laws of the Christian Emperors, 
 Theodosius and Valentinian, enacted that though marriage 
 might not be dissolved without just cause, yet that there were 
 many cases in which it was advisable ; Charlemagne repudiated 
 his first wife because she was not a Christian ; while with us, 
 marriage, long after the introduction of Christianity, was 
 considered a private contract, at which if the clergy were 
 present it was simply as guests, while divorce was a recognised 
 institution. About the eighth century the Church thought it 
 expedient to make marriage a sacrament at which its priests 
 were required to officiate, of course not gratuitously, but there 
 were still, I believe, some seventeen cases in which divorce was 
 permitted. As time went on, marriage, though still held to be 
 a sacrament, was, at the same time, as you were remarking, 
 considered by some curious process of reasoning to be such a 
 defilement that it was not encouraged much even in laymen, 
 while to priests it was positively forbidden, though once 
 entered into, no incompatibility or misery was held to be 
 sufficient ground for a release ; a state of things which gave 
 immense power to the clergy, who maintained the sole right 
 to rivet or loose these matrimonial bonds.' 
 
 ' But how about the Reformed Church ? ' 
 
 ' Wycliffe asserts that divorce is lawful to the Christian for 
 many other causes besides adultery, and if Milton may be 
 considered as the mouthpiece of Puritan doctrine in these 
 matters, you know how he writes on the subject.'* 
 
 ' Milton's married life, however, was not a very happy 
 commentary upon his theories.' 
 
 ' That is true, but when married people, owing to incom- 
 * See Milton's Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, 1644.
 
 SOME SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 215 
 
 patibility, find it impossible to live together in any comfort, 
 which is better, that they should part and lead peaceable, 
 independent lives, or that they should spend an existence 
 either of hypocrisy or open enmity, lowering to the nature of 
 both, and wretched to contemplate ? Look at the position of 
 an honourable, upright man, married to a woman who turns 
 out a hopeless drunkard ; or a good, high-souled, pure-minded 
 woman trapped into marriage with a man of low principles and 
 secretly gross nature ; is it reasonable or just that the tie 
 should be held binding in such a case ? Is it not monstrous 
 that a felon when he has worked out his term of penal 
 servitude may return and legally compel his wife to live with 
 him, whether she loves him or turns from him, as is most 
 likely, in loathing and disgust ? ' 
 
 ' I suppose, though, that in such extreme cases as this it 
 would not be difficult to obtain at least a judicial separation? ' 
 
 ' More difficult than you think, I am afraid, especially for 
 women who are ignorant, or poor, or friendless.' 
 
 ' But is it not likely that if greater freedom of divorce were 
 allowed, the privilege would be abused, oftenest perhaps by 
 our own sex, and for no other reason than that they have 
 grown tired of their wives V 
 
 ' Such cases might, I think, be in a measure provided 
 against, but where there is true affection and esteem there 
 would be no fear of this sort of thing, and where love is 
 wanting, or has waned, what becomes of the semblance of 
 marriage ? What is it that sanctifies this union, the love 
 which binds soul to soul, or the religious ceremony and legal 
 contract which, however good in their way, are worse than 
 nothing in the absence of those feelings which no vows can 
 affect either one way or the other] If there were a periodic 
 and solemn renewal of contract at the end of a term of one 
 year, or two, or three, or more, as seemed advisable, when man 
 and wife should be free to part by mutual consent or to renew 
 their vows, I believe the result would be not only the 
 immediate diminution of crime, but an immense decrease in
 
 216 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 matrimonial breaches of the peace and even of petty dis- 
 agreements or misunderstandings, for so long as any love 
 remains, the very fear, the very possibility of parting would 
 make both husband and wife "beware of entrance to a 
 quarrel." A contentious couple had one day been disputing 
 as usual when the wife pointed to the cat and dog lying on 
 the hearthrug in the most friendly manner side by side 
 " Thou see'st Jacob, even cat and dog can live together 
 happily." " Aye," growled the husband, " but tie them 
 together and see what will happen." Now this man, I 
 suspect, would have been much more chary of expressing 
 his contempt, if on their intercourse becoming unbearable 
 they might have parted by mutual consent.' 
 
 ' I do not know ; there are some natures so fickle, that 
 they would contemplate a frequent change of condition with 
 the greatest equanimity; like the hero I read of once in an 
 ancient anecdote, who is represented as sitting in a window 
 deeply absorbed in a book, " when a gentlewoman came to him, 
 and Sir (sayde she), / would I were your booke (because she 
 loved the gentleman). So would I (quoth he), / wish you were. 
 But what booke would you have me bee (sayde the other) if I 
 were to bee so ? Marry an almanacke (quoth the gentleman), 
 because I would change every yeare." ' 
 
 ' Had your friend been given to understand, perhaps, that 
 whatever book was chosen, if he valued it so little as from 
 the first to plan deliberately to fling it away at the end of a 
 year, he must remain without literature altogether for at 
 least as long a period, he perhaps would have thought twice 
 before carrying the principle of his repartee into practice.' 
 
 ' But do you not think that the indissolubility of mar- 
 riage is in the interests of women 1 I am afraid, if the truth 
 must be told, that Orsino was not far wrong when he 
 acknowledged 
 
 " Our fancies are more giddy and unfirm, 
 More longing, wavering, sooner lost and won 
 Than women's are."
 
 SOME SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 217 
 
 I am afraid they would be the chief sufferers if greater freedom 
 of divorce were permitted.' 
 
 ' I do not think so ; the law of course would have to be 
 very careful not to countenance license, or the inconsiderate 
 breaking of faith, and in these days no Act would be likely 
 to pass conferring upon men the power of putting away their 
 wives at pleasure ; as things stand at present while to the 
 husband an ill-assorted marriage is a constraint, to the wife 
 it becomes the most intolerable of servitudes. I do not 
 think there is much fear of the ordinary English man or 
 woman being dubious about the benefit of marriage as an 
 institution, it is only when perverted from its right use 
 by a want of true affection and entire sympathy, that it 
 is a mistake to try and prove this parody of a true union a 
 holy and honourable estate. It is because I honour true 
 marriage so highly that I protest against its loveless desecra- 
 tion as against any other form of legalised prostitution. Our 
 law does not recognise the religious vows of monk or nun, it 
 holds that people change their minds, and that it is not right 
 therefore, under the influence of what may be a passing 
 emotion, to bind oneself to a state of celibacy for life. Does 
 not the same rule apply in a measure to life-long vows of 
 constancy 1 ' 
 
 ' And yet,' said Sir Henry, ' to any one who truly loves, the 
 idea, the very thought of any possible change, must be utterly 
 repulsive.' 
 
 ' Certainly ; so long as true love continues on both sides I 
 can conceive of no motive strong enough to make the thought 
 bearable; constancy, so far from diminishing, is likely to 
 become more general as the entire equality of man and woman 
 in the marriage state is recognised ; but you cannot, by any 
 number of difficult or impracticable laws, force people to be 
 constant, though it would be very delightful no doubt if all 
 men, and women too, were honourable, loving, true, upright, 
 sound both physically and mentally ; but we must take nature 
 as it is, not as we should like it to be, and it always seems to
 
 218 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 me extraordinary that those who realise the seriousness and 
 importance] of marriage are yet content with such short pro- 
 bationary periods as are the term of a modern engagement ; 
 in some parts of China the bridegroom is preceded by a goose 
 when he goes to meet his bride, whom it is intended to typify 
 I never heard, but it might stand for many a pair of lovers 
 amongst us who rush into marriage with about as little 
 consideration or less apparently than they would bestow upon 
 the renting of a house, or the purchase of a horse, and yet "he 
 who wants his wedding garment to fit him," as Riccabocca 
 sensibly remarks, " must allow plenty of time for the measure"; 
 a man may know the colour of a woman's eyes, a woman may 
 know the turn of a man's moustache, but as for having any 
 experience of each other's character which may be relied upon 
 as a guarantee of future sympathy and happiness, what can 
 they learn in a three, or even six, months' engagement, with its 
 superficial and occasional intercourse 1 It is not the effervescent 
 feelings of early youth, sparkling and attractive though they 
 may be, which are the best security for future happiness, 
 but the thoughtful, deliberate choice of the mature man or 
 woman.' 
 
 ' At what age are we to be allowed to marry then in that 
 case 1 You know what Shakespeare says, " Let the woman 
 take an elder to herself," &c.' 
 
 ' Does Shakespeare say that ? I do not deny that the words 
 appear in Twelfth Night, but supposing now that we were 
 characters in a book (the whole of our party I mean), and all 
 the discussions we have had within the last week or ten days 
 were in its pages faithfully recorded, would any one taking 
 up that book have a right to quote what Major Knagge has 
 brought forward against women's work or education, or, on the 
 other hand, what I have just been saying for instance, and to 
 cite it as the personal opinion of the author who has been 
 simply describing different types of character, and perhaps would 
 agree with none of us V 
 
 1 1 see; you mean that Shakespeare has just put those words
 
 SOME SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 219 
 
 into the mouth of the Count Orsino as representing the views of a 
 light, pleasure-loving nature, whose only idea of a woman was 
 that she should be a pretty toy, the amusement of a summer's 
 day. And yet he loved the Lady Olivia.' 
 
 ' But he could not command her love you may recollect. I 
 think great disparity of age on either one side or the other 
 is against anything like true sympathy, and union of tastes, 
 feelings and pursuits. Is a young, ignorant, inexperienced girl, 
 who, where her fancy is engaged, is naturally, from her very 
 youth, blind and undiscerning, fit to take life-long vows upon 
 her 1 Besides, on physiological grounds, it is not right that she 
 should walk from the nursery or schoolroom to the altar, being 
 deprived of those years, say from sixteen to two or three-and- 
 twenty, which should be devoted to the fuller development of 
 all her bodily and mental powers ; it is not fair either to a 
 woman herself, or to her offspring. The responsibility of 
 parenthood is one that is far too little considered, as we may 
 see eveiy day in the reckless indeed, I may say criminal 
 way in which children are brought into the world, without any 
 reasonable chance of their having a desirable or profitable 
 existence.' 
 
 ' Since you speak of the claims of parentage,' replied his 
 companion, ' do you not think that to allow divorce, except in 
 extreme cases, would be very bad for the children of the 
 marriage 1 ' 
 
 'Where there are children, this of course constitutes the 
 greatest difficulty, but it is only in extreme cases (that is to 
 say, where the parents, one or both, have never truly loved, 
 or else have ceased to do so) that parting can be justified, and 
 surely it is better that the children should live with one parent 
 or the other than that they should be the daily witnesses of either 
 open enmity or hypocrisy, which veils, but cannot conceal, the 
 parents' growing dislike and, it may be, contempt for each other. 
 Mind you, I would not, as some have suggested, make the State 
 responsible for the rearing and educating of these children, 
 especially where the parents have means; I think better of
 
 220 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 human nature than to suppose that this would generally be 
 desired by either father or mother, but these are matters 
 that could be regulated by law without much difficulty I 
 imagine. And my position remains in any case untouched by 
 these side issues ; every year that I live I become more and 
 more convinced that by affording facilities for dissolving those 
 fatal shams, which often go by the name of marriage, we best 
 vindicate the divinity of true marriage. It seems to me that 
 so far from its being in any sense demoralising to sever this 
 relation when it has become a curse, such a term ought rather 
 to be applied to a state of things which makes the commission 
 of a legal offence the only means by which such unhappy 
 couples can free themselves from a state of perpetual suffering, 
 caused perhaps by no greater fault than want of penetration, 
 prudence, or foresight.' 
 
 ' By the way,' exclaimed Sir Henry, suddenly looking 
 at his watch after the lapse of some moments, during which 
 nothing more was said on either side, ' talk of prudence and 
 foresight, we promised to be back punctually at one o'clock, 
 and it now only wants ten minutes to the hour ; give me the 
 other oar, we shall do it I believe yet ; how fortunate that 
 the tide is in our favour, we can run into the little creek 
 just below the tennis -ground, and reach the house in two 
 minutes.' 
 
 ' And you have quite got rid of the " blues," ' said the Pro- 
 fessor, looking with something almost like affection at the 
 bright, handsome face of his companion, as he insisted upon 
 taking his share of hauling up the boat at the landing- 
 place. 
 
 ' Quite ; thanks to your good company ; I believe, if the truth 
 must be told, I am grateful for having, in this instance, been 
 put utterly in the wrong. What a noble, true-hearted girl she 
 is,' he continued, after a moment's pause, ' one whose friendship 
 it would be worth spending a lifetime to win ; as for anything 
 more, I don't know what man would dare ' 
 
 ' Men have dared to woo, and more than this have won such
 
 SOME SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 221 
 
 women before to-day,' was Professor Wray's reply, to which 
 Sir Henry answered nothing, but the momentary shadow 
 passed from his face, and as they reached the house, for a 
 second the two men grasped each other's hands in silence. 
 An understanding of some sort there evidently was between 
 them.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 ' To see one half of the human race excluded by the other from all 
 participation in government is a political phenomenon which, according 
 to all abstract principles, it is impossible to explain.' TALLEYRAND. 
 
 ' Might not the presence of a few virtuous, experienced, well-educated 
 women, keep candidates for very shame from saying and doing things 
 from which they do not shrink before a crowd of men who are on the 
 average neither virtuous, experienced, or well educated, by wholesome 
 dread of that most terrible of all earthly punishments at least in the 
 eyes of a manly man the fine scorn of a noble woman ? Might not the 
 intervention of a few women who are living according to the eternal laws 
 of God, help to infuse some slightly stronger tincture of those eternal 
 laws into our legislators and their legislation ? ' 
 
 CHARLES KINGSLEY, Women and Politics, Macmillan. 
 
 ' I observe that hi a recent debate in another place and country, some 
 ridicule was occasioned by a gentleman advocating the rights of the other 
 sex to the suffrage. But as far as mere abstract reasoning is concerned, 
 I should like to see anybody get up and oppose that claim ; I say that in 
 a country governed by a woman, where you allow women to form part of 
 the other estate of the realm, I do not see, where she has so much to do 
 with Church and State, on what reasons, if you come to right, she has 
 not a right to vote.' 
 
 LORD BEACONSFIELD, Speech in the Home, April, 1866. 
 
 ' As far as I am able to judge, there is more presumptive ground for a 
 change in the law than some of the opponents of the measure are dis- 
 posed to own I cannot help thinking that for some reason or 
 
 other there are various important particulars in which women obtain 
 
 much less than justice under social arrangements I may be told 
 
 that there is no direct connexion between this and the parliamentary 
 franchise, and I admit it ; but at the same time I am by no means sure 
 that these inequalities may not have an indirect connexion with a state 
 of law in which the balance is generally cast too much against women 
 and too much in favour of men.' 
 
 W. E. GLADSTONE, Speech in the House of Commons, May 3rd, 1871. 
 
 ' I wish women had the franchise, for they would make a better use of 
 it than their husbands.' 
 
 EICHARD COBDEN, Speech in Covent Garden Theatre, Jan. 15th, 1845. 
 
 ' The responsibilities which the struggle for existence impose upon 
 women, the legal rights which make it possible to discharge those re- 
 sponsibilities, can only be effectually guaranteed by direct parliamentary 
 representation. Though the franchise, which is at once a practical and 
 logical necessity, mny be denied for some time yet by a people as illogical 
 as they boast that they are, though not always so practical as they think 
 themselves to be, its ultimate concession is certain, and not far distant.' 
 
 Daily News, April 22nd, 1884.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE. 
 
 ' As usual, you are better than your word, dear,' exclaimed 
 Mrs. Silverton, as some few days later she flew down stairs and 
 into the hall to greet her friend who had just arrived in a fly 
 from the station. ' I am glad to see you though ; we have 
 been so dull without you ; Professor Wray's locks have grown 
 perceptibly longer and thinner ; Harry's face the same ; Major 
 Knagge is pining for his chosen antagonist ; and as for our- 
 selves, like' Madame de Se'vigne', we have been " throwing the 
 days at the head of any one who wanted them, and even slept 
 in a hurry," in our impatience for your return, though I hardly 
 ventured to hope that you would be back before the end of the 
 week ; but come into the drawing-room, and we will have some 
 tea at once ; you must want it after your journey ; I shall not 
 wait for the others, they are somewhere about the place, and 
 are sure to be in before very long.' 
 
 ' Thanks, dear,' replied Madeline, returning with equal 
 warmth her friend's kiss and hand-clasp ; ' I am equally pleased 
 to get back, and shall be glad of my tea by-and-by, but I did 
 not come away without luncheon.' 
 
 ' Which being interpreted means you had a sandwich at 
 twelve o'clock ; T know you too well, you see, to be deceived. 
 Now set down in that easy chair and do as you are told with- 
 out any further protest. I must say, you seem to have thriven 
 on absence from us,' continued Mrs. Silverton, contemplating 
 her friend with eyes in which a large amount of admiration 
 and affection shone through a shade of assumed pique and dis- 
 appointment. ' What have you done to yourself] I never saw 
 you, I think, in the course of all our long lives looking so 
 bright and happy, I think, which is saying a great deal.' 
 
 Q
 
 226 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 ' I think delight at returning to Craig's Nest, to say 
 nothing of getting successfully through an ordeal, may have 
 something to do with it,' replied Madeline, laughing in sym- 
 pathy with her friend's evident good spirits. ' You know the 
 American song,' she continued, as taking off hat and gloves, 
 she leaned back in her chair, cup in hand, nothing loth to be 
 taken care of after four days of fatigue and anxiety. 
 
 ' There was a man what had a clock, 
 His name was Matthew Mears, 
 He wound it reg'lar every night 
 For four and twenty years. 
 And when this precious time-piece proved 
 An eight-day clock to be, 
 A madder man than Matthew Mears 
 You wouldn't wish to see.' 
 
 ' I do not like work of supererogation any better than Mr. 
 Meat's, and when one has nerved oneself to do a disagreeable 
 thing, it is pleasant to find it was worth doing Les on-dits 
 font la Gazette des Fous, you know ; the world, as Mrs. Candour 
 says, is so censorious, that it never does to believe hearsay in 
 such cases, and I am very glad I went.' 
 
 ' You found, in short, that Mrs. Wylde is " not so devil as 
 she is black," to quote the Portuguese version of a proverb I 
 should like to brand into the minds of some people I could 
 name you see I can quote upon occasion, too well ' 
 
 ' To make a long story short, Mrs. Wylde did not want 
 much persuasion to induce her to decide on leaving Plymouth, 
 and the horrid garrison-town gossip will soon find its level, 
 I suspect. She is coming to us in London for a time, as soon 
 as I get back ; and since Captain Wylde is going to try for a 
 home-appointment on his return next year, I think she will 
 probably take rooms or a small furnished house near us for 
 the time ; she seemed to like this idea better than any other.' 
 
 ' In fact you are a little witch, and have won her heart as 
 you do every one's, and have made her do exactly what you 
 pleased. Oh, Harry ! eaves dropping ! I am ashamed of you,'
 
 WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE. 227 
 
 Mrs. Silverton exclaimed, as having come round behind her 
 friend's chair to straighten one of the sunny braids of hair 
 which her hat had somewhat displaced, looking up she saw her 
 brother standing just within the open French window at the 
 other end of the room. ' How long have you been there, 
 please, behind my back 1 ' 
 
 ' Miss Acton will bear witness, I am sure, that I have only 
 this minute come in,' replied the person addressed, as laying 
 down his cap and racket-bat, he came forward with unmistak- 
 able pleasure to greet their guest ; ' so not having been an 
 intentional listener, please remember that I expect to hear 
 nothing but good of myself.' 
 
 * Then by way of inaugurating the expected string of com- 
 pliments,' replied Madeline, as they shook hands, ' allow me to 
 congratulate you on having so completely taken yourself off 
 the sick-list.' 
 
 ' I had no choice, you see, since my medical adviser gave 
 up the case and ran away.' 
 
 ' Madeline does not want any assurances to prove that you 
 are a very ill-used person,' said his sister ; ' her conscience 
 pricks her dreadfully, I know, that she should have allowed 
 anything else to occupy her mind. Will your nerves stand it ? ' 
 she continued, in mock anxiety, pretending to withhold from 
 his outstretched hand the cup of tea she had just poured out. 
 ' What do you think, Madeline 1 ' 
 
 ' I have occasionally met people,' replied Madeline, ' so 
 nervous that their life seems one long apology for having come 
 into existence ; one always feels so sorry for them, it must be 
 so wretched ; but I should never have thought of putting Sir 
 Henry in that list, so I really do not see why he should be 
 denied his tea.' 
 
 ' I see it is no good to depend on your support,' said Mrs. 
 Silverton ; ' but since men are always talking with more 
 or less contempt of tea as a woman's beverage, I do not 
 see why we should not keep it to ourselves, or at least give 
 it them only by special grace; I mean to have a tea-clolh
 
 228 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 embroidered in striking colours with " All Rights Reserved " 
 upon it.' 
 
 ' And yet I am sure,' said her brother, ' you would not have 
 the heart to exclude us from a rite so sacred as afternoon tea. 
 Just think how bad it would be for our morals, and what an 
 impetus to the sale of less innocent drinks ; why the Chinese 
 consider the connexion of ethics with the paraphernalia of tea- 
 drinking so intimate, that the only oath, I believe, which they 
 hold to be absolutely and irrevocably binding on their con- 
 science is that to which they pledge themselves by the break- 
 ing of a saucer.' 
 
 ' Please do not think of taking any oath while you are 
 here,' exclaimed the young matron, spreading her protecting 
 arms around the tray and such of the precious old-fashioned 
 ware (Madeline's wedding present) as remained upon it 
 
 ' " There's a joy without canker or cark, 
 
 There's a pleasure eternally new, 
 'Tis to gaze on the glaze and the mark 
 Of china that's old and that's blue." 
 
 So you do not mean to support my amendment, Madeline ; I 
 am afraid you are not true to our principles.' 
 
 'But I do not think that the "All Rights Reserved " sug- 
 gestion would be true to our principles,' was the reply. ' What 
 we want is to share, not monopolise privileges, to claim more 
 would be to set a very bad example.' 
 
 ' To follow it, you mean, dear ; has not the other half of the 
 race from time immemorial required us to submit to as justice 
 their approbation of all the chief civil and political rights. 
 Oh, thank you, auntie,' to Miss Wynter and Mrs. Knagge, who 
 had just entered the room; 'I hope you enjoyed your walk ; 
 it was good of you to think of calling at the post-office.' 
 
 ' What is that formidable document ? ' inquired Sir Henry, 
 as his sister opened a large sheet of blue foolscap ; ' it looks 
 suspiciously like some legal business, a parliamentary petition, 
 or something equally troublesome.'
 
 WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE. 229 
 
 ' You are not far wrong ; read it if you like.' 
 ' Thanks ; oh, I see 
 
 " To THE HONOURABLE THE COMMONS OF GREAT BRITAIN AND 
 IRELAND IN PARLIAMENT ASSEMBLED. 
 
 " The Humble Petition of the Undersigned Sheweth 
 
 " That in the judgment of your Petitioners the Parlia- 
 mentary Franchise should be extended to women who 
 possess the qualifications which enable men to vote, and 
 who in all matters of local government have the right of 
 voting. 
 
 " "Wherefore your Petitioners humbly pray that your 
 Honourable House will pass a measure to remove the 
 Electoral Disabilities of Women. 
 
 " And your Petitioners will ever pray," &c. 
 
 " Should women sit in Parliament, 
 
 A thing unprecedented, 
 A great part of the nation then 
 Would be miss-represented." ' 
 
 went on Sir Henry solemnly, as though his epigram made 
 part of the contents of the document in his hand. 
 
 ' But we are not talking about sitting in Parliament,' re- 
 plied his sister. 
 
 ' No, I know ; not at present, but how long will it be 
 before you do 1 ? This petition,' he continued, turning it over 
 in his hand, ' is moderate enough in its demands, at first sight 
 at least ; but, my dear, how many people in these regions do you 
 think you will get to sign it 1 ' 
 
 'All the sensible ones that I ask, beginning with you.' 
 
 ' With me ! Oh no ; this signing of petitions is far too 
 serious a matter to be done off-hand ; I don't know that the 
 majority of women themselves want the suffrage, nor what 
 those who do desire it are going to gain by it ; in fact, I 
 must look into the stibject a great deal more than I have 
 done yet, before I commit myself to any definite course of 
 action.'
 
 230 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 ' I should think from your extreme caution that you were a 
 Member of the Government already. I always notice that 
 Members in office and out of office are altogether different 
 beings ; in the one case so brave in the statement of their 
 opinions, so generous in assurances of what they would do 
 when in power, so daring, so active, so full of resource ; in 
 the other so cautious, so reserved, so afraid of taking any 
 steps towards many needed reforms, for fear of endangering 
 their party.' 
 
 ' Whence this severity ? Because the Government of most 
 countries has hitherto been composed almost exclusively of 
 men 1 ? I can quite believe that women would be more ven- 
 turesome, but is it not better for the ship of State that pru- 
 dence should hold the helm, even although it may lead for 
 the time to the toleration of certain abuses, than that a 
 Government should make shipwreck of good and bad together ? 
 Do you not think so 1 ' he asked, turning to Madeline. 
 
 ' No doubt ; but still I think there is a medium between 
 the two extremes, and it is possible that this might be found 
 in the combined action of men and women.' 
 
 ' You mean that men being naturally slower and more 
 indolent, women might act as a spur and stimulus to counteract 
 our over-caution ? ' 
 
 ' Possibly. You know under present conditions what a 
 time it takes to move the cumbrous machinery of State to any 
 effect, you know the way in which evils are allowed to exist 
 age after age unchecked, the interminable arguing to none 
 effect which occupies at least half the time of the House of 
 Commons, the circumlocution, the red-tape, the officialism 
 which rules public business everywhere ; does not this all make 
 it probable that the more active impulses of women would be 
 politically useful in rousing men's consciences and feelings on 
 many points ? The ship of State you speak of would make 
 more satisfactory progress, I think, with less ballast and more 
 sail. There are always two sides to be looked at, are there not, 
 in all questions political as well as social, and until the united
 
 WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE. 231 
 
 faculties of men and women are brought to bear upon both, I 
 do not think you can get a complete view ; certainly as things 
 stand at present we have no claim to the possession of a 
 representative government.' 
 
 ' If, as no doubt is the case, you have read the sixth satire 
 of Juvenal, you will probably remember the terrible fiasco 
 which resulted from the struggle of women for emancipation.' 
 
 ' Yes,' said Madeline, ' I have read it, but I do not think 
 you can take a satire or a political lampoon, and argue from it 
 as if it were a matter of historical truth ; even amongst the 
 ancients the denial to women of political rights was thought 
 by some writers so palpable an anomaly that they were com- 
 pelled to invent fables to account for it, like that of Neptune 
 and Minerva.' 
 
 ' I do not recollect it.' 
 
 ' The story, which is, I believe, imputed to Varro, says that 
 when Cecrops was building Athens, Minerva and Neptune 
 disputed for the honour of giving it a name. Athene carried 
 her point by a majority of one, upon which Neptune in re- 
 venge overflowed and laid waste Attica, and was only pro- 
 pitiated on a decree being passed that women should never 
 be allowed to vote, and that no child should ever bear its 
 mother's name.' 
 
 ' Those ancient fables are, some of them, very much to the 
 point,' said Sir Henry ; ' but to come down to more modern writers 
 in support of the theory of women's non-fitness for Govern- 
 ment, have you read Paul de Kock's Madame Pantalon, or 
 Besant's Revolt of Man ? They neither of them give a very 
 inviting picture of the result of feminine supremacy.' 
 
 ' Both these authors draw a very ingenious and amusing 
 but none the less a fancy portrait of what women desire, which 
 is not political supremacy, but only some approximation to 
 equal civil rights. The authors you name have evidently only 
 skimmed the surface of this subject, while thinking that they 
 have sounded its depths, but they are like one-eyed people 
 trying to describe a round object when they have seen but
 
 232 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 one side of it. In the Revolt of Man, for instance, women are 
 represented as banishing men altogether from the arena of 
 life, and both in public and private affairs seizing the supreme 
 authority and monopolising power in just the very way we have 
 been protesting against as wrong in any section of the com- 
 munity, whether composed of men or women, nobles or pro- 
 letaires.' 
 
 ' Well,' replied Sir Henry, < as I have said more than once, 
 I am open to conviction if you can prove your theories to be 
 practical and practicable; you will not, I am sure, expect me to 
 promise more.' 
 
 ' No, I think you are quite right not to sign this petition 
 until you have thoroughly examined the subject ; I cannot 
 understand the indifference to political questions affected by 
 some persons ; surely what influences the life and growth of a 
 nation ought to be a matter of some importance to every in- 
 dividual composing it ; I would much rather have to deal with 
 hesitation than hear men say promptly, as they do sometimes, 
 " I don't know much about this women's suffrage and I care 
 less, but I could not think of disobliging a lady, I will sign 
 the paper by all means." ' 
 
 ' Just as if one were a child,' exclaimed Mrs. Silverton, with 
 some contempt, ' to be humoured in its idle fancies, and not a 
 reasonable human being asking for a privilege which it is an 
 outrage on all consistency and justice to refuse. But I am 
 glad that you are ready, Harry, to fairly examine the subject 
 at any rate, if you do no more.' 
 
 ' So am I,' replied Madeline, ' for I always find that our 
 chief opponents are those who have never given the question 
 any really serious consideration ; so however valiantly and 
 persistently you may fight against us, Sir Henry, we shall not 
 despair of your ultimate conversion ; perhaps you have never 
 heard that one of the ablest advocates and warmest supporters 
 of women's claim to the suffrage in America first became con- 
 vinced of its wisdom and justice by trying to write against it ; 
 when he began to weigh his own arguments in the balance he
 
 WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE. 233 
 
 found them wanting in logic, and then he thought it was time 
 to see whether the same could be said for those on the other 
 side, the consequence being well I think the only natural 
 one under the circumstances.' 
 
 ' I can quite understand,' said Sir Henry, ' that with your 
 culture, holding such an independent position, and taking such 
 a keen interest in politics as you do, that you should feel 
 warmly upon this subject ; in fact, if the question were one of 
 giving you personally the franchise I should not hesitate a 
 moment. ' 
 
 ' I am sure Madeline is actuated by no such low motives as 
 mere personal interest,' said his sister, indignantly, 'it is a 
 question of abstract justice.' 
 
 ' I have heard lawyers declare that there is no such thing 
 as abstract justice.' 
 
 ' I am not surprised, for if anything would make a man 
 doubt the existence of justice in the abstract, I think it would 
 be a legal training and career.' 
 
 'I know better than to cross swords with you, my dear, 
 when you are in that mood,' replied Sir Henry, laughing, 'but,' 
 he continued, turning to Miss Acton, ' with those who assert 
 that the denial of the franchise to women is inconsistent and 
 unjust, rests the burden of proving it so.' 
 
 ' Certainly ; and in the first place is it not as unjust to 
 deny political rights to any individual for the mere accident of 
 her having been born a girl instead of a boy, as to let the 
 question of a man's skin being black or white determine his 
 lifelong freedom or slavery ? So long as household suffrage 
 is the law of the land, is it not a distinct injustice to create 
 artificial distinctions between persons who equally fulfil the 
 conditions qualifying for electoral power 1 With us the 
 only basis of political right is the possession of a certain 
 amount of property, the payment of rates and taxes ; is it con- 
 sistent then that women who possess this property, who pay 
 these taxes, should be excluded 1 Is it right that where burdens 
 are imposed, as in the ratepaying clauses of certain Acts, the
 
 234 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 term He should be made to apply to women-householders (or, 
 to quote the choice language of our legislature, words im- 
 porting the masculine gender were deemed and taken to in- 
 clude females*), whereas in those clauses of the same Acts con- 
 ferring the privileges avowedly offered as an equivalent, the 
 term He is made to exclude the same women-householders. 
 Is it not unjust that any Government should, for the expenses of 
 a country, drain money from the pockets of women, and at the 
 same time refuse them a voice in the Government of that 
 country ; that women should be weighted, in short, with the 
 burdens of citizenship and denied its privileges ? It would, at 
 least, be only fair that they should have the choice either to be 
 released from tax - paying, or be allowed the vote to which 
 taxation entitles them ; if under these circumstances they chose 
 the former as, no doubt many women-householders would do, 
 there would then, I grant you, be no cause of complaint ; but 
 as matters stand a burden is imposed, whilst the equivalent 
 privilege obtained by all men is, in the case of women, denied. 
 Is it fair that the intelligent, thoughtful, active-minded of the 
 one sex should be shut out where the degraded, drunken, 
 ruffianly of the other, may, when he possesses the requisite 
 property-qualification, vote without question 1 I must say I 
 think it is difficult to see any logical grounds by which the 
 ignorant and vulgar are thus often placed above the educated, 
 thoughtful, and refined.' 
 
 ' I should not say,' replied Sir Henry, ' that the burdens of 
 a State consist only of paying rates and taxes, there are other 
 exertions by which a State is upheld that are equally im- 
 portant ; it may be that women contribute their full share of 
 these, but in any case is the vote after all such a very great 
 privilege ? ' 
 
 'It appears to me that men think it so,' said Mrs. 
 Silverton. ' What is the right to property without the right 
 to protect it ? ' 
 
 ' I think,' said Madeline, ' I have heard you in speaking of 
 * Interpretation Clause. Public Health Act, 1848.
 
 WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE. 235 
 
 the county franchise call it a hardship that so many intelligent 
 men should for so long have had nothing to do with taxation 
 except to pay, no voice in the laws they were compelled to 
 obey, and is it not equally hard for women? A man may always 
 hope to work his way up to being in a position to claim the 
 franchise on the strength of his 101. or 121. rating, but a 
 woman, however hard she may labour with hands or head, 
 however much money she may earn or inherit, however vivid 
 an interest she may take in politics, however keen an in- 
 telligence she may bring to bear upon them, though as land- 
 lord or tenant she is fulfilling the very duties which entitle a 
 man to vote, she is for ever held incompetent to share with 
 him the common duty of citizenship, and this, when it is the 
 avowed principle of our constitution that taxation and re- 
 presentation are correlatives.' * 
 
 ' Hear, hear,' said Professor Wray, who had just entered 
 the room, followed by Mr. Silvertoii and Major Knagge, ' I am 
 glad to find a good cause so ably advocated.' 
 
 ' It is all of no avail however,' said Mrs. Silverton, ' we 
 want your help to bring my brother to a right way of thinking 
 upon this question of women's suffrage.' 
 
 ' Indeed ; but perhaps his opposition is less real than 
 assumed for the purpose of drawing out such powers of debate 
 as I have been listening to for the last few minutes, I do not 
 think either you or Miss Acton require any help from me in 
 argument ; but I do not, for my part, see how it can logically 
 be denied that this principle of taxation and representation 
 being co-extensive practically covers the claim of women to be 
 represented ; so long as there is no male and female rate of 
 taxation, it is unreasonable that in the question of voting sex 
 should be made a disability, the result being that a large 
 amount of property in the kingdom is practically disfranchised 
 and unrepresented.' 
 
 ' It seems to me,' said Mrs. Silverton, ' that the people who 
 
 * [This anomaly is rendered yet more striking since the passing of the 
 new Franchise Act. ED.]
 
 236 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 oppose women's suffrage must be either wilfully ignorant or 
 else wanting in the Englishman's proverbial love of fair play. 
 I was reading the report of an old debate the other day where 
 in reply to a proposition that any one who had been once 
 under sentence of penal servitude should be held during the 
 rest of his life incapable of voting, Mr. Gladstone objected on 
 the ground that a citizen ought not to bear for life the brand 
 of electoral incapacity. I thought I should very nmch have 
 liked to ask why citizens who have committed no crime, unless 
 womanhood be counted one, should " have to bear through life 
 the brand of electoral incapacity." A lunatic may in a lucid 
 interval be held capable of voting, but we have no lucid in- 
 tervals ; a stupid or ignorant boy as soon as he comes of age, 
 supposing he possesses the property-qualification, may claim his 
 vote, but we, as every one knows, never grow up, our under- 
 standings are always infantile, a woman of forty is politically as 
 much an infant as a girl of four.' 
 
 ' There is no doubt,' said Professor Wray, ' that this 
 political ostracism of women which allows them no voice in the 
 imposition of taxes on their property, in the framing of laws 
 which intimately affect their lives, liberties, and happiness, is 
 more widely reaching in its injustice than is generally sup- 
 posed ; in the case, for instance, of a bribery commission where 
 a borough has been found guilty of corrupt practices, women- 
 householders have to pay their share of the expenses, which are 
 practically a fine incurred by those amongst whom no woman 
 is numbered. There is another case in which the want of a 
 vote presses more heavily still, I think, and that is upon 
 women-farmers who, through not possessing the franchise, are 
 unable to get long leases, and have, therefore, very great 
 difficulty in making their land productive. I know of one 
 instance, for example, where upon a single estate no less than 
 seven widows were ejected who, if they had possessed a vote, 
 would have been allowed to retain their farms.' 
 
 ' I heard, 1 said Madeline, ' only last month of a very sad 
 but I am afraid not uncommon case of this description. The
 
 WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE. 237 
 
 occupier of a large farm in the midland counties died, and his 
 widow, who was a woman of some ability and energy, determined 
 for the sake of her young children to turn to advantage the 
 experience gained during her husband's illness, and to spare no 
 effort which might make the farm at least as profitable as it 
 had been in his time. She succeeded beyond her expectations, 
 and it was, therefore, with the utmost dismay that on applying 
 for a renewal of her lease she was told that the place she loved 
 so well, the home of her early married life, the birthplace of 
 her children, in which they all took such pride and pleasure, 
 could be her's no longer ; in fact, that she must leave as soon as 
 possible. Nearly heartbroken at the thought, and not 
 knowing which way to turn, she sought an interview with the 
 landlord himself, and entreated him to tell her what she had 
 done to be so hardly us'ed " Is not the farm," she asked, " if 
 anything, in better condition than when it came into my hands 
 two years ago 1 " He was obliged to acknowledge that this was 
 the case. "Have not I paid my rent regularly 1 ?" "Yes." 
 " Then what have I done that I should be turned out ] " 
 " Nothing," replied the landlord, looking half ashamed, " I 
 have not a word to say against you, but but the fact is there 
 will be an election shortly, and it is most important that I 
 should have a tenant who is able to support my interests." 
 And so this poor woman has been turned adrift, and I think 
 it is very possible may end her days in the Union, since she has 
 been unable to obtain another farm for the same reason that 
 lost her this one, not that she is ignorant of her business, or 
 is an incapable, unworthy, or useless member of society, but 
 solely and simply because she has not the right to a vote.' 
 
 ' I have heard of many similar cases,' said Professor Wray, 
 'and I must say I should have thought Gladstone, after the 
 speech he once made recognising this very hardship, would 
 have taken up the question of women's suffrage more warmly ; 
 for, as a matter of justice, the case seems to me too clear to be 
 disputed ; and as a matter of expediency I maintain that it is 
 no less so.'
 
 238 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 ' I do not deny,' replied Sir Henry, ' that you have used 
 some strong arguments in proof of the justice of your claim, 
 but I do not think its expediency is equally clear.' 
 
 ' Name any difficulties that suggest themselves to you, I 
 venture to say they will vanish on a fair examination.' 
 
 ' In the first place, you claim, I believe, the right of voting 
 only for widows and spinsters, now does it not seem to you 
 a marked unfairness to the majority to create marriage thus 
 a disability 1 Have not married ladies and would-be married 
 men under these circumstances a just right to complain 1 ' 
 
 ' I do not think so,' said Madeline, ' the married and single 
 are not different classes, a higher status for single women must 
 in its reflex influence benefit all wives, since the disqualification 
 then would be one, not of sex, but simply of circumstances ; 
 women-householders would fairly represent those not qualified 
 by law to vote, whereas the disqualification being made 
 one of sex alone is a sort of disparagement to womanhood 
 generally.' 
 
 ' It seems to me,' said Mr. Silverton, ' that this question of 
 the suffrage owes its chief importance to the fact that it is 
 the admission of a principle which must change the whole 
 position of women for the better, educationally and socially, 
 quite as much as in a mere political sense ; a vote may matter 
 little to any individual woman, and yet be of the most vital in- 
 terest to the class she represents.' 
 
 ' Before the passing of the last Married Women's Property 
 Act,' said the Professor, ' enabling all wives to hold their own, 
 and sue and be sued independently, I should have endorsed 
 what you say, and been content to claim the vote for spinsters 
 and widows only, waiting for an alteration in the marriage-laws, 
 and feeling certain that sooner or later married women 
 must receive equal justice, but I can see no valid reason 
 now for a distinction, which seems to me neither just nor de- 
 fensible.' 
 
 ' Except,' said Mr. Silverton, ' that to include them would 
 make the question of women's suffrage less acceptable to the
 
 WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE. 239 
 
 House ; I believe if the enfranchisement of married women 
 were passed, we should lose many of our chief parliamentary 
 supporters, both amongst Liberals and Conservatives ; to 
 demand more at present would only be to increase opposition.' 
 
 ' Naturally,' said Sir Henry ; ' it would augment the 
 difficulties in the way of granting the franchise to women 
 tenfold ; any man, for instance, might by assigning a house 
 or cottage, or piece of land to his wife, make her a fagot-voter 
 and so double his own power.' 
 
 ' Is it necessary that she should on all occasions vote with 
 him 1 ?' asked his sister. 
 
 ' And if not, what then 1 Her whole vote would neutralise 
 his, and he becomes practically disfranchised.' 
 
 ' In dealing with the question of fagot- votes,' said Professor 
 Wray, ' such a contingency would no doubt have to be con- 
 sidered, if they are right, then there is no reason why a man 
 should not assign real property to his wife as much as to a 
 friend or supporter whose vote he wishes to gain ; if they are 
 not right then the system of fagot-votes should be altogether 
 abolished, and as regai'ds the fear of rousing increased oppo- 
 sition, a temporary policy is scarcely worthy, I think, of a just 
 cause.' 
 
 ' I quite agree with you,' said Mrs. Silverton, ' if we lost 
 some half-hearted supporters by including married women in 
 our claim, we should gain others who being lovers of con- 
 sistency are now holding aloof ; if marriage is such a crushing 
 proof of imbecility that the only course is to disfranchise a 
 woman as soon as she becomes a wife, then surely the partner 
 in her guilt should share her punishment.' 
 
 ' If you feel so strongly on this point, my dear,' said her 
 brother, ' why are you giving all your energies to supporting a 
 movement which certainly, according to the wording of this 
 petition, does not include married women ] It especially 
 demands the suffrage only for those women who " in all 
 matters of local government have the right of voting," and 
 seeing that the question as to whether married women paying
 
 240 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 rates and taxes might vote at municipal elections was decided 
 in the negative by the Court of Queen's Bench so far back as 
 1872, it is clear that they are to have no part in your scheme.' 
 
 ' Perhaps not at first,' said Madeline ; ' I see from your 
 point of view there is a certain want of consistency in the 
 manner of our petition, but there is a homely proverb which 
 says that " half a loaf is better than no bread," and when once 
 single women-householders have the franchise it will not be 
 long withheld, I think, from married women who are the 
 possessors of real property; but before any married woman 
 could be entitled to vote, lawyers say, I believe, that special 
 legislation having reference to the marriage status would have 
 to take place.' 
 
 ' It only shows what crooked and onesided things men's 
 ideas of justice have made in the shape of laws that this should 
 be necessary,' said Mrs. Silverton. 
 
 ' Very true,' said her husband, ' but do not annihilate me, 
 I had nothing to do with it. It does seem unfair,' he con- 
 tinued, putting down the newspaper which he had raised in 
 pretended alarm as a shelter from his wife's indignant glance, 
 ' it does seem unfair that the wife whose property or labour 
 helps to keep up the house and pay the rates and taxes should 
 not have either a joint or separate vote; but the object, I take 
 it, of the women's suffrage advocates is to obtain the greatest 
 possible amount of good with the smallest possible amount of 
 disturbance, and even though the granting a vote to married 
 women may be long delayed I do not think it need be con- 
 sidered so very great a hardship, for where a married woman 
 cares much about politics, in nine cases out of ten her 
 husband's vote represents her views.' 
 
 'Mr. Silver-ton's opinions on this subject,' said his wife, 
 with the serio-comic air which was her nearest approach to 
 solemnity, ' are not unworthy of attention, he is in excellent 
 training you perceive, and quite agrees with that sensible old 
 man who, when asked on the eve of an election for whom he 
 meant to vote, replied, " I dunno, I must ask my old lass."
 
 WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE. 241 
 
 "Your old lass! what has she to do with it?" asked his 
 friend, " ain't you the head ? " "Maybe, but she's the neck, 
 and seemin' to me, 'tis the neck as turns the head.'" 
 
 ' Women are always making fools of men,' growled Major 
 Knagge behind his newspaper, ' there's no doubt about that.' 
 
 ' Nature so often forestalls them, I think,' said Mrs. 
 Silverton in an aside to her brother, ' that they have very 
 little chance.' 
 
 'You deserve to be pinched,' he whispered, with difficulty 
 suppressing any signs of amusement which might call attention 
 to words that would possibly appear personal. ' That is what 
 I always say,' he added aloud, ' good and intelligent women 
 have plenty of influence already without seeking it in the 
 franchise.' 
 
 ' So have all good and intelligent men,' said Madeline, ' but 
 I never heard that made an argument against giving them the 
 suffrage ; it would be a very short-sighted policy thus to lose 
 the votes of the ablest and most useful among them, and is it 
 not the same in the case of women 1 ? ' 
 
 ' I don't know,' replied Sir Henry, ' I am rather inclined 
 to think that all things considered women have more than 
 their fair share of power already, that (as Demosthenes 
 discovered long ago) measures which a statesman has pondered 
 over a whole year may be upset in one day by a woman's 
 influence.' 
 
 'And what sort of influence is this? Your argument, I 
 think, is in favour of direct representation, not against it ; for 
 in the case of a thoughtful, conscientious woman, the extension 
 of her influence will be for the benefit of every one, with a less 
 scrupulous it would tend to endow her with a juster sense of 
 her duties and responsibilities, not only in social but in civil 
 life. Indirect influence, power without responsibility, are not 
 on any grounds desirable, and this is all that women so far 
 have been allowed to have in political matters.' 
 
 ' You are quite right,' said the Professor, ' where a woman 
 rules by an appeal to the reason, not to the emotions, her 
 
 R
 
 242 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 influence is of the same quality exactly as that possessed by an 
 able man, and is equally good; but the result of her influence 
 in public affairs having been mostly indirect and irresponsible 
 is that it has been considered quite legitimate for her to work 
 upon a man's feelings inducing him to act oftentimes against 
 his convictions, and seeing that the noblest of their sex would 
 scorn to avail themselves of such influence as this, power has 
 more often than not fallen into the hands of those least worthy 
 to exercise it. Let women once recognise their Responsibility 
 in political affairs, let them exercise the suffrage, let them feel 
 that they have public duties, and soon, I am convinced, the 
 whole tone of the nation will be raised by the sense of respon- 
 sibility, the widened political views of those who more often 
 than not rule its rulers.' 
 
 ' We always hear a great many pretty speeches,' said Mrs. 
 Silverton, ' upon Woman's (with a capital letter) Woman's 
 gentle influence, her vast and far-reaching power over men ; it 
 is an odd thing that with all this she has not yet in any part 
 of the world succeeded in obtaining equal laws.' 
 
 ' She has not often,' said Sir Henry, ' seriously tried ; has 
 very rarely looked, in fact, beyond personal interests and 
 surroundings.' 
 
 ' Then it is high time she should,' said his sister; ' although 
 you have been soothing us to sleep for so many centuries, if 
 you would only see things justly, you ought to be glad even 
 for your own sakes that we are beginning to open our eyes and 
 look about us at last.' 
 
 ' I think if women want anything more than they have,' 
 said Miss Wynter, ' there are quite enough feminine and 
 legitimate ways of obtaining it without agitation, there are 
 influences higher than mere political wire-pulling.' 
 
 ' I am afraid Miss Wynter thinks,' said Sir Henry, ' like 
 some one I read of the other day, that men must be amused 
 somehow to keep them out of mischief, but that while politics 
 offer a harmless and tolerably quiet occupation for grown up 
 boys, they are not worth serious attention.'
 
 WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE. 243 
 
 ' By no means,' replied the old lady, with polite gravity, 
 ' I only say that politics are unbefitting a woman, I have 
 observed that wherever they meddle with them they are 
 almost sure to cause some mischief.' 
 
 * Irresponsibility again,' said Professor Wray ; ' so long as 
 women are told that they have nothing to do with public 
 matters, so long will those who in their ordinary life would 
 scorn to do a dishonourable thing, yet not hesitate to control 
 unfairly the votes of their tradespeople, tenants, or dependents, 
 so long will they be animated by personal considerations in 
 short rather than public spirit, with the natural result that 
 their influence instead of being beneficial is often injurious. 
 It is here that the educating power of the franchise comes in, 
 it gives that sense of trust and responsibility which must 
 hinder any conscientious person from indirect or crooked 
 courses, or from subordinating the general welfare to mere 
 private ends. It is no wonder that women's tact has so often 
 developed into manceuvering, not to say deceit, when those 
 whose opinion they rely on have habitually told them that 
 indirect influence answers best with them, that the less they 
 seem to claim the more they will get, that their strength lies 
 in appearing weaker than they really are. It is quite a different 
 and much more wholesome influence than that of a Vivien, 
 a Delilah, an Omphale, that women who claim the suffrage 
 seek.' 
 
 ' I am inclined,' said Mr. Silverton, ' to doubt the universal 
 application of this " noble - education - of - English - politics "- 
 theory, I am afraid more often than not they lead men rather 
 into blind partisanship than into habits of philosophic thought, 
 or to a practical turn of mind. We see frightful examples of 
 this occasionally, especially in the party which happens for the 
 moment to be in opposition to the Government, with diminished 
 power; it seems to a great extent to throw off any strong sense 
 of responsibility, all political morality and consistency being 
 for the time subordinated to the one object, viz., the discomfiture 
 of the administration. This remark, however, is merely by the
 
 244 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 way, and has nothing to do with the question of giving the 
 suffrage to women of property, there I am entirely of your 
 opinion, but with this one exception, I must say I should like 
 to see the franchise more limited rather than extended. 
 What has the extension of the franchise, for instance, done for 
 Ireland 1 ?' 
 
 ' Without it, I have no doubt,' replied Professor Wray, 
 ' that the country would have been even more unmanageable 
 than it is at present. A Government which rests upon forces 
 that have no natural outlet is in a dangerous predicament, for 
 these forces are liable at any moment to break forth to its 
 overthrow. When an election means not the will of the whole 
 people, but of a favoured class, we may be sure that sooner or 
 later explosive elements will be stirred up, and prove all the 
 more violent and dangerous for having been long latent. 
 When " Brer Fox, he lay low ", you recollect, it always boded 
 mischief.' 
 
 ' You are an advocate for universal suffrage then ? ' 
 
 'To this extent, that I think every law-abiding citizen, 
 whether man or woman, who has reached the age of twenty-one 
 years, who can read and write, and possesses a few rudimentary 
 ideas upon leading political questions, has a right to demand 
 the privilege of citizenship ; and in regard to the educational 
 power of the franchise, I maintain that the consciousness of 
 having to record their vote must, in the majority of cases, lead 
 people to feel the responsibilities of citizenship, make them 
 desire to learn something about the laws of their country, its 
 constitution and its customs, and to be more inclined to take 
 the side of law and order, than when they are permitted, 
 nay encouraged, to live in carelessness respecting all these 
 things.' 
 
 ' But, but, my dear sir,' said Major Knagge, who for the 
 last quarter of an hour had been absorbed by the attractions of 
 the Sporting and Dramatic News, ' you must not forget that 
 if er you encourage the weaker sex to meddle in politics, 
 you bring a new element of er dissension into every house-
 
 WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE. 245 
 
 hold, for women will be sure to take the opposite side to their 
 husbands, just to show their independence.' 
 
 ' That theory,' said Professor Wray, 'followed out to its 
 logical conclusion, would not only deny women a vote, but 
 keep them from being allowed even to think independently ; 
 in fact, at this rate, the Indian squaw or the Eastern odalisque 
 is the woman most fitted to make a man happy.' 
 
 ' I think,' said Mrs. Silverton, ' that it will be a most 
 excellent think for men themselves, at least for such as are 
 disposed to be overbearing, when the State acknowledges that 
 the being they have been in the habit of looking upon as a 
 mere cipher in political matters, is recognised as holding a 
 place at least as important as their own.' 
 
 ' But a great many men,' said her husband, ' do recognise in- 
 dependence of thought and opinion in the women of their family.' 
 
 ' I am sure of that,' said Madeline ; ' and I do not see why 
 differences need necessarily cause discord, why a quiet or even 
 a warm discussion should imply enmity ; it is not so in the 
 case of father and son, brother and brother.' 
 
 ' They are not, I consider, parallel cases ; with all due de- 
 ference to the ladies present,' said Major Knagge, ' it is no use 
 to deny the fact that women are er less tolerant naturally, 
 more bigoted and positive than men.' 
 
 ' I do not think that,' replied Professor Wray, ' except 
 where their minds have been narrowed by a mistaken system 
 of education ; but even were they more naturally overbearing, 
 more anxious to coerce those from whom they differ than we 
 are, I cannot see that this would justify the keeping them 
 always in leading-strings ; why the mind and judgment of one 
 sane adult human being should be put into the keeping of 
 another I cannot conceive.' 
 
 ' Certainly not,' said Sir Henry ; ' but supposing, if I may 
 venture on the assumption, supposing a wife is a bigoted Con- 
 servative, and her husband an equally staunch Liberal, would 
 not her possession of a joint or independent vote place them 
 in a somewhat awkward position 1 '
 
 246 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 'So it seems rather an uncomfortable state of things,' 
 replied Madeline, ' when the wife is a strict Roman Catholic, 
 her husband, we will say, an Unitarian ; they are not likely to 
 find a church whose ritual and teaching is a convenient 
 mixture of the two. There are princesses, as some writer says, 
 whose religious convictions are kept in solution, as it were, to 
 be precipitated when the particular belief professed by the 
 prince they are about to marry has been clearly ascertained ; 
 but it would be thought the grossest tyranny to keep any 
 ordinary woman from giving outward expression to her re- 
 ligious faith, even though it might happen to differ from that 
 of her husband, and yet this is just what is done in politics.' 
 
 ' If people are indifferent or easy -going,' said Mrs. Silver- 
 ton, ' they will probably agree to differ ; he will attend his 
 church, she will keep to her's ; he will vote for one party, she 
 will vote for the other, all the time keeping up a perfectly 
 good understanding ; if the one is in earnest, the other indif- 
 ferent, the latter will most likely fall gradually into a sort of 
 acquiescence in the views of the former ; and if they are natu- 
 rally quarrelsome, you may be very sure they will not wait for 
 politics to start them.' 
 
 ' But how if they are both very much in earnest, taking a 
 deep interest in all political and religious questions ] ' asked Sir 
 Henry. 
 
 ' In this case surely it must be madness on the part of 
 either,' said Madeline, ' to marry one with whom it would be 
 impossible to agree.' 
 
 ' Exactly,' said Professor Wray, seeing that Sir Henry was 
 silent and looked unusually serious ; ' if husband and wife are 
 agreed, you gain nothing by depriving the wife of a vote ; if 
 they are not agreed, then she is the victim of gross injustice in 
 being deprived of the independent opinion to which she has 
 surely as much right as her husband. But we are drifting 
 from the point at issue, the question at present under dis- 
 cussion is the claim of single women who possess certain 
 property qualifications.'
 
 WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE. 247 
 
 * But,' said Miss Wynter, ' I do not think the majority of 
 women are inclined to sympathise with any such claim.' 
 
 'The thoughtless majority I grant are not, and why] 
 Because in political matters, having been taught not to think 
 for themselves, but to rely upon the opinions of some male 
 friend or relative, they naturally have no confidence in their 
 own judgment or powers ; while dreading above all things to be 
 thought unconventional, they give some colour of truth to the 
 assertion of Voltaire, that ideas, like beards, are things 
 mostly denied to women and young men.' 
 
 ' The women disclaimers of any desire for political freedom,' 
 said Mrs. Silverton, ' ought to be put in the same category as 
 those of Utah, who signed petitions for legalising polygamy ; 
 or the inmates of an Eastern harem, who pity us for having 
 to appear unveiled, and assert that their own secluded and 
 frivolous life is the only desirable or proper one. I don't 
 believe in them any more than in those unfortunate soldiers who, 
 when it was proposed to abolish flogging in the army, were 
 said to have "no objection to flogging."' 
 
 ' For my part/ said Major Knagge, ' if women were to get 
 the right of voting to-morrow, I do not believe most of them 
 would exercise it.' 
 
 ' Which would only prove the more conclusively,' said Pro- 
 fessor Wray, ' their need of greater freedom and development ; 
 so far from making the indifference and opposition of such 
 women an argument against the suffrage, you might just as 
 reasonably urge that because the masses are ignorant of the 
 laws of health we should not concern ourselves about sanitary 
 matters.' 
 
 ' I am afraid,' said Madeline, ' that a great many literary 
 women and others, though they sympathise with us, yet have 
 not the moral courage openly to advocate what they secretly 
 believe in, because from opponents on all sides they hear such 
 advocacy stigmatised as ungraceful and unfeminine.' 
 
 ' I must acknowledge,' said Sir Henry, ' I have always 
 thought myself that this claim to the franchise -represents the
 
 248 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 wishes of only a very small minority ; that it is not only the 
 silly and ignorant who are indifferent, but that a great many 
 sensible women care nothing at all about it.' 
 
 ' A large and daily increasing number of women/ replied 
 Mrs. Silverton, ' are answering most emphatically that they do 
 care. What else is proved by the huge meetings in London, 
 Edinburgh, Manchester, Glasgow, Birmingham, Bristol, and 
 other large cities ? What else is meant by the petitions yearly 
 presented to Parliament signed by thousands of women-house- 
 holders and others, in every rank of life and in all parts of the 
 country, entreating that justice may be granted them 1 ? Would 
 women have done this if they had not cared for a vote 1 ' 
 
 ' Oh,' said Major Knagge, ' it is only the ultra strong- 
 minded women who like making a stir, and so over-persuade 
 the others to think it something very fine to clamour for their 
 rights.' 
 
 ' If by " strong-minded," ' said Professor Wray, ' you mean 
 practical, sensible, self-reliant women, I do not see that these 
 qualities unfit any one for the duties of citizenship, rather the 
 contrary ; and it cannot be denied that the advocates of 
 women's suffrage have from the first had in their ranks not 
 the empty-headed, the narrow-minded, the ignorant, but some 
 of the most thoughtful and intelligent of their sex ; of those, in 
 short, whose voice best deserves to be heard, intellectual 
 women, self-supporting women, philanthropic and benevolent 
 women, such as Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Mrs. Norton, 
 Mary Howitt, Harriet Martineau, Mrs. Grote, Mrs. Gaskell, 
 Mrs. Somerville, Mrs. Jameson, Mary Cowden Clarke, Mary 
 Carpenter, Frances Power Cobbe, Miss Thackeray, Edith 
 Simcox, and many others, all of whom have publicly testified 
 their sympathy with the movement.' 
 
 ' Miss Austen throughout her works, too,' said Madeline, 
 ' showed regret at many circumstances in the education and 
 position of women ; Lady Morgan passionately advocated the 
 claims of her sex to reform ; while Mrs. Siddons, though the 
 idol of society, hoped " that there might be hereafter some
 
 WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE. 249 
 
 world where justice would be done to women." If any of these 
 were alive now I do not think there is a doubt as to the scale 
 into which their influence would be cast.' 
 
 ' Are you sure about Mrs. Somerville ? ' asked Sir Henry. 
 
 ' Quite ; she regularly signed petitions to Parliament for 
 the suffrage, and indeed was, I believe, up to the day of her 
 death a member of the General Committee of the Woman's 
 Suffrage Society.'* 
 
 ' On the other hand,' said Major Knagge, ' there are quite 
 as many, and more, who care for none of these things. I 
 recollect a Member stated in the House not long since that 
 after having voted for the Bill in 1870, he said to a lady 
 friend, " I have been working for your cause to-day, trying to 
 remove er the electoral disabilities of women," or something 
 of that sort, to which she answered, " you might easily have 
 been better employed " ; and so he said, finding women them- 
 selves were indifferent, he did not er see the object of sup- 
 porting the Bill in spite of them. 5 
 
 ' Drawing a general conclusion from one particular instance,' 
 said Madeline, ' I think, Major Knagge, your friends are con- 
 sistent in this, that their arguments are worthy of their cause, 
 our opponents seem to have taken upon themselves the char- 
 acter frequently attributed to women, but which admirably 
 fits its present position : I mean their frequent indulgence in 
 irrelevancies, their inability or disinclination to follow an argu- 
 ment out to its logical conclusion, their attempt to rebut 
 evidence by unsupported assertion ; the fact is, I suppose, they 
 are at their wit's end for a reply to a demand that is as logical 
 as it is constitutional.' 
 
 ' You are quite right,' said Professor Wray ; ' any unpre- 
 judiced reader of the debates upon women's suffrage must 
 favourably contrast the solid arguments, the serious spirit of 
 its advocates from Stuart Mill downwards, with the reckless 
 
 * See Mary Somerville's Personal Recollections, pp. 344, 346 ; Harriet 
 Martineau's Suciety in America, I., 150; Mrs. Jameson's Communion of 
 Labour, 1856, p. 24 ; Lady Morgan's Wmiian and Her Master, &c.
 
 250 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 statements of its opponents. That is a fair example which you 
 gave us just now,' he continued, turning to Major Knagge 
 ' because a few women are too selfish or careless or indifferent 
 to care anything about these subjects we are told that no 
 woman does, and that therefore the thing is undesirable.' 
 
 ' I think if we inquire carefully,' said Madeline, ' what 
 women it is who are indifferent to the suffrage, we shall gene- 
 rally find it is those of the privileged and sheltered classes, 
 who know nothing and care less for their unhappy or struggling 
 sisters 
 
 " The owl he f areth well 
 
 In the shadows of the night, 
 And it puzzleth him to tell 
 
 Why the eagle loves the light." 
 
 they have wealth and like to be idle, they cannot understand 
 this clamour for work ; they are comfortable and happy, it must 
 be a woman's own fault if she is not so ; incense and flattery 
 meet them at every turn, what in the world do others want 
 more than they have 1 All this discontent and crying out for 
 reforms is in very bad taste. We do not want this or that, 
 why should you ask for it? In fact, such women are just as 
 selfish and ignorant as the much ridiculed French princess, who 
 was surprised that any one should complain of the poor want- 
 ing bread, when it would be so easy for them to supply its 
 place with cake ; whereas those who do not personally suffer 
 from bad laws are just the ones who, if they have any right 
 feeling, any sense of justice, ought to labour for those who do.' 
 
 ' Quite true,' said Professor Wray ; ' contentment becomes 
 a vice when it means indifference to what does not affect us, 
 but from which others are daily suffering.' 
 
 ' I would rather myself,' said Madeline, ' be without 
 privileges which are taken from the woman to be given to the 
 lady ; and supposing ninety-nine out of every hundred women 
 were indifferent to the franchise, would that be any reason for 
 denying it to the one who wished for it 1 Because during the 
 last election at Liverpool only 36,000 men out of the 62,000
 
 WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE. 251 
 
 on the register took the trouble to vote, would it not have been 
 thought a hardship if Liverpool on this account had been dis- 
 franchised ? That the women in America who have obtained 
 the franchise do value it is very certain. I was reading not 
 long ago of a lady in Wyoming who hi 1880 was spending the 
 summer at a ranche seventy miles from her home. Though 
 not fortunate enough to find any company which would have 
 shortened her journey across the desolate prairie, she deter- 
 mined, nevertheless, not to let any such small matter as this 
 deprive her of her vote, and so she set off and rode the whole 
 distance, camping out, with no society on the trail but that of 
 her horse, and finally arrived in time to record her vote.' 
 
 ' If that is a typical case,' said Professor Wray, ' I do not 
 wonder at the testimony of Governor Hoyt, who declared some 
 time since, that during the fourteen years or more which have 
 elapsed since the extension of the franchise to women in 
 Wyoming, the great body of them have accepted the suffrage 
 as a precious boon, and exercised it as a patriotic duty. He 
 further states that so far from any of the predicted evils having 
 resulted, they have better laws, better officers, better institu- 
 tions, better morals, and a higher social condition than before.' 
 
 ' I am quite tired,' said Mrs. Silverton, ' of hearing that 
 women do not want the vote ; it is just one of the silly argu- 
 ments that used to be brought forward (and still is in Eastern 
 countries) against letting women learn anything; "they do 
 not wish it, it would unsettle their minds, disturb the equilib- 
 rium of their domestic relations," and so on ; but it is much 
 easier to assert these things than to prove them. I should like 
 to know whether the patience of Indian squaws under a life of 
 slavery, the readiness of Hindoo widows to be burnt, is any 
 proof that a condition of things which brings about these little 
 amenities is the most desirable of all others for them. No 
 advocate of woman's suffrage, so far as I know, has ever sug- 
 gested that those who are indifferent or object to vote should 
 be compelled to do so ; that those who prefer to lead colour- 
 less lives, full of petty interests, should be dragged from their
 
 252 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 drawing-rooms to the polling-booths, as the Times on one occa- 
 sion seemed to fear was imminent.' 
 
 ' That throws some light,' said Sir Henry, ' upon the 
 scruples of the American politician who would not advocate 
 the suffrage because, though he approved of the principle of 
 the thing, he was " agin its enforcement." I suppose there 
 are some people who think the bestowal of the franchise means 
 that, nolens volens, they will have to vote. But are you not a 
 little hard upon the women who do not agree with you 1 ' 
 
 ' Not half hard enough, I think,' replied his sister ; ' it is 
 disgraceful that a woman, because she is happy and comfort- 
 able, should be deaf to the cry of her suffering sisters, care 
 nothing for wants that do not touch her, and sneer at the re- 
 monstrances of those men and women whose thoughts travel 
 somewhat further than their own necessities and indulgences. 
 It is very delightful to some natures, no doubt, to sit snugly 
 ensconced in a comfortable easy-chair, with their feet resting 
 on the footstool of " whatever is, is best " ; but is it noble or 
 generous, do you think, to refuse to " accept with tolerance of 
 others' needs, what you do not need yourself " ? ' 
 
 ' But,' said Miss Wynter, ' if the women who hold aloof 
 from this movement are so selfish, do you think the motives 
 of those who uphold it are any higher ; they are many 
 of them, I suspect, not above caring for power and notoriety 1 ' 
 
 ' Are active sympathies for one another's needs and duties,' 
 asked Professor Wray, ' are a high sense of the duty owing to 
 humanity, and a desire for power to defend oneself and others 
 from injustice, selfish motives'? When there is a passion 
 for notoriety there are other and easier ways of satisfying 
 mere ambition than by embracing an unpopular cause ; and 
 where is the selfishness in happy and prosperous women facing 
 ridicule and detraction for the sake of those who are too 
 ignorant to understand what they need, too weak to urge their 
 claims V 
 
 ' Now tell us the truth,' said Professor Knagge, ' are not 
 many of your heroines disappointed and embittered women who,
 
 WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE. 253 
 
 having failed in obtaining domestic happiness, have er ceased 
 to believe in it 1 ' 
 
 1 So far from this being the case,' replied Professor Wray, 
 ' these women (and I know most of those working in this cause) 
 are generally in the best sense of the word " womanly " women, 
 happy and honoured as wives, sisters, and mothers.' 
 
 ' My idea of a womanly woman,' said Miss Wynter, ' is one 
 who is gentle, retiring, unassuming in all her ways.' 
 
 ' And no terms could better describe some of those I have 
 in my mind.' 
 
 ' What ! ' exclaimed Miss Wynter, raising one hand in 
 protest, ' women who are always going about speaking from 
 platform to platform.' 
 
 ' That does not exactly convey a just idea of their life ; the 
 men of Coventry might just as well have accused the Lady 
 Godiva of immodesty, as we of the nineteenth century bring a 
 charge of undue boldness against those women who, their 
 nature being too large to fit into a social strait-jacket, dare to 
 do all that their conscience tells them is right, and in spite of 
 natural shrinking and nervousness, venture openly to protest 
 against what seems to them unjust.' 
 
 ' There cannot be a greater mistake, I think,' said Madeline, 
 ' than to suppose it is love of notoriety, rather than a sense of 
 duty, which animates women who speak in public. A friend of 
 mine, who has been in the habit of lecturing for years on behalf 
 of women's suffrage, told me that whenever she has to speak in 
 the evening, the thought of it so oppresses her for the whole 
 day beforehand, that she can scarcely eat anything, and is 
 nervous and frightened to a degree, that those who hear her 
 quiet, sensible, unhesitating language upon the platform, would 
 hardly think it possible.' 
 
 ' Your friend, I do not doubt, my dear,' said Miss Wynter, 
 ' may be actuated by a sense of duty, but I cannot help feeling 
 it to be a very mistaken one.' 
 
 'A mind of any breadth,' said Mrs. Silverton, ' ought to be 
 able, I think, to look beyond any mere personal feelings or con-
 
 254 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 siderations in such a case, where it is a question of bringing a 
 legitimate influence to bear upon subjects of vital importance.' 
 
 * If you start,' said Major Knagge, ' by assuming that women 
 have a right to er mix themselves up in this sort of thing, 
 but I do not consider that they have any such right. Women 
 have no concern with politics.' 
 
 ' Did you ever,' said Madeline, ' hear Madame de Stael's 
 reply to Napoleon, who, being somewhat afraid of her political 
 influence, said to her bluntly on one occasion, " I won't have 
 women meddling with politics, women'have nothing to do with 
 politics." " Sire," she answered, " so long as women are liable to 
 be guillotined on political grounds, so long have they a right to 
 demand the reason why." In the same way, so long as women 
 suffer from unjust laws still unrepealed, so long have they a right 
 to make themselves heard in protest. We have fortunately 
 outlived the days when women or men either were liable to be 
 beheaded for political offences, however heinous, but the same 
 principle applies; so long as a single law subjecting women to un- 
 necessary sorrow and suffering remains upon our statute-books, 
 it becomes, I think, not only our unquestionable right, but a 
 positive duty for every woman to concern herself with politics. 
 Do not questions dealing with education, with our hospitals, 
 with the care of the poor, the regulation of women's work, the 
 marriage-laws, and all matters of public health and morality 
 intimately concern us 1 Surely it is our duty, instead of 
 shutting ourselves within a round of narrow conventionalisms, 
 to look into the evils that surround us, to trace them to their 
 source, and do the little that we are able to remedy them.' 
 
 'No doubt,' said Sir Henry, ' it may do a great deal of good 
 for some women to interest themselves in politics, many of the 
 most intelligent in every age have done so ; but then, as a rule 
 I think, they have been contented with quietly discussing public 
 questions amongst their own friends, I do not by this mean any 
 disrespect to the lady-advocates of women's suffrage, for I take 
 it on your authority that they are actuated only by the highest 
 motives.'
 
 WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE. 255 
 
 ' My dear fellow,' said Mr. Silverton, laughing, ' even your 
 worst enemy could not accuse you of anything but the highest 
 regard for the fair sex, but the principle of association is strong 
 in most of us I suppose ; because women have been chiefly known 
 and loved in private life, we are haunted by a vague idea that 
 she is only fitted for this sphere, and would be less lovable in 
 any other.' 
 
 ' Such a conclusion, I should say, was the result of ex- 
 perience,' exclaimed Major Knagge. 'When do you ever find 
 anything like public spirit in a woman? It is not natural to 
 them.' 
 
 ' Exactly,' replied the Professor, ' their virtues have been 
 encouraged to develop only on one side, and then we are told 
 it is nature which has stunted them upon the other ; but those 
 who fear to emancipate women do nature an injustice, just as 
 the timorous who dread free discussion and inquiry do truth 
 an injustice.' 
 
 ' Well,' said Major Knagge, ' whatever you put it down to, 
 the fact is is er palpable enough, that women know nothing 
 about politics, and as a rule care less. Their minds were not 
 er formed to grasp wide issues. How many women do you 
 meet who are able to form an independent judgment? Not 
 one in in in a hundred.' 
 
 ' Is that a reason for disfranchisement?' asked Mrs Silverton, 
 with a slight elevation of her strongly marked eyebrows, and 
 a momentary flash of the eyes beneath them ; ' if so, how many 
 men- voters, in spite of the encouragement they have had to 
 take an interest in public matters, have the sense or the 
 courage to think for themselves ] The game of " follow my 
 leader" is what most of them excel in, I think No doubt it is 
 the only safe rdle for a great many,' she added, with a just per- 
 ceptible but expressively contemptuous movement of the 
 shoulders. 
 
 ' Perhaps,' said Madeline, laughing, ' it is safer not to inquire 
 how many gentlemen's minds would be, politically speaking, like 
 the primeval earth, " without form and void," were it not for
 
 256 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 the good offices of their favourite daily paper, which supplies 
 them with good serviceable ideas that really, when dressed up 
 in new clothing, look quite fresh and respectable.' 
 
 ' Our sincere thanks,' said Sir Henry, bowing ; ' would that 
 your remarks were as undeserved as they are severe.' 
 
 ' Oh, you must not think what I say is meant to be of uni- 
 versal application,' she replied, half apologetically, ' and in any 
 case your ironical gratitude is due not so much to us as to 
 Major Knagge for being such an efficient prompter.' 
 
 ' Well,' said the gentleman in question, not ill-naturedly, for 
 even he was not proof against the attractive personal qualities 
 of the woman whom he looked upon as his chief opponent, ' I 
 only hinted with er all due deference to the ladies present, 
 that politics were not in their line.' 
 
 ' Please give us something more definite by way of objection,' 
 entreated Madeline, ' one cannot tilt against cobwebs.' 
 
 ' Well, in the first place, women cannot, cannot, I should 
 say, understand political questions,' and Major Knagge drew his 
 fingers a favourite action through his iron grey hair which 
 stood up in consequence, assuming a defiant attitude that was 
 often in strange contrast to the inherent feebleness of his 
 arguments. 
 
 ' And what amount of understanding does the Government 
 require from existing voters ? ' asked Madeline ; ' Harriet 
 Martineau, I suppose, who did perhaps more for political 
 reform than any of her contemporaries, Madame de Stael of 
 whom it has been said that she was the most profound politician 
 of her time, George Eliot, Mrs. Fawcett, or any of the many 
 women- writers in our daily papers t would be much less fitted 
 to form a just judgment upon political questions than the 
 small tradesman, who in reading is obliged to spell out his 
 words, whose interest in political economy is bounded by what 
 affects the market for the things he retails, who can just 
 manage to add up a column of figures, and make what pur- 
 ports to be a signature instead of his mark upon official or 
 business documents.'
 
 WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE. 257 
 
 ' But my remarks er refer to the majority of women, not 
 to such remarkable ones as you have named,' persisted the 
 Major. 
 
 ' Are the majority of women then so dull ? ' asked Professor 
 Wray ,-* ' it seems to me that while there may be some political 
 questions which men understand better than women, there are 
 quite as many whose merits women are the best fitted to judge 
 of, and it is equally as bad for the country to deny due influence 
 to the one as to the other. If the franchise were made to 
 d'epend solely upon individual intelligence, I am inclined to 
 think women would get the best of it ; the moment that you 
 raise an intellectual standard high enough to exclude all 
 women, you will not only disfranchise most of your male- 
 voters, but you must, to be consistent, shut the doors of both 
 Houses against a large majority of their Members ; but in point 
 of fact the suffrage is never denied to men because they are 
 dull or not highly intellectual ; if a man is sane, keeps clear of 
 felony, and has the requisite property-qualifications, that is all 
 that is asked, therefore this is no argument against giving the 
 vote to women ; indeed, so long as the most illiterate and in 
 many instances the most degraded men are practically declared 
 competent to judge of political questions, it is preposterous to 
 pretend that women are not so. As a telling commentary on 
 this assumption : some three or four years ago, three prizes 
 were offered for the three best essays upon a given political 
 - subject, the competition was open to the whole kingdom. By- 
 and-by the prizes were awarded, and then, and not till then, it 
 came out that they were all written by the same person, a 
 woman of only twenty-four.' 
 
 ' And where were her home duties all the time she was 
 writing 1 ' inquired Miss Wynter ; ' I must say I think one of 
 the chief dangers of giving women votes is that they will be 
 tempted to neglect their higher duties.' 
 
 ' It has yet to be proved, I think,' said Madeline, ' that 
 domestic affairs are incompatible with a keen sympathy for 
 large human and national interests ; a woman must have a 
 
 s
 
 258 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 very bad nature, I think, if the effect of a larger and freer life 
 is to make her neglect the comfort and happiness of those dear 
 to her, for politics or anything else. Because charity begins at 
 home it does not follow that it ends there.' 
 
 ' I do not see,' said Professor Wray, ' how any woman can 
 have a higher mission than enlarging her interests and duties ; 
 and granted that home is often her chief sphere, then at least 
 those branches of politics which demand the practice acquired 
 in that sphere, education, the care of children and the poor, 
 details of expenditure and so on, are surely no less her business. 
 The greatest of political economists, John Stuart Mill,* declared 
 " if we are to meet the demands of the age for a Government at 
 once cheap and efficient, which shall cost little but shall give us all 
 we ought to have for the money, the most vigilant and capable 
 agents for making the money go as far as it can will generally 
 be found among women.'" 
 
 ' As for the fear of our neglecting our domestic duties,' said 
 Mrs. Silverton, ' being an argument against the franchise, I 
 think if women cannot afford half an hour daily to read the 
 paper and the same time perhaps once in every few years to 
 record her vote, they are one and all as much to be pitied as 
 that poor creature who not long ago was mentioned in the 
 Medical Record under the heading of " Domesticity as a Cause 
 of Insanity." She was aged forty-four, was the mother of eight 
 children, and was suffering from acute mania. The husband, 
 when asked if he could suggest any cause for her illness, 
 exclaimed with much animation that he could not conceive 
 any reason. " She is a most domestic woman," he said, " is 
 always doing something for her children, is always at work for 
 us all, never goes out of the house, even to church on a 
 Sunday ; never goes gadding about at the neighbours' houses 
 or talking from one to another ; has been one of the best of 
 wives and mothers, and is always at home." The super- 
 intendent of the Hartford Retreat for the Insane, in 
 commenting on the case said, " This appreciative husband 
 * See Speech at Women's Suffrage Meeting. London, 1869.
 
 WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE. 259 
 
 could hardly have furnished a more graphic delineation of 
 the causes of his wife's insanity had he understood them 
 ever so thoroughly." ' 
 
 ' Custom in this, as in many other cases,' said Professor 
 Wray, ' has established unnatural distinctions between the 
 sexes ; men, as well as women, have duties to discharge to 
 their families beyond providing a maintenance, and if women 
 have so very much more work to do than we have, that they 
 cannot spare the smallest amount of time for anything beyond 
 their households, then I can only say that the world's labour is 
 much more unfairly divided than I have always supposed ; for 
 no one ever suggests that the duties of the professional man, 
 the merchant, or tradesman will suffer from his being 
 swallowed up in> the vortex of politics if he is allowed to 
 vote ; it is taken for granted that they have sense, and 
 judgment, and, indeed, self-interest enough, to look after all 
 personal and private affairs, however much interested he may 
 be in public measures,; and have not women as much con- 
 science as men ? There is just as great a danger that the 
 lawyer will forget his clients, the physician his patients, as 
 that a mother will neglect her infant for any cause whatever, or 
 her home and husband either ; her instinctive love of home is 
 so strong that as a rule I think she is much more apt to err on 
 the other side. I have seen cases, indeed, where though there 
 is no home worthy of the name> women will still cling to its 
 shadow with a passionate and unreasoning affection, like the 
 poor creature whom I read about in the paper the other day 
 who, being asked why she and her family, one of whom had 
 died of hunger, did not go into the Union, replied, " We did 
 not like to leave our bits o' comforts. "' And what were these 
 " bits o' comforts," a broken chair, and a board with some 
 empty sacks upon it.' 
 
 'Your comparison of women's duties- with those of most 
 men is unanswerable, I think,' said Mr. Silverton, t our con- 
 stituencies would be small indeed if none were allowed to vote 
 except those who had nothing else to do ; and m point of fact
 
 260 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 the purely domestic duties of women in the upper and upper- 
 middle classes occupy a very much smaller portion of their 
 time than those of the busy professional man ; in fact, I am 
 afraid the difficulty with many is to know what to do with 
 their days.' 
 
 ' And supposing women who are housekeepers,' said Mrs. 
 Silverton, ' required to give all their energies, their sleeping 
 and waking thoughts to that most interesting occupation, I 
 fail to see on what ground that is made an argument for 
 refusing the franchise to single women, and I really cannot see 
 what inherent right men have to stigmatise our participation in 
 politics as unfeminine any more than we have to decree that in 
 them it is unmanly. It is a curious idea some men seem to 
 have that it is necessary for them to interfere lest women should 
 grow unwomanly.' 
 
 ' After all,' replied Sir Henry, ' it is an indirect compliment, 
 as I have said before, this fear that any change should make 
 women different and less good and charming than they are at 
 present.' 
 
 ' I think it is the very height of presumption for them to 
 venture to dictate at all in the matter,' said his sister, ' as if 
 we were not the best judges of what we want ; and I do not 
 see that the municipal and school-board votes have had such 
 an alarmingly deteriorating effect.' 
 
 ' Quite the contrary,' said Professor Wray, ' and the 
 influence of women would be equally advantageous in affairs 
 of State. If the world were as good and happy in every 
 respect as possible, then we might content ourselves and 
 expect women to be contented with a one - sided system of 
 government, but when such anomalies and evils exist in our 
 Constitution as we find there, we may depend upon it it is 
 because we have mistaken the road, that there is something 
 wrong, and that the sooner we look about us and discover what 
 it is the better. You remember it was Gorgo, the young 
 daughter of Cleomenes, king of Sparta, who persuaded her 
 father to spurn the bribe of the Ionian stranger. I believe we
 
 WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE. 261 
 
 should find women's influence invariably upon the side of 
 morality. A well-known journal once stated its deliberate 
 conviction that if women had votes it would be something like 
 a death blow to the public-houses, and those who know what 
 influence publicans have in returning or rejecting Members 
 of Parliament may perhaps find in this statement some clue 
 to the seemingly unreasonable opposition which the question 
 of women's suffrage always arouses. Women have been called 
 the conscience of the nation, and we cannot very well afford to 
 dispense with this conscience in politics ; if they are gentler, 
 purer, keener of perception than men, I should not have said 
 that these qualities are in our public life so abundant as to 
 make women's influence superfluous in attempting to deal with 
 the great moral and physical evils of society. Men form great 
 projects often, sound in principle perhaps, but which frequently 
 result in utter failure from a want of attention to details such 
 as could never have occurred if women had had a share in 
 planning them ; we want the particularising faculty in our 
 legislation as well as the generalising ; women's tact also would 
 do much to lighten the drudgery of men's public work, besides 
 making it more effective, and for my part I plead guilty to 
 
 " Preferring sense from chin that's bare, 
 To nonsense throned in whiskered hair." 
 
 it is very bad policy not to use every species of available talent, 
 and as Mill once remarked, u women are as much accustomed 
 to make a very small sum go a very long way as Members of 
 Parliament are to making very large sums go a very little way, 
 and therefore it must be to the interest of political economy 
 that their more direct influence should be brought to bear 
 upon our legislation. In true family life we find the type of a 
 perfect state, and a country deprived of its full share of 
 women's influence is in as sad a plight as the household which 
 owns no sister, mother, wife, or female friend." ' 
 
 ' Do you recollect,' said Madeline, ' Charles Kingsley, in his 
 Women and Politics, after referring to the education and em-
 
 262 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 ployment of women, says, " I have dealt principally with'the 
 franchise because I sincerely believe that it and it only will 
 lead to their obtaining a just measure of the two former. As 
 things stand now the average woman is more educated in 
 every sense of the word than the average man, and therefore to 
 admit women would be to admit a class of voters superior, not 
 inferior, to the average. Women as a rule take a greater 
 interest in social and moral reforms, while men are apt to 
 neglect them for questions purely political." ' 
 
 ' I had no idea,' said Sir Henry presently, when the ladies 
 having obeyed the call of the dressing-bell, he followed the 
 Professor across the hall and up the broad staircase, ' I had 
 no idea that Kingsley felt so strongly upon this subject.' 
 
 ' I do not know how so staunch a lover of freedom, and one 
 who respected women as he did, could feel otherwise,' was the 
 answer. 
 
 ' But,' replied Sir Henry, ' I should have thought it was 
 precisely those who know that they would always consider 
 women's interests before their own, who feel that there is 
 little, if any, need for women to assert themselves, that 
 they may safely leave things in our hands.' 
 
 ' It will be time enough to use this as an argument when 
 our laws are in every respect as favourable to women as to 
 men ; you may depend upon it that in spite of good intentions 
 on the part of the stronger, an unrepresented class will always 
 be in some sense a neglected class as Jacob Bright once 
 remarked, it is like trying to drive a heavily loaded waggon 
 without horses, to attempt to pass a woman's bill through 
 the House of Commons without their having votes.' 
 
 ' But do you think women are really to be called a 
 " neglected class" 1 ' 
 
 'Yes, I speak advisedly, it is justice for the many, not 
 gallantry for the few, we want ; has there been no injustice 
 where laws exist which, when husband and wife cannot agree, 
 allow the mother no voice in the disposal of her children ; is 
 there no injustice when a man who has half murdered his wife
 
 WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE. 263 
 
 may be let off with a fortnight's imprisonment ; is there no 
 injustice in the laws I was speaking of the other day, which 
 protect the immoral man at the expense of his no more guilty 
 companion in sin; is there no injustice as between man and 
 woman in the laws relating to property ? But we must not 
 loiter now, I suppose Au revoir.'
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 ' THE sanctity of the home is the safeguard of the nation, if you decree 
 a separation between the home and the nation, if you affirm that one half 
 of the nation is to be shut up in the house, and excluded from any 
 participation in large interests, take care that the ornaments of the home 
 do not become mere ornaments, pictures to be gazed at and worshipped, 
 not living powers to purify and hallow.' 
 
 KEV. F. D. MAURICE, Spectator, March 5, 1870. 
 
 ' The more we interrogate common-sense, the less reason we find for 
 excluding women from political existence.' CONDOBCBT 
 
 ' For my part I should not be unwilling to compound for the political 
 
 privileges which are denied to women Let there be a measure 
 
 brought in to exempt us from the payment of those rates which qualify 
 every gaping clown to exercise the franchise. It will not be a dignified 
 way of getting out of it, but it will be a way of getting out of it, and one 
 which will be logical and convey some solace to our wounded pride. I, 
 for one, am willing to compound.' 
 
 MKS. OLIPHANT, Grievances of Women, Fraser, May, 1880. 
 
 ' Half the follies, half the brutalities, committed by nations for which 
 they have paid the price in long arrears of punishment and suffering 
 would have been prevented if they had been presented to the ordeal of 
 consideration by the right-minded and clear-headed women of the land.' 
 GENERAL T. PERBONET THOMPSON, 1841.
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE (CONTINUED). 
 
 ' THE worst of this sort of thing,' said Major Knagge, who, 
 unable to dismiss the afternoon's conversation from his mind, 
 scarcely waited for the soup to be removed before taking up 
 again the argumentative weapons which during the last three 
 quarters of an hour he had been carefully burnishing. ' The 
 worst of this sort of thing is, that one never knows where it 
 will end ; these women-questions I see, if we do not take care, 
 will er launch us on on an ocean of difficulties.' 
 
 ' The same thin-end-of-the-wedge argument,' said Professor 
 Wray, ' was, I recollect, brought against the repeal of the 
 test act, against household suffrage, the ballot, the corn laws, 
 the abolition of Church rates, measures now universally 
 acknowledged to have been necessary, but which at the time 
 were by many looked upon as dangerous precedents. To 
 dread the legitimate use of a thing for fear of its being 
 abused is, as we all know, common enough, there is always a 
 certain section of the community which thinks that one step 
 forward is going to revolutionise the world ; the spider thought 
 heaven and earth were coming together when the housemaid's 
 broom descended on his web, but I never heard that any wide- 
 spread evil was the result. The opinions of Copernicus, now 
 everywhere received, were once the object of satire upon the 
 stage ; it is within the recollection of people now living that 
 the idea of travelling twenty miles an hour was once by a 
 writer in the Edinburgh Review scouted as ridiculous. There 
 were prophets when the slave-trade was abolished who de- 
 clared that it would be the ruin of the British Empire ; when
 
 268 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 Sir Samuel Romilly proposed to do away with the death- 
 penalty for petty theft, certain voices were heard exclaiming 
 that it would establish a precedent by which the common-law 
 of England would be endangered; even so essentially utilitarian 
 a measure as the introduction, of street-lamps in the reign of 
 Charles II. met in some quarters with fierce opposition ; many 
 theories and useful inventions again, which now are matters of 
 common and unquestioning acceptance, would a hundred years 
 ago have consigned their originators probably to a lunatic 
 asylum, therefore one scarcely ought to wonder perhaps at 
 meeting with objections to the demand for woman's suffrage, 
 reasonable though it may seem to us.' 
 
 ' Still,' said Madeline, ' I cannot see that it is possible to 
 bring forward any good reason for opposing it.' 
 
 ' Well,' replied Major Knagge, ' it is very plain to me that 
 if women obtain the suffrage, their next demand will be for a 
 seat in Parliament, and and and once there, you may de- 
 pend upon it, they won't stop short of the woolsack, or the 
 Speaker's chair.' 
 
 ' A fearful idea, is it not ? ' said Madeline ; ' still many 
 thoughtful persons, I believe, hold that even here no arbitrary 
 exclusion should be exercised, and at any rate the right to vote, 
 as for instance in the case of the clergy, does not as a matter 
 of course involve the right to be elected, though, no doubt, in 
 a country where the highest post in the realm can be filled 
 by a woman, it is an anomaly to assert that others of her sex 
 are unworthy, or unfit, for posts of less importance, while one 
 woman may negative the voice of both Houses to pronounce 
 all others of her sex congenitally unfit for the smallest fraction 
 of direct political influence ; when abbesses were summoned by 
 Henry the Third and Edward the First to sit in Parliament, 
 and peeresses were ordered by Edward the Third to appear by 
 proxy, it is evident there was then no idea of sex-disqualification 
 being part of our Constitution.' 
 
 ' There is nothing more absurd,' said Professor Wray, ' in a 
 peeress sitting in the House of Lords, or any cultivated woman
 
 WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE. 269 
 
 in the House of Commons, than in the Queen presiding in 
 Council, it is only custom which gives this impression.' 
 
 ' We shall have the ladies using hair-producers next,' said 
 Major Knagge, ' in order to grow er beard and whiskers ; 
 the only way in which women are fitted to rule, I maintain, is 
 through the deference we pay them ; where was there ever one 
 who could hold authority by by by force of her own per- 
 sonality 1 ' 
 
 ' Fourrier, in his statistics of monarchs,' replied Madeline, 
 with a quietness that was in marked contrast to the Major's 
 growing excitement, ' says that there have been seven common- 
 place kings for one great one, seven great queens for one 
 commonplace ; Semiramis and Boadicea must have had some 
 force of character, while I think if you compare Elizabeth of 
 England, Isabella of Castille, Catherine of Russia, or Maria 
 Theresa, with most of their predecessors or successors, or our 
 Queen with any other monarch of the house of Hanover, I 
 think you cannot help recognising the truth of his remark.' 
 
 ' But did you never notice,' said Mrs. Silverton, ' that 
 historians throw a sop to the Cerberus of masculine vanity 
 by imputing the success of these queens to their men- 
 advisers.' 
 
 * Forgetting,' added the Professor, ' that the power of 
 choosing able Ministers is half the art of governing. Mill says 
 his experience at the Indian Office taught him that women 
 have a peculiar aptitude for administration, that in the East 
 where male chieftains were often plunderers and tyrants, or 
 idle and voluptuous, women-rulers in several cases had shown 
 distinguished talent.' 
 
 ' But,' said Sir Henry, ' is there any connexion between the 
 duty of a sovereign and that of a subject ? ' 
 
 ' I should say there is the most direct analogy,' replied 
 Professor Wray, ' between a sovereign's choice of a Minister 
 and a subject's choice of a representative ; in fact, as we have 
 said before, if you make the franchise depend upon inherent 
 ability, you must at once disfranchise more than half your
 
 270 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 men-voters, and admit without question a large number of 
 women.' 
 
 ' But women,' said the Major, ' are too hysterical, too 
 excitable, to be trusted generally in responsible positions.' 
 
 ' Where they have displayed these qualities,' replied Pro- 
 fessor Wray, ' it has been rather than anything else, I think, a 
 proof of nervous energy run to waste, which directed to a 
 definite end might have proved of inestimable service ; given a 
 fair chance, women have organized charities, edited journals, 
 filled professors' chairs with honour, written valuable works on 
 philosophical, social, and political subjects ; look at the dis- 
 order and misery which Florence Nightingale found reigning 
 in our hospitals at the Crimea, and at the amazingly short 
 time in which she brought Kosmos out of what appeared almost 
 hopeless Chaos; or at the similar organizing power displayed 
 by the American women in mitigating, so far as was possible, 
 the evils of their sad war. The women on our School Boards 
 again, and in other positions of trust, are daily proving them- 
 selves as capable as the best man amongst us, of sober judg- 
 ment, steady application, breadth of view, and able ad- 
 ministration. What could any Member of Parliament do 
 more 1 But this is not the question at issue ; if it should 
 prove desirable for women to take their part in legislation, it 
 will come sooner or later in the natural course of events ; but 
 I do not see that we are called upon at present to decide for or 
 
 ' But it surely behoves statesmen,' said Sir Henry, ' to look 
 at the ulterior as well as the immediate consequences of any 
 proposed measure.' 
 
 ' In many instances, no doubt, it is so, but I cannot see 
 that far off possibilities have anything to do with a question of 
 simple justice ; Lord Palmerston was no short-sighted politician, 
 and it was a maxim of his, " Yield to-day that which is 
 reasonably asked, and resist to-morrow that which you will be 
 right in resisting ; but do not put yourself in the wrong to-day, 
 merely for fear of to-morrow." '
 
 WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE. 271 
 
 ' Besides,' said Mrs. Silverton, ' I, for one, do not grant that 
 women have any ulterior aims beyond the desire for more 
 direct influence and increased usefulness; it might, perhaps, 
 be worth while to remind those gentlemen who are nervous on 
 this score, that if women were to be as eager for a seat in 
 Parliament as they are themselves, they could not obtain it 
 unless elected by a large number of men, whose judgment it 
 would be very remiss in them to question.' 
 
 ' These fears,' said Madeline, ' are in short as illusory as 
 those of the man in the Eastern story, who upon his neigh- 
 bour's finding a horse-shoe began to wail and lament ; when 
 asked the cause of his grief, he replied, " My neighbour may 
 one day find a horse to fit this shoe, my little child may go so 
 near it as to be kicked, a feud may thereupon arise between 
 our two families, and many lives may be lost " ; even some of 
 our professed friends grow timid through their visions of an 
 imaginary future ; " we do not deny the fitness of those for 
 whom the franchise is claimed now," I have heard them say, 
 " but if they get it, others whose fitness is not so obvious may 
 claim the same privileges." ' 
 
 ' Another objection that I have often heard,' said Sir 
 Henry, ' is that women are one and all under the influence of 
 the clergy, who as a body are not always the safest advisers in 
 political matters.' 
 
 ' An argument,' said his sister, ' almost as far-fetched as 
 that of Mr. Newdegate, who discovered at one time, I believe, 
 that giving votes to Englishwomen meant increasing the power 
 of the Jesuits.' 
 
 ' I am no sympathiser with the Newdegate school, as you 
 know,' was the reply ; ' but from a Liberal standpoint, I can 
 quite see the danger that lies in undue clerical influence, 
 which, as a rule, though there are exceptions, I admit is in 
 favour of absolutism, and opposed to freedom of thought and 
 discussion.' 
 
 ' I think you scarcely do justice,' said Madeline, ' to the 
 liberality of a large proportion of the English clergy ; where
 
 272 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 they are inclined to be narrow, I think it is only because in 
 many cases they have, like women, been shut out by tempera- 
 ment or circumstances from the free exercise of their judgment, 
 from the unbiassed and far-reaching examination of debated 
 questions ; and surely if there were anything narrowing or 
 hurtful in the amount of influence they possess, the remedy 
 lies not in leaving things in the hands of the clergy, but in en- 
 couraging women to think for themselves, and take an active 
 part in the affairs of life, as well as in giving them the scientific 
 training which will balance the more credulous and sentimental 
 side of their nature.' 
 
 ' I do not think,' said Professor Wray, ' if you take into 
 consideration the sort of limpness and timidity which seem to 
 have been the end of women's training in the past, that we 
 have any proof of their courage and love of liberty being less 
 than that of men. In former days, when submission to the 
 priesthood was held a religious duty, the majority of men were 
 decidedly more under clerical sway than are women at present ; 
 let the same widening influences which have emancipated men 
 be brought to bear more fully upon women, and we shall soon 
 find them equally unwilling to blindly surrender their judg- 
 ment to any one, however great a claim he may have upon 
 their respect and sympathy. Indeed, we have already had 
 some demonstration of this in the fact that, some years since, 
 out of twenty-four women now sitting on the School Boards 
 in various parts of England, who may be taken as types of the 
 more intellectual and thoughtful of their sex, three voted in 
 favour of a purely secular education, fourteen were for unde- 
 nominational teaching in religious matters, and only seven were 
 in favour of denominational instruction, which does not look 
 much like servile submission to clerical influence.' 
 
 ' Really,' said Mrs. Silverton, ' I do not think the weakest 
 or most superstitious of women could cling more to the worn- 
 out remnants of ecclesiastical ascendency, or to obsolete and 
 meaningless forms than do our wise lawgivers themselves in 
 many instances.'
 
 WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE. 273 
 
 ' You refer to the question of the oath, I suppose,' said 
 Madeline ; ' but ! think the influence undoubtedly possessed 
 by the clergy over a large number of women has been due to 
 the fact that they are the only men who, as a class, have recog- 
 nised us to some extent as fellow-workers and fully acknow- 
 ledged our moral responsibility. When other men take equal 
 pains to interest women in subjects outside a purely domestic 
 sphere, they will command, I have no doubt, equal sympathy.' 
 
 'You see you cannot deny my proposition as to clerical 
 influence,' said Sir Henry. 
 
 ' I only deny that it is no reason for refusing women the suf- 
 frage, but rather a further argument in favour of granting it 
 You dread the revived influence of clericalism ; but if we inquire 
 where the people are most ignorant, the priests most powerful, 
 we shall find it is in those countries which have the least 
 political liberty. Has not experience proved that the granting 
 of political rights is symbolical of a widened range of interests, 
 and is therefore the thing of all others likely to encourage 
 independent thought and action ] ' 
 
 ' True,' said the Professor ; ' liberty is the chief condition 
 of a worthy and desirable existence, and women, as well as men, 
 are endowed with will and individuality that these qualities 
 may be used, subject only to restraint when they infringe upon 
 the liberties of others. Do you think it consistent with true 
 Liberalism,' he continued, turning to Sir Henry, 'to oppose 
 this movement on any grounds whatever 1 * 
 
 ' I am not quite sure,' was the reply, ' whether advanced 
 Liberals have not better grounds for their opposition than any 
 others, in the fact that the majority of women are undoubtedly 
 Conservatives.' 
 
 'And what becomes of your theories of representative 
 government and individual liberty, Harry?' asked Mrs. Sil- 
 verton. 'I should have thought it an offence against first 
 principles to be influenced by the question of how any measure 
 is likely to affect the fortunes of either one party or the other. 
 Oh, it is commonly done, I know (so much for men's idea of 
 
 T
 
 274 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 political morality) ; but all I say is, if you allow that women 
 have a right to make this claim, then it is unworthy and 
 unjust, it is putting expediency in the place of right, to urge 
 such considerations.' 
 
 'No doubt,' said the Professor, 'this question is far too 
 commonly treated as one to be considered on grounds of 
 expediency alone, as if right and wrong, justice and injustice, 
 had nothing to do with it. Surely women have as much right 
 as we to hold Liberal or Conservative or any other views with- 
 out having their vote withheld on that account. For my part, 
 if I knew the majority of women were Conservatives, and if 
 the sole hope of the Liberal party for the moment lay in 
 shutting them out, Radical as I am, I would scorn a power 
 gained by ignoring the opinions and wishes of half the 
 nation,' 
 
 ' This has never been a party question, and I am glad of it,' 
 said Madeline ; ' but I think those Liberals who entertain any 
 fears upon this subject would, in the event of our obtaining the 
 franchise, soon find that they had been mistaken. Women 
 have suffered too much from needless delay not to feel strongly 
 on the subject of reform ; and though, like men, they hold 
 every variety of political opinion, not being, as I once heard 
 suggested, run into moulds that, like candles, can be made into 
 " long-threes " or " short-sixes," whichever their owners please, 
 my own humble opinion is that there would be just as much 
 chance amongst women-voters of a Liberal as of a Conservative 
 majority/ 
 
 ' I believe it was by way of testing this very question,' said 
 Mrs. Silverton, ' that a few years ago a kind of census was 
 taken of the political opinions of the women at Newnham, 
 when only five, put of eighty or ninety, proved to be Con- 
 servatives.' 
 
 ' But it is women-householders,' replied her brother, ' and 
 not women-students to whom it is proposed to give votes.' 
 
 ' That is true,' said the Professor ; ' but amongst women- 
 guardians again the majority are Liberals, while of those on the
 
 WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE. 275 
 
 School Board, with very few exceptions, the same may be said, 
 and they mostly owe their election to worn en- voters.' 
 
 ' I quite agree with you,' said Mr. Silverton, ' that were 
 every woman in the country a Conservative, a Liberal Govern- 
 ment which owed its existence to keeping them out would not 
 be an honest one.' 
 
 ' The Conservative leader in the h'ouse of Crag's Nest 
 is emphatic,' said Sir Henry ; ' would it be impertinent to 
 inquire how much of his warmth is due to party interests, how 
 much to the interests of women 1 ' 
 
 ' I will vouch for Fred's singleness of mind on this point,' 
 replied Mrs. Silverton ; ' but as Madeline says, Harry, this is 
 not a party question, and I do not see why politics should be 
 dragged in except where they affect or are affected by the case 
 in point.' 
 
 'But, my dear, pardon me for interrupting you,' re- 
 monstrated her brother, ' I should have said the question as to 
 which way women are likely to vote merits at least discussion.' 
 
 ' Has it not been both discussed and disposed of?' 
 
 ' Well, whether women are Liberal or Conservative does 
 not much matter,' said Major Knagge ; ' but this I say, and 
 this I maintain, that on er either one side or the other their 
 votes are not likely to be of much benefit to the country until 
 they prove that there is something like patriotism or or 
 public spirit about them.' 
 
 ' The higher you raise men or women the further they 
 will see,' said the Professor ; 'it is neither logical nor just to 
 deny women the right of giving expression to their opinions by 
 a direct vote, and then to blame them for their small interest 
 in current events, it seems to me but natural that those who 
 are excluded from politics should take a languid interest in 
 them. I put it to you, would any man feel acutely measures 
 affecting the political and social condition of his country, as 
 apart from those which affect him personally, if, while called 
 upon to pay taxes, he might have no voice in the distribution 
 of his money, take no part in public affairs ; and can the
 
 276 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 majority of women be expected to keep up a keen and lively 
 interest in things which they are always told are out of their 
 province 1 ? Can devotion to public service be reasonably ex- 
 pected from those who have no public duties to perform, and 
 no emoluments or honours to be won 1 And yet, in spite of 
 this, it is not possible to go over the pages of history without 
 finding the names of many women who have not only been 
 public-spirited in the ordinary sense of the term, but whose 
 one ruling passion was the love of their country ; I refer to 
 such women as Zenobia, Boadicea, Joan of Arc, the maid of 
 Saragossa, Madame Chrzanowska and other Polish women, 
 Madame Roland, Charlotte Corday ; and to go back to earlier 
 times, we find many examples of pure, disinterested patriotism 
 amongst the Roman and Spartan women. You recollect how 
 when Rome was besieged by Brennus, it was saved by the 
 women giving up all their golden ornaments for ransom ; after 
 the battle of Cannae, again, the women sacrificed all their gold 
 and jewels. No doubt you have read, too, how in the Middle 
 Ages, when Cyprus was besieged by the Turks, the women 
 came in crowds to the rescue, mingled with the soldiers, and 
 fought gallantly in the breach, and so were the means of saving 
 their country. The Dutch women in the revolution of the 
 Seven Provinces were scarcely less enthusiastic, and I do not 
 think, if put to the proof, we should find our countrywomen 
 one whit behind them.' 
 
 ' But,' said Major Knagge, ' we don't want er Amazons.' 
 ' And I should not say that the lady advocates of women 
 suffrage have much ambition in that direction ; we do not, as 
 you say, want women soldiers, but we do want their peaceful 
 influence to enable us to do away with fighting altogether, 
 that the money spent in useless wars may be more profitably 
 employed. War is now felt by all reasonable and good men to 
 be a painful anomaly, and I believe that in enfranchising 
 women we should gain immense power on the side of peace, 
 and so strengthen ourselves socially and commercially. Hu- 
 manity must still be low down in the scale of progress when,
 
 WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE. 277 
 
 amongst so-called "civilised" countries, justice can only be 
 upheld by maintaining at vast expense large bodies of men 
 whose sole profession it is to fit themselves for the effectual 
 slaying of their brother-man. I believe that by admitting 
 women to our councils we rise one step higher in the scale of 
 order versus anarchy ; that, as the moral law increases in 
 influence, so the law of the fist loses its power ; that as respect 
 for the law grows, so belief in mere brute-force must decline. 
 Unfortunately the word patriotism is too often used by us as a 
 synonym for mere ambition and greed for conquest, and we do 
 not want any further development of this sort of patriotism 
 among men or women either.' 
 
 For some moments no one spoke ; probably it was expected 
 that Major Knagge would as usual have an answer of some 
 sort ready ; but if there was one thing he liked better than 
 argument it was his dinner, and at this moment he was busily 
 occupied, and partly, perhaps, the silence was due to the im- 
 pression made by Professor Wray's words, for every one looked 
 thoughtful. Sir Henry, however, could not long be solemn, 
 unless under very exceptional circumstances. 
 
 * For my part,' he said, ' I think vicarious patriotism is the 
 sort of thing to go in for, such grand enthusiasm as nerved 
 Artemus Ward to declare that he would spend every drop of 
 his relations' blood, and every drop of his wife's relations' 
 blood, in the cause of his country ; that is something like 
 public spirit ; when did you ever hear a woman profess such 
 sentiments as that?' 
 
 'Never!' said Major Knagge, who for some reason was 
 under the impression that Sir Henry had dealt a crushing 
 blow to the enemy. ' I have understood that some have had 
 the er audacity to assert that all the burdens of citizenship 
 fall upon women equally with men, but I should like to know 
 how that is to be proved ; they they are not called upon to 
 defend their country, and since they are not liable to bear 
 arms, what right have they to vote on questions of war and 
 peace 1 '
 
 278 MEN, "WOMEN", AND PROGRESS. 
 
 'This right,' said Madeline, 'that their interests are as 
 seriously involved, they are as vitally concerned in the preser- 
 vation of peace as are their fathers and husbands and brothers. 
 Do not women suffer at least as much as men from the horrors 
 and evil results of war, and have we not equal right, then, to 
 inquire into the causes for which a Government makes war ? ' 
 
 ' No doubt,' said Professor Wray, ' it requires more real 
 heroism to endure patiently the sacrifice of lives dearer than 
 their own, more sustained courage to attend the wounded and 
 the dying, than under the influence of temporary excitement 
 to face the enemy. Soldiers, I think, should be the last to 
 forget that it is to a woman Isabella of Spain the world 
 owes the establishment of the first regular camp hospitals ; 
 that it was a woman Florence Nightingale who, as Kinglake 
 says in his History of the Crimean War, brought a priceless 
 reinforcement of brain-power to the nation at a time when the 
 brains of Englishmen had given signs of inanition ; the same, 
 or almost as much, may be said for thousands of other women ; 
 and if a nation must fight, which is the more worthy part of 
 war, the love of glory so-called, aptitude for the fiendish art of 
 wholesale slaughter, or the courage which women have shown 
 all the world over in rescuing the wounded and nursing back 
 to life, and to the service of their country, those of her sons 
 whom national vanity or ambition had condemned to prema- 
 ture death 1 ' 
 
 ' That is as it may be,' replied Major Knagge ; * but it is an 
 old, and so it seems to me very just er position, that those 
 incapable of defending their country are not fit to rule it.' 
 
 ' In that case, nothing short of deposing the Queen would 
 suit you, and to be logical, you must exclude not only women, 
 but every physically weak male-voter, let him be ever so 
 highly intellectual or useful in a public or private capacity; 
 such men, for instance, as Pope, Milton, Cowper, Huber, 
 Prescott, Thierry, even Darwin and John Stuart Mill, would 
 scarcely in a general conscription have been called out ; but no 
 one has ever suggested that they ought on this account to
 
 WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE. 279 
 
 have suffered legal subjection and disfranchisement. Until we 
 refuse a vote to every man who is not broad, and strong, and 
 active enough to pass the army test, this weakest of arguments 
 will not staud a moment's criticism.' 
 
 ' Every one knows,' said Madeline, ' that it is not from the 
 physically strongest that the greatest actions spring. Besides, it 
 is the taxpayers who provide the sinews of war ; a nation of 
 men could no more carry on a war alone than a nation of 
 women, for half of them at least would have to be told off for 
 hospital and home duties. I must say, I do not think the sup- 
 posed connexion between fighting and voting will bear analysing.' 
 ' In earlier and less civilised times,' said Professor Wray, 
 ' when war was the normal condition of things and peace was 
 rare, there being no less barbarous way of settling difficulties, 
 and when, owing to general lawlessness, it was next to impos- 
 sible for women to administer their own property, it perhaps 
 seemed more in the natural order of things that they should 
 not have votes ; but times have changed, the muscles of 
 gladiators are no longer considered the noblest attributes of 
 humanity, physical strength has ceased to be made the basis 
 for precluding men from authority, and therefore it cannot 
 logically be made a motive for disqualifying women. If mere 
 brute strength had still anything to do with political sove- 
 reignty, then the physical force of the country, the soldiers, 
 sailors, and policemen, should certainly not be prevented from 
 voting. To show the absurdity of making physical strength a 
 test of moral fitness, Professor Huxley, who once said that 
 wherever it came to a question of competition for any office, 
 women must, on account of their inferior strength, be out- 
 stripped, himself entered into competition with a woman 
 Elizabeth Garrett, now Mrs. Garrett Anderson for a seat on 
 the London School Board ; the lady went in at the head of the 
 poll, while the Professor, who was also elected, though with a 
 much smaller number of votes, was afterwards compelled to 
 resign, the work being too much for his strength.' 
 
 ' I remember,' said Major Knagge, ' that we discussed this
 
 280 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 theory on our road to Barnstaple the other day, but I er regret 
 to say, my dear sir, I am no nearer agreeing with you now than 
 I was then. I consider the fact that men have naturally a power, 
 a force of domination denied to er the other sex, is proof 
 enough that women were always intended to be, and always 
 will be, in a state of subjection ; it is contrary to nature for 
 women to be invested with power ; men are born to be the 
 leaders, and therefore naturally the er the law-makers.' 
 
 ' You may depend upon it,' replied the Professor, ' that 
 intellectual and moral force either in man or woman is the only 
 safe guide for a civilised community ; these points being equal 
 the want of practical strength should be only a motive for 
 giving increased rather than less power. What notion of fair 
 play can men have who, knowing that in everything, except 
 muscular force, there is no more difference between man and 
 woman than between a lion and a lioness, or between any male 
 animal and the female of the same species, have yet based on 
 this one difference the unwarrantable assumption that strength 
 is the main excellence in a human being, and that intelligence 
 exists in the same ratio 1 Such a palpable fallacy, one would 
 have thought, ought to have exploded long ago, but we are too 
 indolent to look things fairly in the face, too selfish not to cling 
 to the idea that it is man's particular province to rule all 
 things absolutely, women included, that she has no right to rule 
 herself or live as pleases her.' 
 
 ' I should be very sorry to hold any such theory as that,' 
 replied Sir Henry; ' no doubt a great many women are already 
 well-fitted for the political emancipation which sooner or later 
 they are certain to obtain, but I doubt if the times are ripe 
 yet for the change.' 
 
 ' That is just what the upholders of slavery declared,' said 
 Madeline, ' the negroes were not yet fit for liberty, if they had 
 been listened to, the negroes would not to this day be considered 
 fit for liberty ; there is always, surely, a middle course between 
 a precipitate and thoughtless change and the determination 
 to find nothing good in what appears to be without precedent.'
 
 WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE. 281 
 
 ' Do you recollect,' said the Professor, ' Macaulay's answer 
 to those who urged that the Jews were not fit for political 
 equality " What right have we," he said, " to take this 
 question for granted ? Throw open the doors of the House of 
 Commons, throw open the ranks of the Imperial Army before 
 you deny eloquence to the countrymen of Isaiah, valour to the 
 descendants of the Maccabees." In the same way we say of 
 women, give them a chance before you declare them unfit for 
 the same liberties that men enjoy, it is only in the working 
 that a thing can be fairly tried ; why repudiate a strength 
 yet untested, why refuse the help of good heads, capable 
 hands, tender hearts, in dealing with our social complica- 
 tions, in the perpetual struggle against sin and suffering. 
 You say there is no hurry, but to delay justice is to commit a 
 wrong.' 
 
 ' But/ said Sir Henry presently, ' I have been thinking that 
 if you admit women's claim to the suffrage you make them 
 not only an equal but a greater power in the State than men, 
 which would not be fair.' 
 
 'How?' 
 
 ' Seeing that they outnumber us, they would have it in 
 their power to outvote us on any question they pleased, and as 
 we go on extending the franchise, so women will get more than 
 their fair share of political influence.' 
 
 ' You agree with me, I know,' said Professor Wray, ' in 
 thinking that the wider our constituencies, the juster and more 
 impartial will be our laws ; but even with manhood suffrage 
 limited, as I hope to see it by an educational test, there is no 
 cause, I think, for any such fear as you express arising out of 
 women's numerical superiority, since the question becomes 
 then one, not of mere numbers, but of individual intelligence 
 and fitness, and certainly where, as at present, property is made 
 the basis of electoral rights, there is no occasion to trouble about 
 the preponderance of the feminine element, now so unjustly 
 ignored, to the detriment of the State, and the injury of a large 
 class of the community.'
 
 282 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 ' But you can hardly consider women a class, can you 1 ' 
 
 ' They seem to have been always legislated for as a class at 
 any rate. But what is it ^that constitutes a class 1 Jevon's 
 definition is that a class should possess some distinct marks 
 different from those possessed by things in general. Now in 
 many ways women's needs are different, their interests distinct 
 from those of men ; all women have some interests in common 
 which none but women share, and the more the fact of sex is 
 emphasised, the stronger does this argument become. If 
 women are like men in mental attributes, if their nature is 
 identical, they certainly have the same right to political 
 influence, and it is wrong to enact laws without their con- 
 currence; if they are unlike, men have still less right to legislate 
 for beings whom they cannot thoroughly understand.' 
 
 ' But I think,' said Miss Wynter, clearing her voice, and 
 gently smoothing down the lace lappets of her cap, ' I think 
 women should have enough confidence in men's sense of justice 
 and the honour in which the best of them hold women, to be 
 sure that their interests are virtually represented without their 
 having a vote.' 
 
 ' Virtual representation too often,' said Professor Wray, 
 1 means misrepresentation, or how is it that the worst laws and 
 the last to be improved are those relating to women 1 I am 
 sure no one who honestly looks into the existing state of social 
 order or disorder can assert that women's interests in education 
 and work in her pecuniary, civil, and political condition, have 
 been generally understood, fairly considered, or justly provided 
 for.' 
 
 'Many noble and unselfish men, I believe,' said Madeline, 
 ' try to live up to the good old rule, " Do unto others as you 
 would that they should do to you." I suppose they have 
 never thought of asking themselves how they would like a legis- 
 lature not only consisting exclusively of women, but returned 
 only by women-voters ? Would they not think that however 
 well-meaning women might be, they could not possibly see 
 things from a man's standpoint ; and this reversed is precisely
 
 WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE. 283 
 
 the condition of things under which women are said to be 
 virtually represented.' 
 
 1 No doubt,' said Mrs. Silverton, ' the great majority of 
 women have the tenderest regard for the interests of their 
 fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons ; but I wonder if any man 
 living would take this as a valid reason for refusing him a voice 
 in the management of his own affairs. When one looks at the 
 existing laws concerning women, and then is told in the same 
 breath that they need not desire a vote, that their interests may 
 safely be trusted in the hands of men, it reminds me of the 
 husband who, a few years ago, murdered his wife, and when 
 asked what induced him to commit such a crime, replied, 
 " because he loved her so much ! " I fancy, poor woman, if given 
 her choice, she would hardly have exacted such a proof of 
 devotion ; it is just possible she might have preferred to live, 
 and out of his strong affection he might, I think, have made it 
 optional. Affection and regard take queer forms sometimes.' 
 
 ' I am quite sure/ said Madeline, ' that our legislators mean 
 to be just and generous towards women, but however well-in- 
 tentioned they cannot be expected to have any true conception of 
 the needs of women, and therefore it is that they have made, in so 
 many instances, such profound mistakes. When such legalised 
 misery as one sometimes sees and reads about has become im- 
 possible, it will then, I think, be time enough to say that our 
 laws as between men and women are impartial.' 
 
 'It is impossible to deny that where the interests of the 
 two,' said Professor Wray, ' have come into collision, those of 
 the latter have always been made subservient to those of the 
 former; in fact, men are neither pure, wise, nor good enough to 
 legislate, uncontrolled, for women.' 
 
 ' If we were sufficiently represented,' said Mrs. Silverton, 
 'to secure just legislation, I should like to know how the 
 marriage and property laws could have continued unmolested 
 in their injustice for so many centuries'?' 
 
 ' Well, you cannot deny, my dear,' said her brother, ' that 
 the new 'Married Women's Property Act ' grants everything that
 
 284 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 the most exacting could require ; indeed, I have heard men, sel- 
 fish ones, no doubt, grumble much as if personally injured, that 
 when they marry they will not have the right to manage their 
 wife's affairs.' 
 
 ' Perhaps you do not know,' replied the Professor, ' that this 
 very Bill lay for long years on the shelf, and it was not until 
 women began to agitate for political rights that the inequalities 
 between the laws for men and women were noticed ; and this 
 one in especial being pressed upon the attention of the public 
 was finally taken up by the Lord Chancellor, and the Married 
 Women's Property Act passed into law at last with a rapidity 
 that was almost startling. But is it not shameful to think of, 
 that up to that time a married women, whatever her age, her 
 intelligence, her business capacity, was reduced to the position 
 of a child ] Though she might be in every way better fitted to 
 manage her own affairs than the man she married, though he 
 might be ignorant, incapable, dishonest, from her wedding day 
 she became legally an infant to be placed under due restraint, 
 her property, her personality, her very existence merged in that 
 of her husband, even her very wedding presents becoming his 
 to do with as he pleased. Feeling the anomaly, inconvenience, 
 the injustice of such a state of things, the wealthy and powerful 
 classes found means by an expensive process of saving their 
 daughters' property from being confiscated for the crime of 
 marriage by having settlements ; by going to law in fact they 
 were enabled to evade the law, but there was no such protection 
 for the working classes, or the women of small means.' 
 
 ' That seems to me, I must confess,' said Sir Henry, ' to have 
 been very unfair.' 
 
 ' I believe many men,' said Madeline, ' are alive to the par- 
 ticular injustice of certain laws affecting women, I wish they 
 were equally alive to the fact that by refusing them the suffrage 
 they are perpetuating the evil ; we desire the vote for precisely 
 the same reason that other disfranchised classes have desired it, 
 namely, that those who remain disfranchised amongst a free 
 people can never hope or expect to obtain complete justice.'
 
 WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE. 285 
 
 ' It is one of the leading principles of political science,' 
 said Professor Wray, 'that the rights and interests of any 
 individual are only secure from disregard by his being himself 
 in a position to protect them ; and if true of men, it is even 
 more so of women, for the weaker people are, the greater is 
 their need of protection ; as Lord Brougham once acknow- 
 ledged, the laws about women were so bad that they needed 
 total reconstruction, and many of these avowedly unjust laws 
 still remain unrepealed. To any one who inquires why 
 these evils have remained so long unredressed, the answer is, 
 " Because they have not been looked into ; " to the question 
 "Why have they not been looked into 1 ?" the only reply is, 
 because women have not been directly represented, for no 
 defence is like self-defence, no protection equals self- protection. 
 I do not mean to say that the suffrage will at once cure 
 every evil, but it will go a long way towards it, since equality in 
 law, in education, in the labour-market must ultimately follow.' 
 
 ' I quite see your position,' said Sir Henry, ' there can be 
 no doubt that in the case of the labouring classes some of the 
 strongest opponents to the extension of the franchise to 
 working men are now to be found posing as their friends, 
 because the labouring man hag become a power in the country 
 and can make his voice heard. But, on the whole, I think 
 women are better off than they were.' 
 
 * As regards direct and legitimate influence I should say 
 women are decidedly in a worse position, for any one of those 
 working men might hope by industry and thrift to rise to a 
 position which would entitle him to a vote, and as we were 
 saying just now it is impossible to deny that the well-being of 
 any class has always been in close connexion with its political 
 power. " Government," according to Bentham, " never yet 
 yielded a right unless bullied into it," and if it were made 
 important to politicans to redress women's grievances, I do not 
 doubt they would soon be doomed ; but however susceptible 
 Members may be to the voices of their constituents, they have 
 no time, as a rule, to devote to the cause of those to whom
 
 2#6 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 they are not directly responsible and who cannot record a vote 
 either for or against them ; it is only human nature that they 
 should be ready and anxious to do all they can for those who 
 have supported and will again support them ; thus it has 
 always happened that where those hitherto debarred from the 
 franchise have ultimately obtained it, a decided change for the 
 better in the legislation affecting them has soon occurred.' 
 
 ' You say,' joined in Major Knagge, whose attention during 
 the last few minutes had been divided between the grouse 
 upon his plate and the points under discussion, ' you say 
 women ought to have the vote as a means to redressing their 
 grievances, but with all due respect to you and Lord Braybourne, 
 I cannot for the life of me see that they've any grievances 
 worth complaining of.' 
 
 'The subject of women's legal disabilities,' replied the 
 Professor, ' would occupy us from now till midnight, and yet 
 not be disposed of; if you care to remind me another time, 
 however, we will discuss the question and I will point out to 
 you some of them ; I was just going to say that I look upon 
 the granting of the suffrage to women as a measure of general 
 utility quite as much as of class benefit, for there are not many 
 thoughtful, liberal-minded people, I think, now-a-days, who 
 refuse to grant that the admission of properly qualified voters 
 is a strengthening, not a weakening of the Constitution, that 
 the efficiency of a representative parliament is in direct ratio 
 to the variety of interests and classes it represents. Some are 
 asking, on the other hand, what educated, refining, elevating 
 influence can be brought in to counterbalance that of the two 
 millions or more of illiterate voters which the country franchise 
 must add to the electoral roll; will not this difficulty be solved 
 in a great measure by the admission of women 1 ' 
 
 ' There I quite agree with you,' said Mr. Silverton, ' I do 
 not, as you know, approve of the extension of the franchise ; I 
 do not in the abstract like the principle of gradually widening 
 the suffrage which seems to be the aim and object of many of 
 our statesmen $ directly the agricultural labourers are admitted
 
 WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE. 287 
 
 the inevitable result will be a considerable redistribution of 
 seats, and one never knows where it will end ; but the en- 
 franchisement of women involves no such results, and I think 
 we are strongest when basing their claim not upon any natural 
 right, but precisely upon the principle you have just laid down, 
 namely, that both women and the State would be the gainers.' 
 
 'I very much doubt that,' replied Major Knagge; 'if you come 
 to inquire into the er class of woinen who form the majority 
 of female ratepayers in London and and in other large towns, 
 they are not of the sort from whom much good is to be gained.' 
 
 ' You surely cannot be in earnest,' said Professor Wray, 
 with some warmth, ' in hinting that the majority of women- 
 householders are of questionable character ; but even were this 
 in some instances undeniable, we men, living as we do in such 
 fragile houses, should shun stone-throwing as the most dan- 
 gerous of pastimes ; immediately you made morality a test of 
 electoral right, I venture to say that men being what they are, 
 the thousands in many of our largest constituencies would 
 dwindle into units, while some candidates would be as hard put 
 to it to find even ten righteous men in the city of their choice. 
 No whatever other superiority may be denied to women they 
 certainly have the advantage of us here.' 
 
 ' For my part,' said Mrs. Knagge presently, as, for obvious 
 reasons, no one pressed at this moment the further discussion 
 of her husband's suggestion, ' for my part, I think women 
 ought to be satisfied, they have all they can reasonably 
 require ; the courtesy and consideration we receive are much 
 more gratifying than any so-called rights ; all the complaining 
 in the world does no good, it only rouses men to jealousy and 
 opposition.' 
 
 ' Quite right, my dear,' said the Major, patronisingly, ' that 
 is what I always say, if women want to seize on men's er 
 prerogative, they must be prepared to give up their privileges.' 
 
 ' Poor things ! ' said Madeline, ' are you not a little hard 
 upon them? Your threat sounds very alarming, but still I 
 think we may venture to hope that at any rate those men who
 
 288 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 are already just and generous enough to support women's 
 claims to wider interests, their desire for a power which will 
 enable them to lighten the burden of their toiling, the tempta- 
 tions of their erring sisters, are not likely to entertain any 
 jealousy or ill-feeling, and in spite of the terrible prospect 
 raised by the suggestion that if women claim their rights they 
 will lose their privileges, thoughtful women who have looked 
 into these questions would, I think, have no hesitation in 
 choosing the substance rather than the shadow, the benefit of 
 the many rather than the indulgence of the few.' 
 
 ' To quote a remark of Bright's,' said Professor Wray, 
 * when some one was waxing eloquent on the subject of 
 benevolence " Yes, yes, it is all very well, but one just law 
 is worth a million of soup-kitchens." By flattery or deference 
 to blind the eyes of individual women to evils which demand 
 redress, and which only striking at the root of them will cure, 
 is precisely the same principle which relieves individual want 
 by indiscriminate charity, without attacking the causes of 
 poverty. But I do not think there is any fear of women losing 
 the respect and deference to which they are entitled, for I 
 cannot think it would be a relief to any English gentleman to 
 drop all chivalrous observance and manly courtesy ; there is no 
 more danger of this I am convinced than that women will ever 
 lose the gentleness and grace which are natural to their sex. 
 My experience is that some of the most chivalrous men of the 
 present day are to be found amongst the staunch supporters of 
 women's suffrage ; certainly the tenderness and respect which 
 are only given to women as a favour on condition of their 
 remaining in a state of subjection, are an insult to reasonable 
 women, the courtesy which affectionately presses your hand and 
 at the same time treads heavily upon your foot, the selfishness 
 which shelters itself behind a mask of consideration for others, 
 like a certain noble householder I know of who, when burglars 
 were heard below at night, said, " You go first, dearest, it is a 
 mean man that would shoot a woman." ' 
 
 ' But,' said Miss Wyuter, ' is it not to a woman's gentleness
 
 WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE. 289 
 
 and grace that men pay deference, qualities which many 
 estimable persons think cannot possibly long survive their 
 mingling in politics and in all the rougher affairs of life V 
 
 ' I think a grain of experience, Auntie,' said Mrs. Silverton, 
 ' is worth a ton of conjecture in such matters ; where women 
 have obtained the suffrage as in the state of Wyoming, we 
 have the testimony of Governor Hoyt himself as to its 
 usefulness. Speaking at Philadelphia in reply to some very 
 similar arguments to yours, he said he had never anywhere 
 known women to be treated with so much real courtesy as in, 
 his own .state, he had never seen even a hod-carrier in the 
 streets of Cheyenne, or a man with a load upon his back who 
 on passing a lady, did not lift or at least touch his hat. If 
 politics have such a corrupting and hardening influence as you 
 suggest then they must be quite as bad for men as for women.' 
 
 ' I have more faith in nature, especially in the capabilities 
 of a woman's nature,' said Professor Wray, ' than to think of 
 their co-operation as other than subjectively, as well as 
 objectively speaking, beneficial. I know there are short- 
 sighted and nervous people who deny that the advancement 
 of women to perfect equality means the intellectual elevation 
 of the whole human race, on the grounds that with them 
 intellectual development means physical degeneration, and that 
 the most terrible results must ensue from women's taking part 
 in the excitement of a political contest ; but I wonder which 
 is the more likely to strengthen and raise the whole nature, 
 a healthy interest in the political, social, and intellectual 
 questions of the day, or the enervating dissipations of a London 
 season, the unhealthy conditions of a life of fashionable idleness.' 
 
 'When I hear men opposing the suffrage, too,' said Mrs. 
 Silverton, ' because we are so "charming" and so on, that any 
 change in us must be for the worse, I cannot help thinking of 
 those reviewers who, in reply to Mrs. Beecher Stowe's appeal 
 against slavery, said, " If the system can produce such black 
 Christ s as Uncle Tom, it would be a thousand pities to destroy 
 so beneficial an institution " ; if they saw fetters galling our 
 
 u
 
 290 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 wrists I suppose they would refuse to remove them because the 
 marks would be unsightly.' 
 
 'My dear lady, we have no intention of doing anything 
 so er barbarous,' said Major Knagge ; ' but we don't want to 
 have the world turned upside down, that is all.' 
 
 ' The best thing that could happen, I think,' replied Mrs. 
 Silverton, ' to whatever has been the wrong side uppermost ; 
 really I do not think there is such very imminent danger that 
 the distinctive attributes of womanhood will be destroyed by 
 Act of Parliament.' 
 
 'Things have greatly changed, indeed, since my young 
 days,' said Miss Wynter, with a gentle and somewhat despond- 
 ing shake of the head ; such a word as woman's rights was 
 unknown in our vocabulary, and as for the suffrage ! ' and the 
 old lady rounded off her sentence with a regretful little sigh. 
 
 ' Quite a new craze, my dear madam,' said the Major pom- 
 pously, ' and not the best development of the age ' 
 
 ' I always notice,' said Madeline in an aside to Sir Henry, 
 who was sitting next to her, ' that when the average English- 
 man says a thing is without precedent, he considers that the 
 last word of destructive criticism has been uttered. ' 
 
 ' In short,' was the reply, ' he shies at a new idea ; to quote 
 Lord Sherbrooke, " like a horse at a perambulator." I am 
 afraid your criticism is only too just, as a race, we are terribly 
 conservative but,' he added, turning to Major Knagge, who 
 had just ceased speaking, ' the women suffrage advocates may 
 claim the authority of ancient usage from the Gauls having 
 called into their councils the chief women of the nation.' 
 
 ' We may find a precedent much nearer home than that,' 
 replied the Professor ; ' it is a fact of which few seem to be 
 aware, that in England women had anciently a right to vote 
 for members of Parliament, a power which during the reign 
 of three Henry's and Elizabeth they not only possessed but 
 exercised, and though in Puritan times they were disfranchised 
 by a text from St. Paul, on the restoration, legal judgment 
 was given affirming the right of properly qualified women to
 
 WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE. 291 
 
 vote ; a right, which, though it fell into abeyance, was never 
 actually repealed until the Reform Bill of 1832, which 
 restricted the franchise to " male persons " ; so you see the 
 idea of women's suffrage is after all no innovation.' 
 
 ' Well, for my part,' said the Major, 'I have no desire to 
 reform the Reform Bill on this point, and let the movement 
 be as er widespread as it may in England and America, in 
 no other country, so far as I know, is the question attracting 
 any attention.' 
 
 ' Miss Acton, you know more about this than I,' said the 
 Professor, ' I believe it is the case, is it not, that the question 
 of women's advancement is discussed with at least equal 
 warmth in other countries.' 
 
 ' In Austria, I believe, the right of voting has already been 
 conceded to women,' was the reply. ' In Russia I speak on 
 the authority of a contributor to the Contemporary Review * 
 since the reign of the Empress Elizabeth girls have been no 
 more subjected to legal guardianship than boys, while the 
 property of married women is held quite independently. If 
 we are to judge from the large and increasing number of 
 articles and works published upon women's questions, the 
 interest excited by them is certainly not less on the Continent 
 than with us. I cannot remember, of course, half those that 
 I have seen. In France they have the Droit des Femmes, La 
 Gazette des Femmes, in Italy La Donna, in Germany the 
 Dewtscher Frauen Anwalt the DeutscJie Hausfrauen Zrituny, all 
 dealing more or less with such social and political questions as 
 we have been discussing. Besides these there are numerous 
 pamphlets and larger works, published in these countries as 
 well as in Norway and Sweden. In the Revue des Deux 
 Mondes, and more frequently still in the Nouvelle Revue, there 
 have been from time to time, thoughtful and liberal papers on 
 these questions, by Emile de Girardin and other writers of 
 reputation, while, what I think speaks more strongly still, is 
 the fact of Alexandre Dumas writing such a work as Les 
 * See Contemporary Review, December, 1878.
 
 292 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 Femmes qui tuent et les Femmes qui Votent ; for it is said that 
 Dumas' success has been chiefly owing to his faculty for 
 discerning, before any of his literary contemporaries, when any 
 questions are coming to the front, in which direction the 
 current of popular feeling is likely to turn, and managing to 
 be just in advance of it.' 
 
 ' If,' said Professor Wray, ' you compare the tone taken by 
 the leading papers and magazines in this country and else- 
 where, now, with the contemptuous ridicule of most of them in 
 former days, when the Standard declared it to be impossible to 
 treat such a theme as woman's suffrage with any seriousness, 
 we cannot help seeing that a great advance has been made. 
 It is no use to be impatient, for it takes two centuries to do 
 away with an absurdity ; one to recognise it, the other to cure 
 it, those who look for anything like rapid action in the 
 cumbrous machinery of State will certainly be disappointed. 
 The proposal for women's suffrage will not pass into law 
 probably this year or next, seeing that it took Parliament not 
 far short of a century to adopt Adam Smith's theories of 
 free trade, obviously sensible though they were. But it cannot 
 be long, I think, before the emancipation of women is looked 
 upon as the most urgent and necessary of reforms ; people 
 will know now-a-days the why and wherefore of everything, 
 and customs, however old established, will have to live on 
 their own merits, or die the death of the worn out and useless 
 branch, which must be cut down to make room for the strong 
 young shoots of progress.' 
 
 ' There's a chiel amang us taking notes,' said Mrs. Sil- 
 verton, presently, when the desert was on the table, and the 
 servants had retired ; ' it is no good to plead " not guilty," 
 Madeline, I have noticed you all through dinner, making occa- 
 sional entries in your note-book.' 
 
 ' Some treason I am afraid ; caricatures perhaps,' suggested 
 Sir Henry, ' or caustic criticisms on the general imbecility of 
 mankind, destined to appear in the pages of the Women's 
 Suffrage Journal.'
 
 WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE. 293 
 
 ' Your conception of the motif of that paper is not quite 
 accurate,' replied Madeline, laughing ; ' I was only amusing 
 myself by noting side by side, the diametrically opposite 
 arguments that one hears brought forward from time to time by 
 persons of different views against giving women the franchise.' 
 
 ' You seemed very much amused, I noticed,' said Sir Henry. 
 
 ' Ye es ; there is always a sort of hidden absurdity, as well 
 as a palpable one, I think, in want of logic. Even in so serious 
 a case as that of the man who having murdered both parents 
 claimed a lenient sentence on the plea that he was a poor 
 orphan; one cannot help laughing at the absurdity of his 
 argument, and it is just so with some of these, our opponents 
 are so fond of reasoning in a circle, and shifting their ground 
 from time to time, that I am constantly reminded of the old 
 lady who said, " I am always open to conviction, but I should 
 like to see the man who could convince me." ' 
 
 ' But obliquity of mental vision,' said Sir Henry, ' like its 
 physical counterpart, is to be cured by judicious treatment, so 
 if we have been illogical, have we not a right to ask that you 
 will point out where 1 ' 
 
 1 1 do not believe in your mental obliquity,' said Madeline, 
 shaking her head, ' any more than in the defective sight of 
 those children who divert themselves, and alarm their friends 
 occasionally by assuming a squint, but you are quite welcome 
 to see my notes, such as they are.' 
 
 ' To be read aloud, Harry,' said his sister. 
 
 ' By the writer's leave then. I find here under the heading 
 " Arguments I have heard against granting the suffrage to 
 women : " ' 
 
 'A member of the Peace Society tu No," says the advocate of a 
 says, " They are too pugnacious spirited foreign policy, " I refuse 
 to be trusted with political power, women political influence because 
 they would rush into war on the they would infallibly belong to 
 smallest provocation."' the peace - at - any - price party, 
 
 regardless of their country's 
 
 honour." '
 
 294 
 
 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 ' " Women are too indifferent 
 to politics," says one.' 
 
 'One Liberal opponent fears 
 " Women would all be Conserva- 
 tives." ' 
 
 ' One chivalrous man says, 
 " Women are too silly and igno- 
 rant to have a vote." ' 
 
 ' They are so wanting in force 
 of character, as well as force of 
 muscle, urges one, " That their 
 votes would only double those of 
 their fathers or brothers, or what- 
 ever man for the moment had an 
 influence over them." ' 
 
 ' Some, like Mr. Newdigate, fear 
 " Women would be governed by 
 the clergy."' 
 
 ' One says that " Women's 
 minds are so unlike men's, that 
 they are totally unfitted by na- 
 ture to have any part in the same 
 work."' 
 
 ' On one side we hear " Women 
 don't want the suffrage, and so 
 there is no necessity for them to 
 have it."' 
 
 ' " Women are so eager and ex- 
 citable," says another, " that to 
 give them a vote would be to in- 
 troduce discord into families." ' 
 
 ' A Conservative, on the other 
 hand, points to the French .Re- 
 volution, and says it is not safe 
 to give women votes for they al- 
 ways rush into extremes.' 
 
 ' Another declares that they 
 are " so sweet and angelic that 
 any change in them must be for 
 the worse." ' 
 
 ' " I oppose the movement on 
 quite different grounds," says an- 
 other, " women are so powerful, 
 that it would never do to give 
 them a vote unless we wish them 
 to usurp all men's functions and 
 privileges." ' 
 
 ' Others say that " Women who 
 agitate for reform are so advanced, 
 that they would be for abolishing 
 religion, to say nothing of our 
 most cherished social institu- 
 tions." ' 
 
 ' While another holds that 
 " The feelings and ideas of men 
 and women are so much alike, 
 that men are equally, indeed 
 rather better qualified to interpret 
 the wishes and opinions of women, 
 than the said women are them- 
 selves." ' 
 
 'On the other, we are told, "If 
 women would only wait quietly 
 instead of clamouring as they do, 
 they would have much more 
 chance of getting what they 
 want." '
 
 WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE. 295 
 
 ' Well done, Madeline,' said Mrs. Silverton, ' I hope you 
 feel properly subdued, Harry.' 
 
 ' Quite crushed,' was the reply. ' I should think,' he added, 
 turning to Madeline, ' you have shown up every possible argu- 
 ment that ever has been, or could be, brought against the suf- 
 frage.' 
 
 ' Not quite ; there are a few others equally ridiculous ; one 
 of the most amusing I came upon in an old black-letter volume 
 in the British Museum entitled, the Lawes and Resolutions of 
 Women's Rights, the author of which says, " The reason why 
 women have no control in Parliament, why they make no laws, 
 consent to none, abrogate none, is owing to original sin ! " 
 
 ' Your old friend or enemy evidently was not of Pope's 
 opinion, at anyrate, that women have nothing original about 
 them,' said Sir Henry. 
 
 ' Miss Acton has made out a very clear case, you cannot 
 deny that,' said the Professor, with his rare smile ; ' such argu- 
 ments as those, which, ridiculous as they are, have actually 
 been applauded in the House of Commons, remind me of a 
 story I have heard of a monk who, discussing with Erasmus, 
 the heresies of Luther and his followers, was glorying in the 
 fact that the Church had completely answered them. " I have 
 been told," said Erasmus, " that you burnt their books ; but I 
 never heard that you had answered them." It is more than 
 ignorance and prejudice can do to extinguish truth.' 
 
 ' I must protest,' began Major Knagge, but in the few 
 minutes it had taken him to prepare his reply, Mrs. Silverton 
 had risen from the table, and his words were now lost in 
 the rustling of the ladies' dresses and the general moving of 
 chairs. 
 
 Something in Sir Henry's manner, as he handed back 
 Madeline's note-book, made her, on reaching the drawing-room, 
 take another look at the contents and there, in another hand- 
 writing beneath her own words, she read : ' The owner of this 
 note-book may, if she pleases, find some analogy between its 
 condition and that of the latest and humblest of her disciples ;
 
 296 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 on both has she inscribed some new ideas, in both is there a 
 page apparently untouched, though in the case of the one as in 
 that of the other, invisible ink may have traced upon it 
 characters more indelible than the rest, which it requires only a 
 little warmth to bring to light.' 
 
 ' Madeline, come and play this duet with me ; auntie has 
 a love of Beethoven which does her credit, and I am sure she 
 deserves a reward for the patience with which she listens to 
 our tiresome discussions and heterodox views.' 
 
 Madeline hastily put the note-book in her pocket, and went 
 at once to the piano, in answer to her friend's request, and 
 since her love of music equalled her capacity, once there, she 
 was in no hurry to leave it again ; and, either absorbed in 
 studying the words of some German songs she was turning 
 over, or for some other reason, when the gentlemen entered the 
 room she did not appear to notice the fact, and it was with a 
 pre-occupied air that she received the cup of tea that Sir 
 Henry presently brought her. After eliciting only mono- 
 syllabic replies to one or two commonplace remarks, he said in 
 his usual straightforward manner ' I hope I did not offend 
 you by my presumption in venturing to scribble in your note- 
 book.' 
 
 ' Oh no,' she answered with an action curiously resembling 
 that of a dog who has been plunged into the water against its 
 will, and is glad to shake off the effects of his immersion ; ' not 
 at all, why should I be offended ? But I am no ^Edipus,' she 
 added, ' and cannot be expected to solve enigmas.' 
 
 ' Yet you are the most ardent exponent of the wants and 
 wishes of your own sex that I have ever met, and I should 
 have said women are the most perplexing enigmas in creation. 
 Have you been singing that song of Mendelssohn's ? ' 
 
 ' No ; I was only thinking what a remarkably free transla- 
 tion " Hopes and Fears " is of the title Neue, LiebeS 
 
 ' It is ; but perhaps there was a subtle though natural con- 
 nexion in the translator's mind between Neue Liebe and 
 " Hopes and Fears " the one undoubtedly involves the other ;
 
 WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE. 297 
 
 but do you not think, though looking at human qualities in 
 the abstract, that the plant " which grasps the soil yet seeks 
 the sun ; " in other words, the spirit of hopefulness is to be en- 
 couraged ? ' the words were uttered lightly, but there was a 
 shade of anxiety in the speaker's tone. 
 
 ' Under some circumstances,' she replied, ' though the 
 Italians have a proverb which says that, " The man who lives 
 on hope will die of hunger." But you will join us in this 
 quartette, will you not,' she added, going to fetch a piece of 
 music from the other end of the grand piano, ' we only waited 
 for your arrival, Nellie 1 ?' And Madeline held up the sheet in 
 question, whereupon Mrs. Silverton and her husband joined 
 them, thus rendering any further tete-ct-tete impracticable.
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 1 Justice is lame as well as blind amongst us, 
 The laws corrupted to their ends that made them.' 
 
 T. OTWAY, Venice Preserved. 
 
 ' Even in those countries where they are best treated, the laws are 
 generally unfavourable to women with respect to almost all the points in 
 which they are most deeply interested.' LORD MACAULAY. 
 
 1 1 have arrived at conclusions which I keep to myself as yet, and only 
 utter as Greek ^vavra orvveroroi, the principle of which is, that there 
 will never be a good world for women until the last monk and therewith 
 the last remnant of the monastic idea of and legislation for women, i.e., 
 the Canon Law, is civilized off the face of the earth. Meanwhile all the 
 most pure and high minded women in England and in Europe have been 
 brought up under the shadow of the Canon Law, and have accepted it 
 with their usual divine self-sacrifice as their destiny by law of God and 
 nature, and consider their own womanhood outraged, when it, their 
 tyrant, is meddled with.' KINGSLEY'S Life and Letters. Vol. II., p. 328. 
 Letter to John Stuart Mill. June 17, 1849. 
 
 ' Man to man so oft unjust 
 Is always so to woman.' BYKON. 
 
 ' In all times, and in all countries, laws have ever been more or less 
 oppressive for women because they have been dictated, promulgated, and 
 sanctioned by men.' VOLTAIKE. 
 
 ' Aussi longtemps que la loi Francaise maintiendra entre rhomme et 
 la femme des inegalites que la nature ne justifie pas, les femmes seront 
 fondees a revendiquer le droit de concourir a la reforme de lois iniques, de 
 lois qui les abaissent, de lois qui les blessent, de lois qui avaient une 
 raison d'etre aux temps et dans les pays barbares, de lois qui n'ont plus 
 de raison de subsister aux temps et dans les pays civilises, de lois enfin 
 qui sont un anachronisme.' 
 
 EMILE DE GIBAKDIN, La Nouvelle Revue, Oct. 15, 1880. 
 
 ' So far as I am able to form an opinion of the general tone and 
 colour of our law in these matters, where the peculiar relation of men 
 and women is concerned, that law does less than justice to women, and 
 great mischief, misery, and scandal, result from that state of things in 
 
 many of the occurrences and events of life If it should be found 
 
 possible to arrange a safe and well-adjusted alteration of the law as to 
 political power, the man who shall attain that object, and who shall see 
 his purpose carried onward to its consequences in a more just arrange- 
 ment of the provisions of other laws bearing upon the condition and 
 welfare of women, will, in my opinion, be a real benefactor to his 
 country.' 
 
 W. E. GLADSTONE. Speech in the House of Commons, May 3, 1871.
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 LEGAL DISABILITIES. 
 
 ' WERE you really serious last night in asserting that there was 
 no injustice to women, no want of due consideration for their 
 interests to be found in our laws ? ' asked Professor Wray, as 
 the next morning after breakfast he and Major Knagge strolled 
 together up and down the long verandah with their cigars, in 
 hopes that the rain which was now coming down in torrents, 
 might sooner or later take its departure. ' I cannot believe you 
 were in earnest.' 
 
 ' Never more so, my dear sir ; I don't deny that there may 
 have been some little injustice occasionally in the past, but 
 since this er new Married Women's Property Act, it seems 
 to me that they are going to have things all their own way, 
 why it is the most magnificently generous piece of legislation 
 that the world has ever seen.' 
 
 ' I should call it no more than an act of tardy justice ; it 
 has given women nothing, it has merely enabled them to hold 
 their own ; and though it is historically true that everywhere 
 the rights of property have been recognised before the rights 
 of persons, and where the property of any individual or class is 
 secured other rights are almost sure to follow, yet this is no 
 reason for forgetting that there are yet many evil and injurious 
 laws unrepealed ; while in regard to those which have ceased to 
 exist we have still their history, proving as conclusively as 
 their existence could, the fact I maintained yesterday, that any 
 class politically ignored is never safe from injustice. Women 
 owe ecclesiastical laws a very serious grudge, for it was the 
 Canon Law which corrupted the Common Law of England and 
 retarded civilisation by its destruction of the property and 
 other rights of women. The worst features of the Common
 
 302 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 Law, as Blackstone admits, are those touching upon the rights 
 of women ; the unbounded influence gained by the Church in 
 the Middle Ages over the State, has, in short, endured to this 
 day in our Criminal Code. It is only the work done within 
 the last half century by able women and their friends which 
 has called attention to these abuses, and obtained the repeal of 
 some. The position of wives with regard to their property has 
 at last been forced on the attention of Parliament, and not too 
 soon ; for, year by year, I have observed that many of the best 
 and most thoughtful women have shown a growing indifference 
 to, not to say dread of, a condition which to quote the words 
 of Blackstone " placed them in every way at a disadvantage," 
 and with delightful inconsistency made the most solemnly 
 responsible action of a woman's life a reason for declaring her 
 irresponsible; with similar logic and sense of justice, the 
 law which made a man in church endow his bride with all his 
 worldly goods really took from her everything she possessed, 
 and in return the husband was only bound to keep her off the 
 rates. You think I am exaggerating,' he continued in reply 
 to his companion's incredulous look ; ' but listen to the words 
 of Coke, " Marriage is an absolute gift by the wife of all her 
 chattels personal, whether the wife survive the husband or 
 not " ; the distinct contract in the marriage service was not 
 only legally null and void, it was actually reversed, so much so 
 that the words of the old Russian nuptial consecration, " Here 
 wolf take thy lamb," would not have been inappropriate in this 
 country, for according to our law there is no doubt that before 
 this new Act came into operation all a woman's interests were 
 in marriage summarily devoured ; she had no more power than 
 an infant of contracting in her separate capacity, and none of 
 sueing in a court of law for the enforcement of her rights ; if a 
 wife, who through no fault of her own, was living apart from 
 her husband, met with a disabling railway accident, he might 
 legally take every penny of the money received by her in 
 compensation. * I know a case myself in which the wife was 
 * See Irish Law Times, May 17, 1879.
 
 LEGAL DISABILITIES. 303 
 
 earning an independent living; being unfortunate enough to 
 meet with a serious railway accident in which her leg was 
 broken, she obtained from the railway company one hundred 
 pounds damages, but this the Court was obliged by law to pay, 
 not to her, but to her husband, who was a thorough-paced 
 scoundrel, and who did not scruple to apply the whole of the 
 money to his own use ; the poor woman was in the greatest 
 straits, having a heavy doctor's bill to pay, and her business 
 having, during her long illness, almost entirely fallen away; 
 but the law had nothing to do with this, the injured limb was 
 her husband's property, and not one single penny of that 
 hundred pounds could she claim. More than this, it is a 
 fact, though not, I believe, generally known, that when a 
 woman had only accepted an offer of marriage, all she had, or 
 expected to have, became virtually her intended husband's, 
 and no gift or deed executed by her between the period of 
 acceptance and the marriage was held to be legally valid, 
 "for," says Roper, in his Law of ffitsband and Wife, "were 
 she permitted to give away or otherwise settle her property, 
 he might be disappointed in the wealth he looked to in making 
 the offer."'* 
 
 ' But his wife's fortune,' said Major Knagge, ' may have 
 been er a weighty consideration with him in undertaking 
 the responsibilities of marriage, and to disappoint him of what 
 he had been led to expect would constitute, I should say, er 
 a species of fraud.' 
 
 ' The fraud is certainly not less in a case where a man has 
 set aside a woman's disposition of property about which before 
 marriage he knew nothing ; but in this case the law supported 
 tbe evil-doer, and who could dare to blame him ? It was quite 
 just that a man should be the administrator of what was not 
 his own, and which he was perhaps not in the least capable of 
 managing ; there was nothing out of the way in the fact that 
 he might transfer any Government Stock or shares from her 
 name to his, might appropriate the balance at her bankers, 
 * Roper On Husband and Wife, i. 163.
 
 304 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 claim the money for debts due to her, and invest it foolishly 
 without her consent, gamble it away, or spend it upon other 
 women, the law could not touch him. He might even, if it so 
 pleased him, sell or give away her personal effects, her clothes, 
 or jewellery, and though every penny they possessed may have 
 been hers, yet if he died intestate, she could only legally claim 
 one third, whilst if he chose, he could even will it all away 
 from her.' 
 
 ' But no man would ever do such a thing.' 
 
 ' It has been done over and over again. An officer to 
 whom I was talking some years ago on the injustice of the 
 laws relating to the property of married women, told me a sad 
 instance in the case of an old servant he knew, who having 
 been for years a lady's-maid and housekeeper, had saved some 
 money, which, with presents and legacies, amounted to a large 
 property for a person in her station. Poor thing ! she married 
 unwisely, and her husband, when he died, left everything by 
 will, to his aister ; not a farthing of her own money, put by 
 as a provision for old age, did the widow receive ; even her 
 silver spoons a present from her late mistress went to the 
 sister-in-law, and the poor wife had no alternative between 
 starving or going into a workhouse, until the sister, under the 
 influence and expostulations of the clergyman of the parish, 
 was forced, in deference to public opinion, to allow her a few 
 shillings a-week out of what was really her own money. Here 
 is another case which I can vouch for as equally true. A lady, 
 possessed of considerable property, and no less faith in the man 
 of her choice,. married without a settlement ; soon her husband 
 behaved so atrociously that she was compelled to leave him ; 
 all she could legally claim to live on being a pittance of about 
 four shillings a-week. Up to the year 1870, as I daresay you 
 know, even a woman's earnings were not her own, and number- 
 less were the cases in which the money of a poor woman, 
 earned with difficulty for the support of herself and her children, 
 was repeatedly taken away by the husband and spent in drink ; 
 if she placed it in the charge of a friend or banker this was of
 
 LEGAL DISABILITIES. 305 
 
 no use, for they were bound to give it up at the demand of the- 
 husband. If husband and wife were living apart, and she could 
 just contrive to support herself, he might make periodical raids 
 upon her, sweep off everything she possessed, and if it pleased 
 him further to sell her business, the law would bear him out. 
 A sad story in illustration of this was told me a short time 
 since by a lady who knew the people concerned. The husband 
 of a poor girl, an irreproachable and loving wife, took to 
 drinking, until his whole nature, not originally a bad one, 
 became changed ; soon he neglected his wife and his business, 
 and spent everything he earned in drink ; but for a time she 
 struggled bravely on. At last, however, shortly before the 
 birth of her second child, her husband took away and pawned 
 all the clothing and necessaries she had provided, sold her bed 
 even, and drove her into the streets to seek help from charity 
 in her hour of utmost need. For her children's sake she 
 struggled back to life and to something like hope again ; find- 
 ing a situation in which she was fortunate enough to be allowed 
 to keep her children with her, she went to service ; but the 
 husband pursued her from place to place, annoying her em- 
 ployei's, collecting her earnings by process of law, and taking 
 any clothes belonging to her or the children upon which he 
 could lay his hands. Such was the iniquity sanctioned by the 
 " chivalry " and " consideration for women " displayed in our 
 common law until quite recently. Indeed, one might go on 
 indefinitely multiplying instances, and that not only in one 
 class of life. You remember the case of the Hon. Mrs. Norton 1 ?' 
 
 'I can't say I know much about it,' replied the Major. 
 ' There was some question of her fidelity, wasn't there 1 and 
 Lord er let me see, who was it ? Lord Melbourne's name 
 was brought in somehow.' 
 
 'Some such charge, though everywhere allowed now to 
 have been false, was, I believe, made the plea for separation ; 
 but what I referred to was the fact of her husband's being able 
 legally to claim the copyrights of her works, and to take the 
 1000 per annum which they brought in, allowing her out of 
 
 x
 
 306 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 it at first about 400/. a-year, but afterwards pocketing the. 
 whole. Another even worse case, perhaps, for Mrs. Norton 
 had many friends was that of a poor woman at Liverpool, 
 whose first husband died, leaving her a thousand pounds in the 
 bank, and a comfortable inn, the business of which she carried 
 on. Not very long after she married again, and soon the 
 second husband drew her thousand pounds from the bank and 
 decamped with it to Australia. She continued to support her- 
 self and her daughter, however, by the business ; but, after a few 
 years, the husband returned in a wretched plight, professed 
 repentance, and was received again. One day this reformed 
 character considerately advised his wife to go with her daughter 
 for a drive in the country ; he thought " it would do her good." 
 Unsuspicious of evil, and indeed grateful for his thoughtfulness, 
 they complied ; but, on their return home, some hours later, 
 they found the man in their absence had sold the business to a 
 stranger and again disappeared. They had no redress, the 
 property and earnings were legally the husband's, and the two 
 women were turned adrift, homeless and penniless upon the 
 streets of Liverpool.' 
 
 ' But I am sure there was some law that, when the husband 
 was absent two years, allowed the woman to get an order from 
 a magistrate to protect her earnings.' 
 
 ' No doubt ; and the man might stay and live in idleness 
 upon her, or come back at intervals of a few months and clear 
 off everything she possessed.' 
 
 ' But all these are extreme cases, not one man in in I 
 should say, a thousand, would behave in that way.' 
 
 * Is this any excuse for the existence of laws which rendered 
 such a state of things possible, which, instead of supporting 
 the physically weaker, made life all the harder for them] Laws 
 are not for the upright and honest members of the community, 
 but as a terror to evil-doers ; and by not guarding against the 
 possibility of offences being committed with impunity, the law 
 is to a great extent answerable for them. If all men were just 
 and good, all husbands and wives were true and loving ; if such
 
 . % LEGAL DISABILITIES. 307 
 
 things as conflicting interests were never known between them, 
 these laws might have done little or no harm, for such people 
 are a law unto themselves. The fact is, the theory of a wife's 
 subjection, upon which all such unequal laws are based, instead 
 of restraining the unscrupulous, really puts an instrument of 
 cruelty into their hands, so much so, that in classes where 
 brutal instincts are not curbed by education and refined sur- 
 roundings, their tendency was, and in some instances, is still, 
 to make women, who earn their own living, prefer unlegalised 
 contracts. A man some years since was tried for cruelly 
 assaulting the woman who lived with him. " What have you 
 to say in defence ] " he was asked. " I was in liquor, your 
 worship ; I gave her money to go to market, and told her to 
 look sharp, but she was gone more'n an hour." " Had she 
 died," said the magistrate, " you would have been tried for 
 murder. You must remember she is not your slave, not 
 accountable to you for every moment of her time she is not 
 in fact she is not " a moment's pause, during which a siip- 
 pressed titter ran through the court " your wife," the worthy 
 magistrate would have said, had not shame stopped his mouth ; 
 but the lesson unintentionally taught was only too evident, 
 namely, that the illegality of their relationship was in the 
 woman's favour. A lady who has done much in alleviating the 
 condition of the poor of her own sex, on one occasion begged a 
 working woman at Wigan to marry the man she lived with ; 
 her reply was, " My Tom brings me some of his wages now, 
 but maybe if I married him, he would do like the rest." Our 
 laws in regard to husband and wife, as I said before, have done' 
 in the past, and do still in many instances, much to directly 
 encourage illegal contracts. The mistress has legal rights and 
 protection which the wife has not ; her money has always been 
 her own, and, unlike the wife, she may always claim her chil- 
 dren, while she is free to leave him for unkindness, without 
 being obliged to prove cruelty or adultery. Not long ago a 
 husband got four months' imprisonment for brutally ill-using 
 his wife just after her confinement, while another man who,
 
 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 when drunk, quarrelled with a woman not his legal wife, 
 though she was partly to blame, had six months' imprisonment 
 for assault. He had not the excuse, you see, of the former ; he 
 could not say, like Petruchio, 
 
 " She is my goods, my chattels, she is my house, 
 My household stuff." 
 
 For my part, I do not wonder at the exclamation of the sister 
 of Kossuth 
 
 "No countrywoman of mine would ever put up with the legal 
 position assigned to married women in England.'" 
 
 ' All those cases you mention sound very unfair, of course,' 
 said Major Knagge ; ' but they might all have been obviated 
 by settlements.' 
 
 'A curious idea of justice this artificial system which 
 enabled the wealthier classes, only by an evasion, to give the 
 common law the go by, and avoid for their daughters the legal 
 penalties of marriage, which to the poor, until recently, meant 
 that their savings and earnings, all their scanty means in the 
 present and provision for the future, were to be confiscated 
 without appeal. Of course, with or without those complicated 
 arrangements concerning trusts, and all the rest of it, by which 
 the severity of the old common law was mitigated, the happily 
 married knew nothing of the legal position of a wife ; it w T as 
 upon the helpless and the miserable the very ones whom 
 legislation should protect that these iniquitous property laws 
 pressed.' 
 
 ' Come, come,' said the Major, ' you must allow that these 
 laws cut both ways ; a wife, to wit, under them could run up 
 as many debts as she pleased without being er responsible ; 
 the husband had to find the money.' 
 
 ' Two wrongs do not make a right, because by one bad law 
 an unprincipled woman would be the gainer ; this is no excuse 
 for perpetuating others from which the innocent suffer. But 
 this subject reminds me of an amusing notice which appeared 
 a few years ago in the Sheffield Daily Telegraph. A husband
 
 LEGAL DISABILITIES. 309 
 
 had advertised in the usual way that he, Thomas A., would no 
 longer be responsible for the debts incurred by his wife, where- 
 upon the wife advertised in reply, " This is to notify that I, 
 Elizabeth A., am able to pay all my own debts now that I have 
 got quit of Tommy." But seriously, the effect of the law 
 cutting, as you say, both ways, was that it allowed the most 
 unprincipled of either sex impunity in evil doing. That there 
 have been many happy unions in spite of our iniquitous 
 marriage laws is due to the fact that in these instances the 
 principle of equality has been practically acknowledged, because 
 culture and progress have taken us far ahead of laws only fit 
 for barbarous times, and individual men feeling this, have, in 
 their sense of justice, ignored them, and made them to all 
 intents and purposes a dead letter.' 
 
 'But I don't agree with you,' said the Major, ' in thinking 
 that this new Act giving absolute control over their own pro- 
 perty to married women is an an an unmitigated blessing ; 
 I should say it is likely to have very bad results from creating 
 separate interests.' 
 
 ' I cannot believe,' replied Professor Wray, ' that the hap- 
 piness of English domestic life depends on the wife's absolute 
 dependence on the husband, nor on the subordination of her 
 will ; harmony between two natures is not to be produced by 
 silencing one of them. I quite agree with Herbert Spencer 
 (Social Statics) in thinking that " even as we loathe now the 
 custom prevailing among certain nations forbidding women to 
 eat in company with men, so shall we come in time to loathe 
 the so-called civilised theories of the wife's subjection to the 
 husband " ; it is demoralising to both, making the man, unless 
 of exceptionally strong mind and generous nature, inclined to 
 think himself of chief importance, not only in the State but in 
 all other matters, and fostering in the women weakness, 
 cowardice, and often a want of straightforwardness.' 
 
 ' Well,' said Major Knagge, ' all I can say is, I shall be 
 curious to see what women make of this new-found liberty 
 when they have had it, say, er a dozen years or so. I
 
 310 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 think it is most probable that their having unlimited control 
 over their own property means that they will fritter it away 
 in dress and jewellery, or waste it upon some unworthy 
 object.' 
 
 ' Men never waste any money, do they, upon expensive 
 dinners, wines, the turf, fast living, or any other form of self- 
 indulgence 1 Truly, we, as a sex, are well qualified to talk of 
 women's extravagance. And though, no doubt, there are 
 thoughtless, expensive wives, I do not think any man who 
 treats the woman he has married as a child never telling her 
 what his income is, or what their expenditure ought to be, has 
 any right to complain ; nor can I see that the thoughtlessness 
 of some, who, never having been taught to earn money, do 
 not know the value of it, is any reason for controlling the 
 property of the whole sex. By this rule, not a man among us 
 could hold his own purse-strings.' 
 
 ' I don't think the cases are parallel ; look what foolish 
 investments women make when they do get control of any 
 money.' 
 
 ' I am fortunate enough to know some women who are both 
 admirable managers and judicious investors ; and there will be 
 more as time goes on, for where women are unbusinesslike, it 
 is chiefly owing, I suspect, to want of training and practice, 
 rather than to any inherent lack of the necessary faculties ; it 
 is hardly fair that any one should be kept from acquiring a 
 knowledge of business matters, and then be accused of in- 
 capacity. We shall see in this, as in all similar cases, responsi- 
 bility will develop power, and women will learn to manage 
 their own affairs ably and wisely, without relying, as in the 
 past, upon the help of some man, be he father, or husband, or 
 brother, or scheming man of business.' 
 
 ' That's as it may be,' said the Major ; ' but when you talk 
 about equality, there's no such thing as er absolute equality ; 
 somebody must rule, and that somebody why it stands to 
 reason iws be the husband ; he provides the money and 
 keeps the household going.'
 
 LEGAL DISABILITIES. . 311 
 
 * So you would give him the wife's property and earnings, 
 and then make that a plea for his absolute sovereignty.' 
 
 ' But isn't the man in nine cases out of ten the bread- 
 winner 1 ?' 
 
 ' I should say that except in a few privileged instances, 
 wives work quite as hard as their husbands ; do quite their 
 share in the support of the house. The marriage state is one of 
 mutual dependence, he has one set of duties to attend to, she. 
 has another, He could no more keep up the same comforts or 
 luxuries of home without her, than she could do without him. 
 Amongst the wealthier classes the wife probably brings her con- 
 tribution of property towards their common expenses, and if 
 not, it must not be forgotten that women have had to forfeit in 
 favour of men the right to exercise, in most cases, their faculties, 
 except at home. Amongst the poorer classes, take for example 
 the case of an artisan or labouring man ; supposing he had to 
 attend to the washing, the cooking, the making, the mending 
 which fill up her days from early morning till late at night ; 
 would he be able, think you, to earn even the half of his wages 1 
 Then, surely, since she saves at least as much as he gains, she 
 has equal right to be considered the bread-winner.' 
 
 ' Well, after all,' said the Major, ' we are going over old 
 ground. This property-business is settled once and for all, I sup- 
 pose, and nothing you can say in favour of the new law, or I can 
 say against it, will make much difference ; and then this plea for 
 giving them the franchise falls through; for I am sure they 
 have nothing else to complain of in the laws. I should say a 
 married woman's er position is about as good as it could be.' 
 
 ' If men,' said Professor Wray very seriously, ' habitually 
 exercised over their wives the full legal power they possess, I do 
 not think you, or any one else, could for a moment think there 
 was nothing left to be desired ; though one despotic power 
 formerly given to the husband has become null and void, there is 
 still injustice enough, and to spare, of which every wife and 
 mother in England has a right to complain, since the children 
 she has borne, still belong by law solely to the father ; a mother
 
 312 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 has during his lifetime no legal right to exercise any control what- 
 ever over their education and training after the age of seven. 
 If the husband chooses to remove a child altogether from the 
 mother's charge he may do so ; he may have their children 
 brought up as Mormons or Mahommedans, or in whatever creed 
 he pleases, in defiance of her wishes and convictions. If he 
 changes his religion after marriage he can insist upon all their 
 children being brought up in his newly adopted faith ; the wife 
 has no power to protest. Indeed, even when, as in the Agar- 
 Ellis case there was an express written agreement, without which 
 the marriage would not have taken place, that any children 
 should be brought up in the mother's faith, the husband and 
 father may break through this with impunity ; his rights are 
 so sacred that he cannot sign them away. As for the mother's 
 rights, legally she has none, and many a good woman, when 
 there has been a separation, secures the possession of her chil- 
 dren only by making a money-compensation to the father. The 
 lesson of the Agar-Ellis case is this, that though a man enters 
 into a solemn engagement that he will do this, or that, if some 
 woman will accept him as her husband ; if he chooses, having 
 gained the ends for which the contract was made, he may 
 repudiate the same, and the law will uphold him. Can any 
 one, with an unperverted moral sense, help feeling indignant at 
 such so-called justice 1 ? The exponents of the law have no other 
 excuse than, with Baron Bramwell to declare, " that a mother's 
 rights over her children are legally nil."" Is it not time that 
 women should make their voices heard by the legislature, when 
 though told by many that motherhood is their only true vocation, 
 their children may yet at the will of the father be legally taken 
 away from their guardianship, and given to the care of a 
 stranger, or even sent out of the country if he pleases ? And 
 not only may he dispose of their offspring, as he sees fit during 
 his lifetime ; but also by will, since the law does not recognise 
 the mother's right of guardianship as paramount. The father 
 may consign them to the care of whomsoever he pleases to her 
 exclusion 1 ; and even though he may have the right feeling to
 
 LEGAL DISABILITIES. 313 
 
 leave them to her guardianship, she has no power to appoint a 
 successor.' 
 
 ' Impossible,' said Major Knagge. 
 
 ' Unfortunately, I have studied the law too carefully upon 
 this subject to be mistaken. It cannot be too much emphasised 
 that as the law stands at present, a mother has no control what- 
 ever over her oivn children ; no voice in their education ; no 
 legal power to claim their society; she may see them consigned, 
 on their father's death, to the care of strangers ; whereas if, on 
 the other hand, she dies, she has no power by will to provide 
 for their welfare and happiness supposing he should marry again 
 and unwisely.' 
 
 ' I haven't the particulars at my fingers ends, of course,' said 
 the Major, ' but my er impression is that the law provides a 
 remedy in case it is bad for the children to leave their mother.' 
 
 ' True, if she have means, she may by a very costly process, 
 enlist the aid of the Court of Chancery, and by this means 
 obtain control of the children, if she can prove her husband's 
 conduct to have been so bad as to entitle her to a separation, 
 and that the children would suffer serious moral or physical 
 injury through being left with him, but not otherwise. Again, 
 it is a punishable offence for a minor to marry without the 
 consent of a father, but if there be a father a mother's consent 
 is unnecessary.' 
 
 ' All this, of course, appears hard enough; but there is quite 
 as much to be said on the other side, on the er score of 
 inequality, so long as it is the father and not the mother who 
 is bound to maintain their children.' 
 
 ' If he fail to support them she is responsible for their 
 maintenance, and can only compel him to contribute by proving 
 herself and them paupers. We must not forget, also that by 
 the provisions of the Married Women's Property Act (1883) the 
 mother, who has means, is bound equally with the father to 
 contribute towards their support.* And, after all, when it comes 
 to a question of conflicting rights, what has the best father to 
 * See Section 21, Married Women's Property Act, 1883.
 
 314 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 offer as an equivalent in kind for the sufferings of every mother, 
 for her daily and hourly tendence of her children during their 
 early years, that should give him the sole legal control and 
 custody. Is it not shameful to think of, that, however bad a 
 man may be, though living a flagrantly immoral life, he may 
 take their children from a virtuous mother, while she is power- 
 less to remove them from his influence, except through a divorce 
 or separation, which are only to be obtained by a tedious and 
 expensive process. It is not in the power of any Court, as, of 
 course, you know, to grant a divorce, unless not only has the 
 husband's unfaithfulness been proved without question, but his 
 cruelty have reached a point at which it becomes illegal. Many 
 a case has come to my knowledge in which a mother has chosen 
 to endure both moral torture and physical ill-usage rather than 
 leave her husband, because it will entail parting from their 
 children also. The American law is on this point almost 
 identical with our own, and Mrs. Gage, the wife of a lawyer in 
 the United States, relates that what first impressed her with 
 the grievous injustice of their law as regards women, was the 
 case of an unfortunate wife who came to Mr. Gage, asking 
 what was to be done to protect herself from the violence of her 
 husband who, not content with living in idleness upon the pro- 
 perty left her by her father, cruelly ill-treated both her and 
 her children. " Leave him," said Mr. Gage. " But he will not 
 let me have my children." " No; in law they belong only to 
 him." "The property is mine." " In the law not a cent of it, 
 except a bare maintenance." " My father gave it all to me." 
 " But the law gives it all to your husband." " Can I sue him 
 for beating me 1 " " Not in your own name ; however, if you 
 choose to leave him, I will do what I can for you. Can you 
 leave your children?" "My God! No! The youngest is a 
 baby !" " Then I am afraid I cannot help you, unless you sue for 
 assault and battery and bind him over to keep the peace." " If 
 I were to do that he would kill me." And the poor woman 
 rose slowly from her chair, and in voice that went to our souls 
 said simply, as she went out, " I must go to my children." '
 
 LEGAL DISABILITIES. 315 
 
 'What an abominable state of things,' said Sir Henry, who 
 had just joined them, having been driven back by the per- 
 sistent downpour from the constitutional on which he and 
 Neptune started half-an-hour before. ' But you said just now 
 something about illegal cruelty on the part of a husband. I 
 supposed that anything in the form of personal violence towards 
 a woman would be held in these days, a punishable offence.' 
 
 ' Towards a woman, yes ; provided she is not a wife ! That 
 is just the difference ; for the old common law considered it 
 qxiite reasonable to make a husband answerable for a wife's mis- 
 behaviour, and to this intent entrusted him with supreme 
 authority, including the power of restraining her, if necessary, 
 by domestic chastisement. For some misdemeanours, the 
 civil law, at one time, allowed him to beat her severely with 
 whips and cudgels. As civilisation advanced, however, this 
 power was somewhat curtailed, and the husband, though allowed 
 still to chastise his wife, was forbidden to use a stick any bigger 
 than his thximb, and Englishmen still possess the privilege, viz., 
 the right of every male inhabitant to beat his wife, which, so 
 says the old chronicler, when granted by King Humbert IV. of 
 Savoy, to the town of Villafranca " attracted thither many 
 residents." Is it any wonder that human brutes behave, as 
 they do, when such laws still disgrace our statute books.' 
 
 ' None,' said Sir Henry, ' it is perfectly shocking to think 
 that the acts of violence against wives which one sees reported 
 day after day in the pa-pers, find in our laws themselves some 
 sort of authority, and I have no doubt there are thousands of 
 cases one never hears of.' 
 
 ' Yes, indeed ; so common amongst the lower classes is this 
 personal violence, that one poor woman I know of exclaimed in 
 gratitude for her exceptional good fortune, " Why my man is 
 more like a friend than a husband ; in all the years we have 
 been married, he've never so much as struck me once."' 
 
 ' And yet, I suppose,' replied Sir Henry, ' things are in some 
 respects better than they were, as a people we are getting 
 gradxially more humanised.'
 
 316 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 ' If this be so, it is education ; the developement and 
 spread of refinement and good feeling, not the law that we 
 have to thank for it, since a husband may still legally employ 
 any act of coercion he sees fit short of endangering his wife's life 
 or health, while the denial of the franchise, the inequalities of 
 the law, have made low-natured man, seeing women possessed of 
 inferior rights, conceive a mean opinion of their imderstanding, 
 and look upon offences against them as of comparatively little 
 importance. At the same time, it is very rarely that a man, 
 however ruffanly, kicks or beats his sister as he does his 
 wife, and why ? Simply because she is not in his power and 
 would not endure it. A single woman is comparatively free ; 
 but a wife's person is still the absolute property of her husband 
 even against her consent.* Up to the present century since a 
 wife was incapable of giving evidence against her husband she 
 might be savagely ill-treated almost with impunity, provided a 
 third person was not present. And though, now-a-days, a 
 wife's evidence is received iu these cases still, on an average, 
 there are daily in England four brutal assaults by husbands 
 on wives ; and I honestly believe it is the state of the law 
 which is in a great measure answerable for this in allowing 
 poor ignorant brutes to regard their wives as beings whose 
 legal rights are not assured, and who, up to a certain point, 
 may be trampled upon with impunity.' 
 
 ' The best thing women can do then is to get a separation,' 
 said Major Knagge, ' no magistrate would refuse it when there 
 is any any any er sufficient ground.' 
 
 'That is not my impression, and I have read the police- 
 reports upon this subject for a very long time. Not long ago 
 a woman applied at the Clerkenwell Police Court for a Pro- 
 tection Order. Three days after marriage her husband had 
 beaten her severely ; the home was hers, and he had broken up, 
 in passion, nearly all her things, and threatened her so, that she 
 went in fear of her life. She had been obliged to leave him at 
 last, and now begged for protection and a separate allowance. 
 * See Mill's Subjection of Women. Chapter II.
 
 LEGAL DISABILITIES. 317 
 
 And what was the magistrate's answer 1 ? "You seena to have 
 made a bad bargain ; but under the circumstances I do not see 
 my way to doing anything for you." There are numerous similar 
 instances where an ill-used woman has applied in vain for a 
 Separation Order, in such a case the authorities ought to be 
 forced, I consider, to grant her the release she craves, instead 
 of telling her as they do so frequently, to give her brutal 
 husband "another trial," the consequence of which, too often is, 
 that finding the law so lenient towards his savage instincts, he 
 again indulges in his favourite pastime of beating and kicking 
 the wife given back into his power, until Heaven, more kind 
 than man, gives her the release which she had months before 
 entreated for in vain.' 
 
 ' I believe,' said Sir Henry, ' the inadequacy of the punish- 
 ments inflicted by some magistrates for assaults upon wives 
 has quite as much to do with their frequency as the inequalities 
 of the law ; indeed I have heard of a French jury who said as 
 an excuse for recommending a murderer to mercy, that " it was 
 only his wife." This may or may not be true, but it is impossible 
 to help being struck by the frequent verdicts of "manslaughter," 
 and the lenient sentences often inflicted upon men guilty of 
 murdering their wives.' 
 
 'Very true,' replied the Professor. ' I remember not long ago 
 (June 1883) being struck by an example of this. William Hill, 
 a blacksmith at Manchester, came home drunk one night and 
 asked his wife for money to get more beer; upon her refusal he 
 knocked her down, kicking her brutally. As soon as she got up 
 he seized her arm, placed it across the table and deliberately 
 broke it, and afterwards greatly aggravated the injury by pre- 
 venting her from going to a doctor ; his punishment was six 
 months imprisonment, while a woman, Ellen Ryder, who a week 
 or two after was convicted of assaulting and wounding her 
 husband, got twelve months with hard labour.' 
 
 'No doubt,' said Sir Henry, 'a violent wife deserves punish- 
 ment; but seeing that a man is the one best able to defend 
 himself, I fail to understand why her punishment should be
 
 318 MEN, WOMEM, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 more than doubled, except upon the hypothesis that some such 
 spirit as that animating the French jury pervades our own 
 courts of justice.' 
 
 ' To give you another instance,' said Professor Wray, ' of 
 inequality, not only in our laws themselves, but in the adminis- 
 tration of them ; some time since my attention was called to 
 two cases tried before Mr. Justice Lopes, one was concerned 
 with a painful matter not often discussed in detail ; a chemist 
 had been found guilty of "murder" through having accidentally 
 caused the death of a poor woman by endeavoui'ing to save 
 her from the exposure of an ordinary confinement. No doubt 
 he was much to blaim and deserved punishment; but whether it 
 is wise of the law to make it wilful murder in such a case when 
 death ensues, is, I think, open to question. However the 
 chemist was condemned to death, a sentence which contrasts 
 strangely with that inflicted in the other case, reported at the 
 same time, where a man in a fit of drunken rage literally kicked 
 his wife to death; for this " rash act," as it was called, he was 
 only sent to prison with hard labour for fifteen months. As 
 the Daily News said, in commenting upon these cases, the 
 judge, even when a jury brings in a verdict of manslaughter, has 
 power to pass any sentence short of a capital one, and the in- 
 fliction of such an inadequate penalty must give a deplorable 
 stimulus to two very dangerous notions which among a certain 
 class are already only too prevalent, first, that crimes of 
 violence are much more venial than crimes of dishonesty ; 
 secondly, that wives are a superior kind of property who may 
 be ill-treated with comparative impunity. 
 
 ' That last fellow richly deserved at least penal servitude 
 for life,' exclaimed Sir Henry ; ' while, as for the chemist, how- 
 ever much from a moral point of view he may have been to 
 blame, the law, I agree with you in thinking, ought in such a 
 case to inflict something short of hanging.' 
 
 ' Decidedly ; compare this sentence with that passed on a 
 man named Bradley, of Preston, who, in 1872, held his wife 
 over the fire till she was so severely burnt as to die in con-
 
 LEGAL DISABILITIES. 319 
 
 sequence. If ever a brute deserved flogging first and hanging 
 afterwards, he did ; but what was his punishment, only ten 
 years penal servitude, the same as another man has got for 
 stealing a purse containing a few shillings.' * 
 
 ' When I read some time ago,' said Sir Henry, ' of a man 
 in New Jersey, who killed his wife by throwing her out of 
 window, and was in consequence accused of " murder in the 
 second degree," I could not help wondering, with others, what 
 constituted murdered in the first degree.' 
 
 ' I must say,' replied Professor Wray, ' that it seems, some- 
 times, as if the feelings, not only of lawyers and jurymen, but 
 of the judges themselves, are blunted by the frequency of such 
 sad cases as we have been referring to, and by the influence of 
 our laws of servitude in marriage. It is not many years ago 
 since an English judge ruled that it belonged to the husband's 
 conjugal rights to keep possession of his wife's person even 
 against her will ; and that, therefore, though he struck or 
 otherwise ill-treated her; though she might have learnt to 
 loathe his very presence, yet if she attempted to run away he 
 might claim her from sheltering friends, bring her back again 
 and again, and lock her up if he thought fit. For though 
 growing refinement of manners has tempered legal despotism, 
 in point of fact a woman, when she marries, forfeits all right to 
 the control of her own person, and may be compelled, at her 
 husband's will, to follow him about like a dog. Well might 
 John Stuart Mill say, " There exist no legal slaves among us 
 except the mistress of every house." It can only be ignorance 
 of the real tendency of our laws which makes any one assert, 
 that where the interests of men and women clash, they are not 
 lenient to the former and unjust to the latter.' 
 
 ' Of course this is a convenient peg on which to hang their 
 claim to the suffrage,' said Major Knagge; ' but it seems to me, 
 women ought not er to forget how much they owe to men 
 in the many laws that have been made for their protection. 
 Polygamy has been done away with by the men of civilised 
 * See an article by Mr. Macfarlane.. Macmillan, March 1832.
 
 320 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 nations, at a sacrifice to self, and entirely in the interests of 
 women.' 
 
 ' Do you think so ? ' asked the Professor. ' I am rather in- 
 clined to believe that, even in the far past, some men were 
 clear-sighted enough to recognise that any great progress was 
 impossible for a nation practising polygamy, such marriages 
 being opposed to anything like real morality, and destructive 
 in both sexes of true nobleness of character or purity of mind. 
 As the woman is the man is, and by degrading the one, you 
 drag both down,' 
 
 ' I have thought a great many times,' said Sir Henry, pre- 
 sently, ' over what you were saying the other day about 
 divorce, and the legalisation of vice. I did not question even 
 then, you may recollect, the injustice of refusing a wife relief 
 unless her husband has been guilty of cruelty, though he may 
 have outraged all her most sacred feelings and been guilty of 
 open infidelity; but in regard to that other vexed question, 
 and the comparatively recent Acts of 1866 and 1869, I believe 
 there is a very strong feeling in their favour, especially amongst 
 doctors and other scientific men, on the utilitarian principle of 
 " the greatest good of the greatest number ; " they maintain 
 that the indignities inflicted on women of doubtful reputation 
 are justifiable as being a safeguard and protection to virtuous 
 wives.' 
 
 ' And why ? But again because our laws and our practice, 
 too, in many cases, unfortunately, are based upon the false 
 assumption that men are not bound by the same law of moral 
 purity as women. Nothing can be more degrading or demorali- 
 sing than this legal sanctioning of vice, upon any grounds 
 whatsoever. I do not know that I myself should have had 
 much to say against these Acts, if the law had been enforced 
 equally against men and women, and the latter were put under 
 the care of competent physicians of their own sex, that would 
 change the whole aspect of the question ; but these are matters 
 that the majority of male legislators do not trouble themselves 
 about; and those who do, know full well that the smallest
 
 LEGAL DISABILITIES. 321 
 
 attempt to subject men to similar treatment would be the 
 death-knell of any Government.' 
 
 ' It is a difficult question,' said Sir Henry, ' and I am afraid 
 on this point as on many others " law " and "justice " are not 
 mutually involved terms.' 
 
 ' Blackstone,' replied Professor Wray, ' denned law as " a 
 means of sustaining justice and the right ;" but we require no 
 further proof, I think, of how far our laws are from coming up to 
 this standard than is to be found in the legal position of women.' 
 
 ' I must confess,' said Sir Henry, ' that until I talked with 
 you upon this subject, I was inclined to think that our laws 
 upon the whole were fairly satisfactory, and that when women 
 my sister for instance spoke of inequality, they had no basis 
 of fact to support their theories.' 
 
 ' That is, no doubt, the case with a great many good men 
 who appear indifferent or even opposed to women's suffrage ; I 
 believe with most earnest and candid thinkers, it is only 
 ignorance of the wrongs women have endured, and still endure 
 from unjust legislation, which prevents their arriving by the 
 most obvious course of reasoning at the point of supporting 
 with all their power every effort for the extension to women of 
 direct political influence. These laws could never have existed 
 in their present form if women had had a voice in making 
 them, or been in any way properly represented. Is it not, for 
 instance, flagrantly unjust, that in a matter of inheritance the 
 law always asks the sex of a claimant before it can decide upon 
 the disposition of any property *? If a man leaves a legacy to a 
 deceased wife's sister, she has to pay ten per cent as a stranger 
 in blood ; but should he wish to marry this stranger in blood, 
 the law forbids the banns. Why ] Because she is his sister. 
 It is convenient also to ignore the " stranger-in-blood " theory 
 when she leaves him a legacy so that he may not have to pay 
 more than three per cent.' 
 
 ' " The glorious uncertainty of the British law " has become 
 proverbial,' said Sir Henry, ' not without some cause, I am 
 afraid.' 
 
 T
 
 322 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 ' I suppose,' said Major Knagge, who, having strolled off a 
 few paces ' to have a look at the weather ' that most interesting 
 of all things to Englishmen had just rejoined them, ' I sup- 
 pose, eh, you think the law of entail very er unjust to your 
 fair clients ; but they have no more to complain of in that 
 matter, than younger sons.' 
 
 ' Younger sons have at anyrate opportunities denied to 
 women of earning a distinguished position, or, at least, a com- 
 petence, besides many means of making their grievances 
 known ; but as regards either men or women, I do not think 
 I am peculiar in holding that the old feudal laws of primo- 
 geniture and entail are, as applied to modern social conditions, 
 a great mistake. Time was, when fiefdom involving military 
 service it was more or less desirable that landed property 
 should be in the hands of males, and no other system would, 
 perhaps, have answered equally well ; but, like many another 
 custom, which once had a certain fitness to a given order of 
 things, these laws have now become obsolete and absurd.' 
 
 ' I tell you where I do think entail presses very heavily,' 
 said Sir Henry, ' and that is where there is no son, and every- 
 thing passes away from the daughters to some distant and 
 perhaps unknown relation. A neighbour of mine, a well- 
 known baronet in the west country, died a few years since 
 leaving a widow and three children two girls and a boy ; the 
 property, which is a fine one, was left in the hands of trustees, 
 of whom the mother was one, until the son, then only ten, 
 should be of age. Unfortunately the boy did not long survive 
 his father, and on his death the mother and sisters had to 
 leave their home and subsist as best they could upon the 
 slenderest of incomes, since by the law of entail everything 
 went to a distant, and not very creditable, relation, who, to 
 the relief of his family, had years before betaken himself to the 
 Colonies.' 
 
 ' I quite believe,' said the Professor, ' that in many cases, if 
 the titles, the estates, the headship, of a family had fallen to a 
 women, many a noble race would have been saved from de-
 
 LEGAL DISABILITIES. 323 
 
 generating. However it was not to the laws of entail, but to 
 those of intestacy as they affect women that I referred more 
 particularly ; in this case not only do sons succeed before 
 daughters, and brothers before sisters, uncles before aunts, 
 relations on the father's side before relations on the mother's ; 
 but if a man dies childless, his father succeeds without question 
 to his personalty, whereas if he has no father, his mother only 
 takes an equal share with his brothers and sisters ; in some 
 
 ! things we seem to have retrograded rather than progressed, I 
 think ; for in Hebrew times, women shared an inheritance on 
 their father's death.* Amongst the early Greeks, daughters 
 succeeded equally with sons, while the man who divorced his 
 wife, was obliged to refund her dowry or pay her so much a 
 month by way of compensation. In the Egyptian Museum 
 at the Louvre, is a collection of legal documents, family con- 
 tracts, wills, &c., dating from the time of Alexander the Great 
 to the twentieth year of Ptolemy Energetes, and these which 
 have been deciphered by M. Revillont, prove, without question, 
 that Diodorus Siculus spoke only the truth when he asserted 
 that amongst the most civilised of ancient peoples property 
 was, to a great extent, in female hands. A certain Patma, for 
 instance, made his wife, Taotem, a bridal gift, and also agree 
 to pay her a yearly allowance secured upon his property ; after 
 a time becoming deeply in his wife's debt, he is found agreeing 
 to yield up everything he has, unless he can clear himself in 
 three years, and finally these documents show all his posses- 
 sions carefully inventoried and sold up in satisfaction of this 
 claim. In Arabia, before the advent of Mahomet, a wife had a 
 regular dower, and annual allowance which she was perfectly 
 free to dispose of during her lifetime or by will Even in 
 much and deservedly- abused Turkey, I believe to this day, 
 daughters succeed equally with sons to houses and lands while 
 they inherit one-third of any personal property.' 
 
 ' I never heard, however,' said Sir Henry, ' of our laws in 
 
 * Numb, xxvii 7, 8.
 
 324 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 regard to intestacy pressing particularly upon women, for very 
 few men who are husbands and fathers are so culpably foolish 
 as to neglect to make a will, I suppose ; and unentailed property 
 is often, I think, divided with great fairness between sons and 
 daughters, all, from the eldest to the youngest, sharing alike.' 
 
 ' The justice of individual men often rectifies matters, no 
 doubt,' replied Professor Wray; ' but I do not think, as I have 
 said before, that in this fact there is any excuse for the in- 
 justice of our laws. There is another flagrant inequality, by 
 the way, of which women have a right to complain, namely, 
 that although it is a fundamental doctrine of the British Con- 
 stitution that all persons should be tried by their peers, on the 
 strength of which even foreigners can claim that half the jury 
 shall consist of their own countrymen, yet women are always 
 tried by a male judge and male jury.' 
 
 ' You would not, my dear sir, you would not, surely,' cried 
 the Major, with a burst of unrestrained laughter, ' advocate 
 admitting women on the bench and in the jury-box as well as 
 everywhere else.' 
 
 ' Disabilities of sex,' replied the Professor, ' are bound to 
 share the fate of disabilities of creed, and be one after another 
 swept away ; and, I think, when the idea which amuses you 
 becomes fact, as assuredly sooner or later it will do, both men 
 and women will gain by it ; it is high time that the exclusive 
 right which men have assumed to sit in judgment upon women 
 should be questioned. That our common-law is not always 
 based upon common sense I think I have already shown ; but 
 in nothing is this more marked than in the fiction that a 
 woman with a male judge, a male advocate, a male jury, is 
 tried according to that great constitutional principle upon 
 which we have no right to pride ourselves until it is applied 
 without distinction to all alike. How is it possible that any 
 man can understand a woman's position and feelings ? Take, for 
 instance, the case of a poor girl charged with infanticide, when 
 it comes to the administration of a law which presses so cruelly 
 hard upon the weak and unfortunate, is it possible that the
 
 LEGAL DISABILITIES. 325 
 
 most able and well-meaning man can here put himself in the 
 place of a frenzied mother, who in terror, anguish, fear of 
 exposure, amounting often to temporaiy insanity, has ended a 
 young life just begun] Can he, think you, understand the 
 feelings which, for the moment only perhaps, have deadened 
 in an unfortunate girl those maternal instincts that under 
 happier circumstances would naturally have been hers 1 Happy 
 wives, good mothers, have acknowledged before now, that in 
 childbirth there are times when their brain and entire nervous 
 system have been so disordered as to make the idea of des- 
 troying the immediate cause of their suffering have nothing 
 horrifying about it ; and if, surrounded by love, the objects of 
 skilful treatment, and the most anxious solicitude, good women 
 become, to a certain extent, irresponsible for their actions ; 
 what must be the position of the friendless solitary, facing her 
 misery with the consciousness that in secrecy alone lies any 
 hope of her being from henceforth other than a pariah and an 
 outcast ? I tell you men are not fit to sit in judgment on such 
 cases. It makes one's blood boil to think of the hundreds of 
 defenceless girls, who, more sinned against than sinning, have 
 been roughly hurried to the gallows in compliance with a man- 
 made, man-administered, and ruthlessly cruel law.' 
 
 ' I think gentle and pitiful women,' said Sir Henry, ' are 
 perhaps the ones best fittest to deal with such cases.' 
 
 ' My dear Sir,' replied Major Knagge, ' they would be ten 
 times harder than the men; give me a woman if you want a hard 
 judge for the frail of her own sex.' 
 
 ' I am afraid your experience,' said Sir Henry, 'like a police- 
 man's life, " is not a happy one ;" if there were not more wise 
 and tender-hearted, than hard and cruel women in the world, 
 we should come off badly, I think, with all our sins.' 
 
 ' But in regard to this question of women being tried by 
 their peers,' said Professor Wray, 'is it not only the guilty, but 
 often the modest and innocent women, who, in questions of 
 seduction, of marriage, and divorce, for instance, suffer most 
 bitterly. The outraged maiden, the injured wile, the bereaved
 
 326 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 mother, might under wiser conditions be saved the ignomony 
 of being grossly questioned in public by men. I know as a fact, 
 that many a woman has endured in silence a wrong that ought 
 to have been redressed, simply because she could not make up 
 her mind to discuss the most sacred and delicate subjects with 
 men only, and that in a public court.' 
 
 ' I still maintain,' said Major Knagge, ' that women are the 
 gainers more often than not by being in the er hands of men. 
 Do you think now, that a jury of women would ever give the 
 plaintiff in a breach of promise case such damages as they get 
 from men, especially if they are young and good-looking, and 
 it is is er proverbial that women criminals are leniently 
 dealt with.' 
 
 ' Since,' said Professor Wray, ' it is necessary to become a 
 criminal in order to enjoy this privilege, it is not much consola- 
 tion to the law-abiding, while if anything were wanting to show 
 the defective administration of the law, it would be that argu- 
 ment of yours in regard to young and pretty women being able 
 to extort heavy damages. When such questions become matters 
 of feeling instead of strict impartial justice, the results often 
 is that those who least deserve a benefit are the ones to get it. 
 I venture humbly to think that the sooner actions for breach of 
 promise are done away with, the better, being based as they 
 are on the false assumption that the loss of a lover means more 
 to a woman than it does to a man.' 
 
 ' Is it not you who are hard upon women now 1 ' asked Sir 
 Henry, ' a man who breaks his troth with a girl hinders her 
 chances of marriage, and I think this is rightly taken to be a 
 substantial injury.' 
 
 ' I grant you that, so long as women are taught to look 
 upon marriage as a means of livelihood ; but the true remedy for 
 this state of things, which is nothing less than degrading to 
 womanhood, lies in educating girls to realise the blessing of self- 
 help, and affording to all women, not only to those of the so- 
 called " working-classes " the means of self-support. It is not 
 the most noble and womanly, but rather the bold and designing
 
 LEGAL DISABILITIES. 327 
 
 of their sex who take advantage of the opportunities afforded 
 them to fine a recreant lover and apply the money thus obtained 
 as a salve to their wounded feelings. It is so truly British, this 
 universal belief in golden ointment by way of cure for every 
 description of mental affliction, whether it be the husband's 
 wounded honour, or the maiden's lacerated heart. Sensible 
 women most likely say to themselves in thinking of a recreant 
 lover ; " Well, a fickle and inconstant man is not likely to make 
 the best husband ; it is better I should know his character now 
 than later, and though I was foolish enough to be deceived at 
 first, now my eyes are opened, I ought to congratulate myself on 
 my escape." ! 
 
 ' Very likely you are right,' said Sir Henry; 'at the same 
 time, I think where actual pecuniary loss has been sus- 
 tained, as in the case of a governess or servant who has 
 given up her situation in order to be married, some compensation 
 is due.' 
 
 ' Yes, moderate damages, I think, in such a case ought to be 
 allowed ; but if you are not tired there is one point that marks 
 more strongly, perhaps, than any other, the want of women's 
 influence in the legislature I refer to its perfunctory and un- 
 satisfactory manner of dealing with questions concerning the 
 protection of young girls. Instead of being the subject of 
 debate in the House, the " Assaults on Young Persons " Bill 
 for the legal protection of girls up to the age of fourteen, was 
 examined in the privacy of Committee and run through an 
 almost empty House ; while to show the interest taken by 
 members in a measure which women rightly considers of vital 
 importance, when the bill was passed in 1880, only eighty -six 
 members were present out of six hundred and fifty, while the 
 age of protection was lowered from fourteen to thirteen by a 
 majority of forty-one, and so the opportunity of putting an 
 extra curb upon licentiousness was lost. Women are not con- 
 sidered capable of managing their own affairs until they are 
 twenty-one years of age. In respect of the labour laws they are 
 not considered adults till eighteen, and yet a little girl of thir-
 
 328 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 teen is held to be perfectly competent to take care of her honour 
 and protect herself against the designs of unprincipled men. Is it 
 not time that women's voices should be empowered to make them- 
 selves heard in our legislature on behalf of the little children of 
 the poor? Are not thoughful women justified in complaining 
 of the light way in which offences against their sex are treated 
 by the law, its makers and interpreters, knowing as they must, 
 that if a poor girl is, under promise of marriage, ruined and 
 deserted by a heartless scoundrel, he goes scot free. For men 
 are not charged with concealment of paternity, and the de- 
 struction of her life's prospects are of no account, though, cer- 
 tainly, if her father can prove that he has in consequence lost 
 her services for any period, he may claim a small sum in com- 
 pensation. Parliament is very much given to making a sort of 
 compromise between ancient laws and modern views, and 
 instead of redressing an injustice out and out, to just nibbling 
 at the consequences, and thus it is that while things have 
 been changing all around us, a woman's legal position has 
 remained in many ways unchanged ; while, too often, legis- 
 lation intended for their benefit has, as in the Workshops 
 and Factory Act, which you remember we discussed the other 
 day, really meant further restraint upon their personal 
 liberty ; a harder struggle for existence ; a rendering of the 
 helpless still more helpless ; lowering the wages of some, 
 depriving others of work, and throwing hundreds more upon 
 the streets.' 
 
 ' And supposing women have a few genuine grievances,' 
 retorted the Major, ' they've no right to forget how much they 
 ought to be thankful for, how much better off they are now 
 than they used to be.' 
 
 'I do not deny that; we are a long way ahead, for instance, 
 of the ancient Hindoos, who, two thousand years before the 
 Christian era, decreed that " if a man goes on a journey his 
 wife shall not divert herself, play, nor shall see any public 
 show, nor shall laugh, nor shall dress herself with jewels and 
 fine clothes, nor shall see dancing nor hear music, nor shall sit
 
 LEGAL DISABILITIES. 329 
 
 in the window, nor shall ride out, nor shall behold anything 
 choice or rare, but shall fasten well the house door and remain 
 private ; and shall not eat any dainty victuals, and shall not 
 view herself in a mirror, she shall never exercise herself in 
 any such agreeable employment during the absence of her 
 husband ; " and, by way of climax, " it is proper for every 
 woman on her husband's death, to burn herself in the fire with 
 his corpse." I know the hardships of the past are sometimes 
 made a text for preaching a sermon to women of the present 
 day upon the many privileges they enjoy, and of how grateful 
 they ought to be to us in consequence ; but I take it there 
 is rather more room for improvement still, than for self- 
 congratulation.' 
 
 ' No doubt,' said Sir Henry, ' the fearless reformer is much 
 to be preferred to the self-righteous pharisee. I confess myself 
 conquered,' he added frankly; 'here is my hand on it. I will have 
 nothing more to do with the opponents of woman's suffrage. 
 And while I am in the confessional I may as well acknowledge,' 
 he continued, taking out his pocket-book, ' I have been making 
 some notes of our conversations that I may be prepared for any 
 future emergencies. Would you mind just running through 
 the list of those things you have been proving so conclusively 
 that women have every right to claim, as to convince me in 
 spite of myself.' 
 
 ' In one word equality ; and this implies their participating 
 equally with boys in the advantages of our endowed schools, 
 colleges, and training institutions, medical, legal, and theo- 
 logical ; a right to the elective franchise, that as citizens they 
 may have a voice in the making of the laws under which 
 they live, and an equal share in the regulation and adminis- 
 tration of affairs both national and municipal, which, in many 
 instances are still so unjust in restraining the productiveness of 
 their labour, and in shutting them out from many branches of 
 employment for which they are well fitted. Again, every 
 mother has a right to claim equally with a father the possession 
 of their joint offspring to obtain release from the husband who
 
 330 MEX, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 has been untrue to his marriage- vows, whether cruelty can or can- 
 not be proved against him. Women, too, have a right to protest 
 against the preference of males, and male issue in the division 
 of estates; the many evils which arise from the insufficient pro- 
 tection afforded to young girls, and the connivance, or rather, 
 perhaps I should say, the indifference of the law, to crimes of 
 violence by husbands against wives. These are some of the 
 chief points we have touched upon I think; but, of course, there 
 are many of less importance which it is impossible to remember 
 at a moment's notice.' 
 
 ' Thank you. It will be a long time, I am afraid, before I 
 reach your standpoint, either in strength of conviction, or force 
 of reasoning ; but you may count upon me as an ally in future, 
 though it may not be a very powerful one.' 
 
 ' I am by no means sure of that ; there has, of course, on 
 this as on every other question, been a great deal of both sense 
 and nonsense talked on both sides; but I have seen enough of 
 you to know that you will not add to the last.' 
 
 'It is sometimes very hard,' his companion replied thought- 
 fully, ' to find the good and true and eliminate the bad and 
 false but what has become of the Major 1 ' he exclaimed as that 
 gentleman's portly figure disappeared around the corner of the 
 house, leaving a trail of blue smoke behind it.' 
 
 ' Oh, he is disgusted at your public profession of faith, 
 which I have listened to with the greatest possible edification, 
 Harry dear,' said his sister; who in riding habit, hat and gloves, 
 stood just within the drawing-room, a dainty little figure framed 
 by the sash of the draped French window. 
 
 'I think we may speed the parting guest,' was his reply, 'since 
 the coming ones are so well worth welcoming,' and his glance 
 strayed from his sister to her friend as they stepped together 
 through the open window into the verandah; the slight blush 
 which was Madeline's only reply, was not wanted, he thought, 
 to add to her attractions, for she possessed just the face and 
 form to look their best in the grave simplicity of a dark blue 
 riding-habit with no ornament but a single tea-rose bud, ap-
 
 LEGAL DISABILITIES. 331 
 
 parently fastening the plain linen collar at her throat. But 
 whatever Madeline may have done, Mrs. Silverton had not lost 
 the gift of speech. 
 
 ' I could have told you long ago,' she said, ' that our dear 
 departed friend, who shall be nameless, only listened to you 
 because having determined the case beforehand, he knew it 
 could do him no harm to discuss it. He put up the shutters 
 of his mind long ago,' she added; in a half- whisper, 'and there 
 is so much dust in the chinks that the rays of reason have no 
 chance of getting through. But you remember we agreed to 
 ride at twelve unless the weather proved too dreadful, if like 
 Pethion, the once Mayor of Paris, we West-country people were 
 to say, " there will be nothing done to-day, it is raining," we 
 might as well be buried at once. Harry, will you ring the stable- 
 bell 1 ?' But Sir Henry's senses were apparently at this moment all 
 absorbed in the serious process of buttoning Madeline's glove, 
 and he was conscious of nothing but the presence of the fair 
 girl who had created such a revolution in the feelings with 
 which he anticipated meeting her but a fortnight ago. Truth 
 to tell he was growing very seriously in love with his sister's 
 friend, none the less, perhaps, for her apparent unconsciousness, 
 and the self-reliance which made it difficult for him to approach 
 her with any definite declaration of his feelings, still more to 
 discover anything of hers. 
 
 ' I will ring for the horses,' said Professor Wray, with a 
 quiet smile, as he met Mrs. Silverton's amused glance. Fol- 
 lowing her presently into the drawing-room, and taking up care- 
 lessly a book which lay on an ottoman just within the window, 
 a copy of the Bon Gaulthier Ballads, it opened strangely enough 
 at the lines 
 
 ' It is the most infernal bore 
 Of all the bores I know, 
 To have a friend who's lost his heart 
 A short time ago.' 
 
 which was not exactly how the Professor would have stated the
 
 332 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 situation, but was sufficiently near to make him hand it to his 
 hostess, and so by a tacit understanding they rode out together 
 to meet the breaking clouds, and back again at luncheon-time 
 in the same order; treating their companions with an indif- 
 ference which they must have been most amiable not to resent, 
 if they noticed it.'
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 ' Die Engel, die nennen es Himmelsfreud, 
 Die Teufel, die nennen es He'Uandleid 
 Die Menschen, die nennen es Liebe.' 
 
 HEINE. 
 
 ' Women of a softer mood, 
 Surprised by men when scarce awake to life, 
 Will sometimes only hear the first word, love, 
 And catch up with it any kind of work, 
 Indifferent so that dear love go with it. 
 I do not blame such women, though, for love, 
 They pick much oakum. Earth's fanatics make 
 Too frequently heaven's saints. But nie your work 
 Is not the best for, nor your love the best, 
 
 I too have my vocation, work to do.' 
 
 ELIZABETH B. BROWNING, Aurora Leigh.
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 A MISTAKE. 
 
 THE most natural conclusion to draw from the fact that 
 Madeline and her companion were so absorbed as not to 
 notice that during the whole ride they were practically left to 
 a tete-a-tete, was, that they were quite contented with an 
 arrangement which had been so cleverly contrived by their 
 young hostess that it seemed, like all well-concerted schemes, 
 to be the result of an accident. And yet, on their return, any 
 close observer could not have failed to see that something was 
 wrong ; their was no exchange, as usual, of sparkling words and 
 glances, of happy laughter, indeed they seemed rather to avoid 
 looking at each other. Sir Henry, it is true, helped his com- 
 panion to dismount with his usual courtesy and deference, but 
 without speaking, while his face might have served as a model 
 for the ' Knight of the Rueful Countenance.' As for Madeline, 
 an almost inaudible ' Thank you,' was her only acknowledge- 
 ment as, looking very pale, she passed with lowered head into 
 the house, upstairs, and straight to her own room. Neptune, 
 the sole spectator of this almost dumb show, appeared much 
 distressed thereby ; he ran a few paces into the hall after his 
 new friend, then back again to his master, rubbing against 
 him and pushing his head underneath the only hand within 
 reach ; finding all his efforts to attract attention, however, 
 were of no use, he crouched down with a low whine, followed 
 by a long drawn sigh, which said as plainly as a dog could, 
 that the world was very evidently out of joint, that human 
 beings were as disappointing as incomprehensible, and that, in 
 short, life, under these conditions, was not worth living. 
 
 ' You surely are not thinking of going back yet to town,'
 
 336 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 Sir Henry had said, soon after they had started, in reply to a 
 remark of her companion's as to something she must attend to 
 in London early in the following week ; ' what shall we do 
 without you 1 ?' 
 
 ' The loss is mine, I think,' said Madeline. ' I have enjoyed 
 my visit to Crag's Nest almost too much ; for I have already 
 stayed longer than I ought to have done. I have only feared 
 sometimes that the discussions I enjoyed so thoroughly were 
 rather a bore to you.' 
 
 ' Quite the contrary, I assure you; and as for Major Knagge 
 he perfectly revels in an argument upon any subject whatever. 
 I think he is something like John Wilson Croker whom, as 
 some one said, even death could not silence, for he would be 
 sure to argue with the recording angel about the dates of his 
 sins. Please do not look shocked.' 
 
 'No; I was only fearing that in our warmth sometimes 
 perhaps we said some rather cutting things to our opponent- 
 in-chief.' 
 
 'So much the better, let him appropriate them by all 
 means, " if they only fit him there is nothing left to be 
 desired," as Lord Kenyon said of the man who stole his gouty 
 shoes.' 
 
 ' Still sometimes I am afraid one is apt to be intolerant 
 even when fighting against intolerance ; it is so difficult for one 
 person to see where another's horizon is.' Madeline in her 
 brightest moments never looked so sweet and winning as in 
 these moods of self-distrust, and for a moment there was a 
 wistful, almost worshipping look in her companion's eyes as he 
 asked, 
 
 ' But is it so absolutely necessary that you should return 
 before the autumn has regularly set in ? You will find London 
 quite empty I am sure.' 
 
 ' Oh quite,' she laughed, ' not a creature to be seen ; grass 
 growing in Regent Street, and Oxford Street a desert from the 
 Marble Arch to Mudie's.' 
 
 < But you know what I meaa'
 
 A MISTAKE. 337 
 
 'Yes; that 'society,' so-called, has decently veiled its 
 windows and its household gods, and betaken itself to the 
 country, leaving its balconies of flowers, and its faithful puss 
 very often, to perish for want of proper care. I cannot go 
 about with a hose and water-cart ; but I must plead guilty 
 to spending a small fortune in milk, for it quite makes my 
 heart ache in the hot, dusty September days to see the poor 
 drooping plants upon the window-ledges denied a drop of 
 water, and the still more unfortunate cats wandering round the 
 deserted squares, getting weaker and thinner, and more woe- 
 begone, every day.' 
 
 ' It is disgraceful,' said Sir Henry, ' no one has any right 
 to neglect animals in that- way ; but I expect it is very often 
 the housekeeper in whose charge they are left, who is to 
 blame ; don't you think so.' 
 
 ' No doubt ; most of the people I know personally would no 
 more neglect a cat or dog than they would a child, but that 
 there are others who care nothing at all of what becomes, at 
 anyrate of the former, is only too evident.' 
 
 ' Now you acknowledge that your friends are nearly all out 
 of town, so why need you hurry away ? ' 
 
 ' I am afraid I must ; I have at least three definite engage- 
 ments for next week only, and more for the week after.' 
 
 ' I did not know that all London could offer such an 
 amount of dissipation at this season of the year. Are they 
 dances may I ask 1 ' 
 
 ' Oh, I will not pretend to deny that I like an occasional 
 dance very much,' she replied with an answering smile, though 
 still skillfully evading a direct reply ; ' but there is nothing of 
 that sort going on now, and it certainly would not at any 
 time tempt me away from this lovely country and such good 
 friends.' 
 
 ' But you have not told me yet why you are so inflexible.' 
 
 ' Am I required to give a detailed account of all my 
 actions'?' she answered, with a glance slightly defiant, and a 
 petulant expression, which, though transient as piquant, 
 
 z
 
 338 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 showed that under other conditions, with a less cultivated 
 mind, and with no serious aims in life, Madeline would 
 possibly have developed into a very different type of woman ; 
 one who, dangerous in coquetry, might have charmed, but 
 could never have raised the men who came under the spell of 
 her attractions. But the mood was over almost before her 
 companion had time to feel surprised at this new and unex- 
 pected attitude, and it was in her usual unaffected, reasonable 
 manner she added, ' If you really are so kind as to take an 
 interest in my pursuits, I do not see why I should make a 
 mystery of what is absolutely common-place. For one thing 
 I have promised to take part in a debate at University 
 College ; then my little cousin is reading up for an ex- 
 amination and declares she will never pass without my help ; 
 there is the working-women's club too, and seeing that I helped 
 to start it, and became to a certain extent responsible for its 
 welfare, I have been neglecting my duties there shamefully.' 
 
 ' You are on the committee then I suppose ? ' 
 
 ' Yes, and my place lately has been taken by a friend, but 
 now she is obliged to join her people in Scotland next week, 
 therefore I feel doubly bound to return, for there is always a 
 great deal to be done.' 
 
 ' I do not understand the working of that sort of thing ; on 
 what principle is it managed 1 ' 
 
 ' Your knowledge of the "United Service," or the " Athe. 
 nseum," or the " Savage Club," would certainly not be much 
 help to you, for this club is established simply and solely in 
 the interests of working women and girls. It is in a measure 
 self-supporting, but at the discretion of the committee 
 members are sometimes admitted even when .unable to pay 
 the small sum usually required. We have had some liberal 
 donations in the way of books, and are getting together quite 
 a little library. Unfortunately, all our people cannot read or 
 write, but those who wish it can be taught ; several bring 
 work, and learn in preference to mend and make their clothes ; 
 plain cooking is, of course, included in our programme, while
 
 A MISTAKE. 339 
 
 my friend, Dr. Alice King, gives us generally one evening 
 in the week, and talks to the women about sanitary matters, 
 how to make their homes clean and fresh so far as may be, 
 and keep themselves and their children in health; she also 
 tells them something about simple medicine and surgery, so 
 that mothers and elder sisters of families may be, to some 
 extent, prepared to meet any ordinary emergency.' 
 
 ' And do you find that poor women appreciate this sort 
 of thing I' 
 
 ' Past all our expectations ; though we are always taking 
 more rooms we cannot even yet receive half those who are 
 anxious to join. It is quite astonishing to see what interest 
 some of them take in discussing such subjects as " Food and 
 its Preparation," "Clothing and Materials," "The Dwelling, 
 Warming, Cleaning and Ventilation," "Washing Materials and 
 their Uses," " Kules for Health," " The management of a Sick- 
 room," " Cottage Expenditure," " Incomes and Savings," and 
 so on.' 
 
 ' It shows my ignorance that I should have thought the 
 attractions of a cheap Music Hall would have far outweighed 
 anything of that sort which you could offer them.' 
 
 ' With a few this may be the case, but with a very large 
 number of working women it is not so. Soon after we started 
 this club and night school, a friend of mine, a literary man who 
 is always looking in out-of-the-way nooks and corners for odd 
 types of character, overheard two poor women discussing in a 
 tavern their own position and prospects, and the lot of women 
 in general, and presently one of them, d, propos of the ad- 
 vantages men have for passing their time after they have left 
 work, summed up the question with a sigh and an expressive 
 shake of the head, " Oh, my dear, in this world, 'tis all for 
 the men." Whereupon he entered into conversation with 
 these moralising matrons, and told them some ladies and 
 gentlemen had determined that, as regards clubs at anyrate, 
 things should not be " all for the men," and if they would 
 come any evening to our rooms they should hear about it.
 
 340 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 These women are now amongst our most regular attendants, 
 they have quite ceased to grumble and rarely visit their once 
 favourite tavern ; there is a marked improvement, too, in there 
 manners and appearance, and what is better still, I hear from 
 a friend in whose district they live, that their homes, such as 
 they are, share in the change.' 
 
 ' I am glad to hear that ; for I know many worthy people 
 object to efforts of this kind as regards women, on the plea that 
 It encourages them to neglect their homes.' 
 
 ' If they could only see some of these so-called " homes," 
 they would be convinced in spite of prejudice, I am sure, that 
 it must be ah advantage for poor women and girls to pass a 
 few hours occasionally in an atmosphere, both morally and 
 physically, purer than that to which they are accustomed. 
 Besides, there is a creche where little children, to6 young to be 
 left, may be brought and well looked after. No one thinks 
 that similar institutions planned to wean men from the public- 
 house are time and money thrown away, and women of the 
 same class, unfortunately, want the counter-attraction just as 
 urgently." 
 
 ' I quite see,' said Sir Henry, ' tha't so long as men spend 
 their wages or a large portion of them in drink, they cannot 
 expect their half -starved wives not to spend their small 
 earnings, or even pawn their clothes, to buy forgetfulness at 
 the gin-shop for a few hours at least. No doubt any scheme 
 which brings them, poor things, if only for a little while, under 
 more wholesome influences, must be a blessing.' 
 
 'And the husbands, and fathers, and brothers are not 
 entirely shut out,' said Madeline ; ' one evening in the week, 
 at least, we have an amateur concert, dissolving views, 
 readings, a popular lecture, or some form of entertainment 
 to which they are admitted. We shall enlist y6ur help some 
 day, perhaps, if you will give it.' 
 
 ' Gladly, I do not doubt that 'thdugh one may not see much 
 change at first, these things must have a humanising influence 
 People are beginning to awake to the fact that the poor want
 
 A MISTAKE. 341 
 
 something more from us than almsgiving ; education, too, will 
 do much for them, we shall see a great change in another 
 generation, I expect.' 
 
 ' I am sure of it,' said Madeline ; ' through the co-operation 
 of our board schoolmistress we have established a class for 
 girls who are in the last half of their time at school, and who 
 like to come one evening in the week for practical lessons in 
 different branches of housework. We do not expect to make 
 finished cooks, or housemaids, or lady's-maids of them ; but they 
 will at any rate be better fitted for service than if they had 
 gone without any instruction straight from school or from a 
 disorganised and thriftless home.' 
 
 ' That is an excellent idea ; but I think it is a pity Board 
 Schools do not give special instruction in such matters.' 
 
 ' It is a difficult question ; each pupil, you see, is expected 
 to receive a certain quantum of general education, and the 
 time cannot be spared to make girls domestic servants, laundry 
 women, dressmakers, any more than to teach boys the rudi- 
 ments of shoemaking, gardening, or whatever they will have to 
 support themselves by in the future ; such an attempt would 
 only distract the minds of the children and overstrain their 
 teachers in the vain efforts to master a multiplicity of subjects.* 
 
 ' That is true,' replied Sir Henry ; ' a preparatory school 
 should be a place rather for the development of the intellectual 
 faculties than for the teaching of any handicraft ; that must, I 
 see, come after. More schools of technical instruction, partly 
 self-supporting, but subsidised by Government, are what we 
 want.' 
 
 ' Yes ; but meanwhile I do not think it is time wasted to try 
 in a small way to supply the lack of these.' 
 
 'Certainly not; and you find it a success 1 ?' asked Sir 
 Henry, not that he had much doubt about the matter, for he 
 thought if her fellow-workers possessed even half Madeline's 
 brightness, her energy, her gentle winning manner towards 
 social inferiors, few efforts of theirs would be likely to fail. 
 
 f Yes, indeed ; we have been quite surprised to find how
 
 342 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 kindly the girls take to it ; they have even, begged to have 
 classes two evenings in the week instead of one ; but we have 
 not been able to manage it as yet, not for want of pupils, but 
 of teachers, who are both capable and willing to undertake the 
 work. However, we shall do better by-and-by, I hope ; so 
 many people are out of town just now, and in these classes 
 poor Aunt Helen has been lately single-handed. But I really 
 ought to beg your pardon for inflicting my hobbies upon you. ' 
 
 ' Do not apologise, I am very much interested, for I can 
 quite believe that your working-women's club; and the classes 
 in connexion with it, must be a very valuable means of educa- 
 tion for the poor. The benefit of ladies' clubs, however, is 
 not so obvious, I think ; I am told that they are often a 
 failure.' 
 
 ' Oh, where have you been to get such ideas ] ' said Made- 
 line, laughing ; ' with the " Albemarle/' and the " Grosvenor," 
 and the " Somerville," and several otherSj all admitting women, 
 and " all alive and growing," as the flower-sellers say. One or 
 two institutions of the kind to begin with, it is true, did not 
 hold together ; but that a few false starts, such as have occurred 
 in the case of many similar schemes organized by men, do not 
 mean ultimate failure, events have proved. If clubs did 
 nothing else but teach women to work with one another, surely 
 this alone would justify their existence ; and a place like the 
 " Somerville/' with its very moderate subscription, and admitting 
 as it does women members only, is, as I know, an unspeakable 
 blessing to the ever-increasing number of gently-bred girls, 
 who, as daily governesses, art students, or writers, are earning 
 their living or preparing to do so. I assure you they appreciate 
 the advantages of getting rest, quiet, and food at reasonable 
 charges, and some mental relaxation in the shape of social 
 intercourse, books, papers, periodicals, in the quasi-privacy of a 
 well-ordered woman's club. Besides this, the lectures, the 
 lending library, the debates in connexion with it, must be a 
 valuable means of education to a large number of women, who, 
 being thus brought together, improve each other and learn
 
 A MISTAKE. 343 
 
 toleration for other's opinions, as well as the value of organized 
 effort and co-operation. But, as I said before, you must be 
 getting quiet tired of me and my hobbies,' she added, noticing 
 that for once her companion had nothing to say. 
 
 ' No, indeed ; you quite mistake my momentary silence ; I 
 am only humbled by the thought of your unselfishness and 
 energy.' 
 
 ' I cannot see that there is any unselfishness in doing what 
 one likes ; as for energy, I think that is more or less constitu- 
 tional, and I should not have said you belonged to the roi 
 faineant type.' 
 
 ' About some things perhaps I can be energetic enough ; 
 but when I compare myself with you here have I been some 
 half dozen years longer in the world, and have had just as 
 many chances to make myself useful, and yet what have I 
 done 1 I am a good-for-nothing sort of fellow at the best, I am 
 afraid.' 
 
 ' I think we all feel that sort of self-dissatisfaction at times,' 
 said Madeline, more gravely than she had yet spoken ; ' that 
 sense of the infinite misery and injustice which exist among us, 
 and of the infinitely little we, as individuals, have done to make 
 things better.' 
 
 ' One wants superhuman energy and ability in these days 
 to accomplish anything worth speaking of.' 
 
 ' But don't you think every one possesses some quality of 
 heart or mind, or head, capable of making an impression for 
 good or evil upon the world around. Great, original thinkers, 
 perhaps, are rare ; but I should not have said you were one of 
 those who are content to take their opinions at second hand, 
 and like to act in mobs,' Madeline said, smiling, as she con- 
 trasted her companion's estimate of himself with what she had 
 heard others speak of him ; ' and although it has been said 
 that eagles fly alone, and silly sheep go in flocks, it seems to 
 me that what is better than aiming at doing something entirely 
 new, is to try and do more perfectly what has been done 
 before. I am inclined to envy you your opportunities.'
 
 344 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 ' You envy me ? ' Sir Henry exclaimed in unaffected 
 astonishment. 
 
 ' Yes, truly, with your tenantry in Cornwall only waiting 
 for you to take the lead in any measures of reform ; with a seat 
 assured you in the place where of all others you may make the 
 most effectual protest against injustice.' 
 
 ' I have been out of England, as you know, for some years, 
 and have been a self-indulgent, lazy beggar most of the time, 
 but I am trying to make some plans for the future. I know 
 without asking what your opinion is, that it is high time for 
 me to be. the architect rather than, the creator of circumstances, 
 and I really mean to turn over a new leaf. I am tired of 
 wandering, too ; I suppose there comes a time in every man's 
 life when no amount of freedom can compensate for the want of 
 a home.' 
 
 '. But that you are fortunate enough to possess. I am told 
 that Tregarthen is one of the loveliest places in the west of 
 England.' 
 
 'Seriously,' he replied, 'do you really think that a house 
 and park and half a dozen servants constitute a home 1 A man 
 who learns for the first time to love,' he added in a lower and 
 more earnest tone; 'who feels that there is one woman in the 
 world whose presence would make the most wretched hovel 
 homelike to him, is not likely to look upon any place unshared 
 by her, with eyes of great affection.' 
 
 Madeline's only answer was to quicken her pace, upon 
 which Black Prince also broke into a trot, and for some minutes 
 not a word was spoken on either side ; but presently, as they 
 approached one of the almost perpendicular hills for which that 
 part of the country is famous, the horses of their own accord 
 slackened speed.' 
 
 ' Madeline ! ' Sir Henry's voice was so beseeching that 
 involuntarily his companion half turned her face towards him. 
 ' You cannot misunderstand me ; you must know that I love 
 you.' Still silent. ' Dear give me one word of hope.' 
 
 ' Oh, why will you spoil our friendship by speaking so 1 '
 
 A MISTAKE. 345 
 
 she answered, impulsively ; ' things were so pleasant before. 
 Is friendship, then, between a man and woman impossible ? ' 
 
 ' Between us, yes ; for, Madeline, I can no more help loving 
 you than I can help breathing.' 
 
 ' It is time for us to turn back, I think,' said Madeline, in a 
 more chilling voice than he had ever heard before. ' If you are 
 as generous and unselfish, Sir Henry, as I have always believed, 
 you will not refer to this subject again.' 
 
 ' But forgive me why may I not 1 Are you quite indif- 
 ferent to me ? I will wait ; I will wait patiently half a lifetime 
 if you will only give me some hope.' 
 
 ' I cannot deceive you,' she said gently, ' it is quite 
 impossible.' 
 
 ' Do not, for pity's sake, speak so decidedly ! Have you had 
 no dreams, like other girls, of a future to be shared by one 
 who should so reverence and love you that your two lives 
 would always, whatever might betide, be one of perfect and 
 entire sympathy.' 
 
 ' I have had my dreams,' she answered slowly, ' but not of 
 that. And after all, What is this picture you draw of an 
 earthly Paradise ? Is it anything better or nobler than a 
 species of dual selfishness ; two people living so absolutely in 
 and for each other that the claims of humanity are certain to 
 be forgotten wherever they happen to clash with the lover's 
 ideal of domestic bliss 1 ?' 
 
 'With your example before me I could not be selfish, 
 Madeline ; if you could only trust me, it should be the effort 
 of my life to help you in your work, not hinder you.' 
 
 'You will live, I hope, to be the helper of some better 
 woman ; of one, perhaps, who would not find domestic life any 
 hindrance to the work she may have undertaken. With me it 
 is different. Feeling, as I do, personally on the subject, it 
 would not be right for me to listen to you any longer. I am 
 very, very sorry,' she added, catching sight of the look of 
 intense pain with which her words were received. ' I do hope 
 we may yet be friends ; you will not let this episode, which
 
 346 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 after a time we both shall have forgotten, make any difference 
 to your plans for the future, will you 1 ' she pleaded. ' You will 
 let me feel proud of our friendship 1 ' 
 
 'I will try not to be unworthy of having known you,' he 
 replied, raising to his lips the gloved hand she had held out to 
 him. ' But is this to be all 1 I hoped I dare say it was pre- 
 sumptuous but I hoped Oh, Madeline, is it no use 1 ' 
 
 1 None,' she answered firmly, though she turned away to 
 hide her quivering lips. ' I am afraid I must have been to 
 blame somehow; I am more grieved than I can tell you.' 
 
 ' Oh, do not mind,' he said, with an exquisite thoughtful- 
 ness for her in the midst of his own acute sorrow. ' I deceived 
 myself, that is all, you are not to blame.' 
 
 But for some reason Madeline apparently did mind very much, 
 for the tears kept welling up into her eyes, and it was only by the 
 strongest effort that she retained her self command during the 
 remainder of their silent ride, and until safely within the walls 
 of her own room. The might have been never appears so at- 
 tractive as when we have just put it away from us. ' Had she 
 done wrong ? ' Madeline asked herself, as scalding tears fell 
 upon the pillow in which she buried her throbbing brow. ' It 
 was all so unexpected, she could not see things clearly ; had 
 she mistaken her feelings of friendship and regard, and did she 
 love this man ? Well, in any case it would be better not to 
 give way ; he would soon get over any little disappointment ; 
 she had her work to do, so had he, and both would do it better 
 untrammeled by personal considerations. No ; it was evident 
 there was no love on her side, or she could not reason about it 
 in this fashion ; so things were better as they stood ; ' and yet 
 when her friend and hostess came by-and-by to look after her, 
 she found this physically and mentally strong young woman 
 prostrated by a violent headache, a matter of no small astonish- 
 ment to one who, in common with Madeline's other intimates, 
 had often at college envied her exceptionally fine physique. 
 But conversation was out of the question, and the most inno- 
 cent and well-meaning of little matchmakers, as she sat gently
 
 A MISTAKE. 347 
 
 bathing her friend's temples with eau-de-cologne, thought the 
 darkened room, with its ill-defined contents and unwonted dis- 
 arrangement, was a very fair picture of the condition of her 
 mind, which had been troubled and mystified already beyond 
 measure by her brother's announcement at luncheon that the 
 business which had been so urgent a fortnight ago, and which 
 had, by common consent she thought, been indefinitely post- 
 poned, now called for his presence in town to-morrow afternoon, 
 and that therefore he must start by an early train. It seemed 
 to her as if the spirit of unrest had suddenly seized all her 
 guests, for the suggestion of work to be done in London roused 
 the Professor like a war-cry, and he seemed to fear drifting into 
 the ranks of the lotos-eaters, unless he, too, soon tore himself 
 away from the delights of Crag's Nest. He was, however, 
 finally persuaded to put off going till the following week, 
 under the inducement of having Madeline's companionship. 
 
 And so the pleasant party was broken up some days earlier 
 than it need have been, all through the machinations of that 
 mischevious god who, bestowing as he does upon mankind its 
 chiefest happiness, thinks he has the unquestionable right to 
 take out his change in petty misunderstandings, anxieties, and 
 annoyances.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 ' L'equilibre entre le droit de 1'homme et le droit de la femme est une 
 des conditions de la stability sociale.' 
 
 EMILE DE GIBABDIN. 
 
 [ Such dupes are men to custom, and so prone 
 To reverence what is ancient, and can plead 
 A course of long observance for its use, 
 That even servitude, the worst of ills, 
 Because delivered down from sire to son 
 Is kept and guarded as a sacred thing.' 
 
 COWPEE, The Task. 
 
 1 Science was faith once, faith were science now 
 Would she but lay her bow and arrows by 
 And arm her with the weapons of the time. 
 Nothing that keeps thought out is free from thought.' 
 
 J. BUSSELL LOWELL. 
 
 ' Though man a thinking being is defined, 
 Few use the great prerogative of mind. 
 How few think justly of the thinking few ! 
 How many never think, who think they do ! ' 
 
 ' This mutual relation is like that of the uses of every member, organ, 
 and viscus in the body, where all and each are so consociated that every 
 one regards its own good hi another and thus in all, and all reciprocally 
 in each other. From this universal and individual relation they act as 
 one.' SWEDENBOBG, Heaven and Hell, sec. 405. 
 
 1 The woman's cause is man's ; they rise or sink 
 Togethar, dwarf'd or godlike, bond or free : 
 
 If she be smafl, slight-natured, miserable, 
 
 How shall men grow ? ' TENNYSON, The Princess. 
 
 ' Yet I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs, 
 And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns.' 
 
 TENNYSON, Locktley Hall. 
 
 ' Never will peace and human nature meet 
 Till free and equal man and woman greet.' 
 
 SHELLEY, The Revolt of Islam
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 WOMEN AND EVOLUTION. 
 
 THE hall of the West London Social Science Institute for Men 
 and Women was unusually crowded one find evening early in 
 the following November, for Professor Wray was announced to 
 give a lecture upon ' Women and Evolution, or some Historical 
 Aspects of the Woman Question'; a subject which appeared to 
 possess some attractions not only for members and their 
 friends, but for a large section of the outside public, though 
 many were drawn, no doubt, simply by curiosity to hear what 
 a scientific man would have to say upon a theme, which to 
 them seemed so far removed from his usual line of thought. 
 But however that might be, his appearance on the platform 
 was greeted with a warmth that would have inspired a much 
 more nervous man with confidence, in its assurance of an 
 appreciative and indulgent hearing. 
 
 ' There are, no doubt, many here to-night,' he said, after a 
 few preliminary remarks, ' whose mental attitude is not unlike 
 that of some gentlemen whom, as I was on the point of enter- 
 ing the hall this evening, I overheard discussing the subject of 
 my proposed lecture.' 
 
 ' " I can't see the connexion of women in particular with 
 Evolution," said one. " Nor I," replied a second, " but look 
 out for rocks ahead in the shape of Women's Rights Distinct 
 marks of feminine handiwork in the finest extant flint imple- 
 ments Pre-historic Woman, Did she possess the suffrage 1 
 The Evolution of the Divided Skirt, &c., &c. ; the lecturer is 
 great on these subjects, I believe." "Very interesting to the
 
 352 HEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 ladies, no doubt," said another, " but not much in our line ; 
 however, we need not stop long."' 
 
 ' I heard no more, but I could not help thinking that those 
 few words sounded distinctly the keynote of the very ideas I 
 am anxious, if possible, to refute. I refer to the notion which 
 seems to be held by a large number of people that the interests 
 of the one sex and the interests of the other, are, if not 
 absolutely antagonistic, yet not identical ; and that the 
 advancement of women in intelligence, in freedom, in influence, 
 is a question by which men are little affected, and with which 
 they have little or nothing to do. Now, in the first place, all 
 good causes are so intimately allied that in helping forward 
 one, we cannot fail to do something towards furthering others ; 
 and this is so in the most marked degree in the question of 
 sex, which, according to the way it is treated, becomes either 
 the greatest aid or the greatest obstacle to human progress. 
 Nature has established such an absolute unity of interests 
 between the two halves of the human family that whatever 
 concerns women concerns pari passu the whole race; and it is 
 impossible to estimate how much the world has lost by the folly 
 which has repressed and ignored those powers, which, allowed 
 free development, would have proved a much greater factor in 
 man's progress from barbarism to comparative civilisation. Every 
 disadvantage women have suffered from has, as I hope to prove 
 to you, been so much abstracted from the common good ; since 
 the sexes, not only dually, but collectively, have a complimentary 
 relation to each other ; they are like the fabled birds of old 
 which could not fly except in cbuples, each individual having 
 but one wing, and in the place of it, upon the other side, a 
 hook by means of which, joined, they could rise to an immense 
 height, but, separated, were compelled to grovel helplessly upon 
 the ground. The elevation of the one sex means the salvation 
 of the other, the abasement of the one, the degradation of the 
 other. In proportion as women emerge from a state of 
 bondage, we find men throwing off the chains of ignorance 
 and brutality ; the conditions bearing upon the advancement
 
 WOMEN AND EVOLUTION. 353 
 
 of women therefore must be a primary element of any inquiry 
 into those conditions which affect the progress of mankind ; 
 and I hope to prove to you that of all the mistakes which have 
 been inade from the beginning of the world, not one perhaps 
 has worked so much mischief as the curb that has been put 
 upon the intellectual advancement of women ; the separation 
 and arbitrary clessification of the sexes in their work, political, 
 social, or educational. Men, with their habitual short-sight, 
 have ignored the fact that every child born into the world is 
 at least as much the child of his mother as of his father ; that 
 women imprint their characteristics on the race, a wise mother 
 having a wise son, a foolish mother probably a foolish son, a 
 sickly mother a feeble son. There is a vague notion current 
 among non-thinkers that beauty and gentleness are the charac- 
 teristics of an ideal wife ; that though she may be essentially 
 common-place, though the germs of any mental power she 
 might have possessed liave perished for want of cultivation, 
 if her husband be fairly intellectual they are sure to have clever 
 sons, and that the daughters, it may be reasonably hoped, will 
 inherit her good looks, which are all that they require. But 
 Nature more often than 'not, holds the balance true, by making 
 sons turn after their mother, daughters after their father ; 
 and this is the result the sons of a half-educated, half- 
 developed mother, are intellectually below the average, and 
 when their tutn comes to marry they probably prefer an 
 empty-headed wife who will not put their own stupidity to 
 the blush; and so a family deteriorates, name and property 
 descend in the male line, and, as usual, injustice recoils upon 
 itself. Many people however are fortunately awaking to the 
 fact that where women's minds and bodies are only half- 
 developed, the race must become stunted both physically and 
 mentally. The world has made some advance you say ; true, 
 we stand higher in the scale of civilisation than we did, for 
 instance, some centuries ago ; for there have been men in every 
 age to recognise the truth of this, there have been women to 
 fight hard for and win a fuller and freer existence for them- 
 
 A A
 
 354 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 selves, but still our progress has been a halting one, and why 1 
 Because ignorance and prejudice have debarred the majority of 
 women from healthy brain-exercise, freedom of movement, and 
 full physical development, and nature has, by the law of 
 inheritance kept on equalising matters, at man's expense, and 
 the loss of the race as a whole. 
 
 ' A very few examples will suffice to show that the political 
 and moral status of any country, its worth and durability, 
 depend upon the position held by women in that country. 
 There was a time in the world's history when Egypt was the 
 most polished and civilised of nations, and in reading its 
 history, as we are fortunate enough to be able to do in a great 
 measure from contemporary documents, we find that they were 
 the only people of antiquity who recognised the equality of 
 women, neither restraining their freedom, nor degrading them 
 by polygamy ; indeed the marriage contracts that have come 
 down to us show that the position of an Egyptian wife was in 
 many respects superior to that assigned even now, with all our 
 boasted progress, to the women in most European countries. 
 In the Egypt of those days the medical profession was chiefly 
 in the hands of women ; and, perhaps, as a not unnatural con- 
 sequence, mortality amongst infants and young children was 
 remarkably small. Women were priestesses, too, and may be 
 considered in a great measure the founders of their literature. 
 The " Sacred Books of Isis " were deemed by Plato to be some- 
 thing like ten thousand years old. It was with the advent 
 of Mahomedanism that Egypt's glory departed ; and the reason 
 is not far to seek Mahomet while bringing about a revolution 
 in all social matters, and working no doubt many reforms, 
 made the incalculable error of leaving women out of his 
 schemes of progress. A creed, which sanctions polygamy, 
 imprisons its women, refusing them both education and civil 
 rights, which excludes them from its churches, ranking them 
 with pigs, dogs, and other impure animals, and which 
 altogether subjects them to a system by means of which they 
 are deprived of both physical stamina and moral sense, must
 
 WOMEN AND EVOLUTION. 355 
 
 inevitably degrade any nation that embraces it. We need only 
 compare the Egypt of to-day with the Egypt of the past, to 
 recognise this. Turkey, for the same reason, committing the 
 serious economic blunder of wasting half its available material, 
 has not only stood still, but has step by step degenerated, 
 dropped lower and lower in the scale of humanity, and has 
 at last become so rotten that it is fast falling to pieces through 
 its own inherent feebleness. Compare the position of Turkish 
 women held like slaves in bondage, or kept as toys for man's 
 amusement, with the freedom enjoyed by their sisters in 
 America. Does not the effete condition of the one country, the 
 marvellously rapid growth, prosperity, and power of the other, 
 teach more strongly than any mere words can do the truth 
 of my proposition, that the growth of a country is in the 
 exact ratio with the freedom and advancement of its women, 
 and that the subordination of women has not only dwarfed 
 their faculties, but has made them a powerful retarding force 
 in the progress of the world, which should, if men were 
 wiser, be moving onwards ceaselessly, and not by fits and 
 starts. 
 
 ' It was in the nature of things, and on the whole, perhaps, 
 not unjust, that in the earliest historic times, when brute force 
 reigned supreme, women should have a subordinate place; 
 physical force being of special value in a savage and barbarous 
 community. The larger frames and tougher sinews of men were 
 best fitted for the rough conflict of subduing the material 
 world, and the weakest, in the hard struggle for existence, 
 were naturally of the least value, and received the least con- 
 sideration, being looked upon simply as the means through 
 which the supply of fighting men was kept up. The world 
 being in its infancy was not prepared for the high influences of 
 fully developed womanhood, it could riot comprehend the wide 
 views, the deep philosophy involved in the equality of the 
 sexes, though it must be acknowledged that this primitive 
 state of mind is a thing not certainly unknown even in the 
 present day. But brute force, though it may be, and often has
 
 356 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 proved itself for the time, irresistibly powerful, can never 
 become the ultima ratio of civilised society, seeing that its 
 reign is directly subversive of anything like freedom and 
 political justice; and, as the world developed from infancy into 
 childhood, men began to feel slowly and hesitatingly after 
 better things and to protest occasionally against the tyranny 
 of force, the despotism of individuals or classes ; but still 
 woman's place was not understood, her claims were thought 
 unworthy of attention. In the man-made mythologies of 
 heathen - times, she was held responsible for the chief ills of 
 life, for their first woman, Pandora, the " All - Gifted," was 
 declared, by reason of her combined charms and indiscretion, 
 to have brought misery upon the whole human race. Again, 
 in the Jewish account of the fall of man, Eve is represented as 
 the first and chief offender, not very logically for if Adam was 
 stronger, he might, one would have supposed, have been the 
 better able to resist temptation, if weaker, where lay his claim 
 to superiority 1 But so firmly were the Rabbis convinced that 
 the only safety lay in woman's absolute submission and 
 acknowledged inferiority, that in one of the Rabbinical legends 
 Eve is represented as having had a predecessor, who daring to 
 hold views of her own, and to possess an insatiable thirst for 
 knowledge, was banished from Eden, and as a warning to all 
 her sex, consigned from henceforth to the keeping of the devil. 
 Is it any wonder that in patriarchial times with only such 
 teaching as this to enlighten the universal ignorance, low views 
 of womanhood should prevail 
 
 ' Plato said some striking things about the -equality of the 
 sexes it is true, and once or twice the Greek world, or rather, 
 perhaps, I should say Athens, was agitated by questions akin 
 to those now brought forward by the supporters of women's 
 claims ; but what the accepted position of women was in this 
 polished nation at some periods of its history, is shown by the 
 dictatorial manner in which that young prig Telemachus, the 
 type of a dutiful son, mind you, speaks to his mother, 
 Penelope, bidding her to "live secluded and improve her
 
 WOMEN AND EVOLUTION. 357 
 
 widowed hours with female toil." Beauty was by the country- 
 men of Phidias and Praxiteles naturally idolised, but as an 
 intellectual force, women's influence in the state was absolutely 
 unrecognised ; their minds were undeveloped, confined to the 
 gynseceum, they were allowed to associate only with their 
 husbands and nearest relatives, while such liberal views and 
 high accomplishments as made the renown of Aspasia, being 
 the result of freedom and unrestrained intercourse with 
 kindred minds, were the almost exclusive possession of the 
 hetserse ; hence, arguing from false premises, men concluded 
 that in women, virtue was only compatable with ignorance 
 and seclusion. With women's endowments thus ignored, 
 perverted, and degraded, nothing was to be expected but 
 the gradual atrophy of all that was noblest in the race. 
 
 ' Amongst the Romans in their earlier days women obtained 
 some measure of equality ; they were venerated as priestesses, 
 and historians were proud to commemorate the brave deeds of 
 their matrons. But little by little their liberty was narrowed, 
 until under the Canon Law, to which many of our most unjust 
 enactments in regard to women may be traced, they lost all 
 pretence to equal rights. They were, as Dr. Merivale points 
 out, not associated in their husband's occupations, knew little 
 of their affairs, and were less closely attached to their interests 
 than even their bondsmen. They seldom shared in their re- 
 creations, which accordingly degenerated, for the most part, into 
 debauches. Systematically deprived of instruction, the Roman 
 matron was taught to vaunt her ignorance as a virtue, while 
 to cultivate her intellect or taste passed almost as a crime. A 
 love of reading Greek or Latin authors, ability to sing or dance, 
 to make verses, to please with conversation, these, in the 
 opinion of the historian Sallust, were no better than seductive 
 fascinations, such as formed the charm and fixed the price of 
 the courtesan. Less-esteemed women became less worthy of 
 esteem, and in their deterioration the whole nation shared. 
 Have we not here the key-note of Rome's decay and finaj 
 collapse before the more vigorous races of the north?
 
 358 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 ' I made an assertion just now which it may be that some 
 will dispute, namely, that the Canon Law is in a great measure 
 answerable for much of the injustice from which women have 
 suffered. I will beg your indulgence for a few minutes while I 
 make a short digression by way of proving what part the 
 Church has really taken in the elevation of womanhood and the 
 advoncement of the race. "Women owe everything to Chris- 
 tianity," we are often told, and no doubt Christ's teaching 
 tended to place them in a position df equality ; but we all know 
 that very early in the history of the Church so-called Christians 
 began to depart widely in this, as in everything else, from the 
 teaching of their Founder. Strange, though not by any means 
 unique, Was the inconsistency which, while gradually raising 
 one woman into a divinity, decreed the general inferiority of 
 her sex, for Christian theology very soon taught that woman 
 was created to serve man and be subordinate to him, though it 
 would have been puzzled to find in Christ's teaching the smallest 
 sanction for such an attitude towards a sex, some of whom, 
 when all men reviled Him, when even His chosen friends and 
 disciples forsook Him and fled, remained faithful in their at- 
 tachment. And yet it was, as I have said before, with the 
 ecclesiastical decrees of Christianised Eome that women's 
 position under the law became worse instead of better. In 
 each succeeding council of the Church, marriage was more and 
 more dishonoured, and Augustine himself, though he admitted 
 that the married might be saved, yet in speaking of a mother 
 and daughter in heaven, both of them having been exemplary 
 women, gave the latter the higher place because she had never 
 married. St. Chrysostom, whose prayer is used day after day in 
 the Church Of England, described women as " a necessary evil," 
 " a natural temptation," " a desirable calamity," " a domestic 
 peril," " a deadly fascination," and "a painted ill." Women were 
 taught to hold their own desires in abeyance to those of men, 
 and the most perverted ideas in regard to the relations of the 
 sexes were encouraged, in fact, as Kingsley says (Life and 
 Letters), "the Christian Church was swamped by hysteria from
 
 WOMEN AND EVOLUTION. 359 
 
 the third to the sixteenth century." England was Christianised 
 in the fourth century, and yet wives were for some hundreds of 
 years after bought and sold.* After the Reformation, the 
 Church, though perhaps in itself less corrupt, had little more 
 claim upon the gratitude of women. Puritanism , always made 
 most of Eve's share in the expulsion from Paradise ; " it was 
 man's complacency to woman," the people were told, "that 
 caused his first abasement, let him not, then, glory in his 
 shame, let him not worship the fountain of his corruption " ; 
 while Luther, with all his daring and originality, could no 
 more understand woman's true position than he could shake 
 off his belief in witchcraft " No gown or garment," he said, 
 " worse became a woman than that she would be wise." He 
 appears again not to have considered bigamy as inconsistent 
 with Christianity, for when consulted by the German Elector, 
 Philip, Landgrave of Hesse Cassel, as to his right to marry a 
 second wife, whilst his first was alive, he conferred not with the 
 two ladies concerned to find out what their opinion was, but 
 with six of the principal reformers, who agreed that as the 
 Bible nowhere expressly condemned polygamy, Philip might do 
 as he pleased. " I would have ho compassion for a witch," he 
 said on another occasion ; "I would burn them all." A little 
 skill in curing diseases, a taste for natural science, a love of 
 investigating the secrets of nature, was enough to earn any one 
 amongst the teachers of religion the fatal reputation of having 
 dealings with the evil one ; and so some of the most thoughtful 
 of the age were the ones to suffer persecution. But harmless 
 women were the chief victims, mostly those who through age 
 or infirmities had lost their physical attractions, and were 
 cruelly " done to death," because so-called " religious " teachers 
 preached their inherent wickedness and stigmatised every pecu- 
 liarity as witchcraft. Here and there a man suffered, it is true, 
 but women, weaker, more helpless, always misunderstood, 
 perished by thousands in every Christian country, for " the very 
 word femina" we are told by a writer of the period, " means 
 
 * Herbert Spencer's Sociology.
 
 360 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 one wanting in faith, since fe means faith, and minus less 
 knowledge." Again, " Sin hath been introduced into the world 
 by a woman's dealings with the devil, and doubtless the female 
 mind hath still a special leaning thereto ; to witchcraft, incan- 
 tations, and the black arts." Nor was it only in times long 
 past that such ideas prevailed, for when Parliament abolished 
 the burning and hanging of witches, the assembly of Scotch 
 Calvinists declared the Act to be a great national sin, And to 
 come down to our own day, is it to the Church or to the teach- 
 ings of science, to the ever-widening influences of education, 
 that women owe the measure of freedom they have already 
 obtained 1 
 
 1 Listen to the publicly-expressed opinions of a popular 
 clergyman of the Church of England upon the subject of a 
 wife's duty and position. "There is no crime," he says, " that 
 a man can commit which justifies his wife in leaving him. It 
 is her duty to subject herself to him always, and BO crime that 
 he can commit justifies her lack of obedience. If he be a bad 
 and wicked man, she may gently remonstrate with him, but 
 refuse him never." Again " Endurance, loving submission, 
 and intricacy of thought are their only characteristics."* 
 Compare these words with those of an eminent man of science, 
 Herbert Spencer, who, in speaking of woman's sphere, says : 
 " As the usages of mankind vary so much, let us hear how it is 
 to be shown that the sphere we assign her is the true one 
 that the limits loe have set to female activity are just the 
 proper limits. Let us hear why on this point of our social 
 polity we are exactly right, whilst we are wrong on so many 
 others." Professor Huxley, again (Lay Sermons), asks: "What 
 is the first step towards a better state of things 1 We reply, 
 emancipate girls. Recognise the fact that they share the 
 senses, perceptions, feelings, reasoning powers, emotions of 
 boys, and that the mind of the average girl is less different 
 from that of the average boy than the mind of one boy is from 
 
 that of another Let those women who feel inclined to 
 
 * Rev. Knox Little's Sermon to Women, 1880.
 
 WOMEN AND EVOLUTION. 361 
 
 do so descend into the arena of life; let them, if they so please, 
 become merchants, barristers, politicians. Let them have a 
 fair field." Now I need not say, I hope, that I have no animus 
 against the clergy, many of whom are undoubtedly not only 
 able and earnest, but also liberal-minded, men; but these would 
 be the first themselves to acknowledge that throughout the 
 world's history the spirit of clericalism has been, as a rule, 
 antagonistic to true progress, hence its persistent efforts to hold 
 women in thrall, to make them a mere cipher in the Church, 
 their motherhood a. curse, their subjection a favourite and oft- 
 quoted text. Recollect the public denunciation of Mary Somer- 
 ville by Dean Cockburn, of York ; the opposition met with by 
 Harriet Martineau in some of her most useful schemes ; and, 
 only this year, the narrow, dogmatic, not to say insulting, 
 letter of Dean Burgon's in the Daily News* against the ad- 
 mission of women to degrees at Oxford, and say whether it is 
 not to thinkers rather than preachers that our race owes its 
 advancement ; and whether the latter, if they wish to retain 
 any hold over the former, are not bound to recognise that the 
 Church, if it is to be a living, power, must modify its action to 
 suit the new needs of the time in which we live 1 It is in a 
 spirit of inquiry rather than dogmatism that a large-minded 
 theology will approve the problems and difficulties of the age, 
 the position of women amongst others. 
 
 ' Misled by the glamour with which the exaggerated 
 homage of chivalry surrounded them, we are apt to think that 
 the women of the Middle Ages must have had everything that 
 heart could desire ; but any one who reads between the lines 
 cannot fail to see that this was far from being the case ; the 
 times were still so lawless that those women who had no 
 natural protector were forced nolens volens to seek refuge in the 
 cloister. Women may, in the language of the day, have been 
 anything ; and yet, at an old French council in the thirteenth 
 century, the question as to whether they had souls was seriously 
 debated ! In the Boole of the Knight of La Tour Landry (pp. 
 * [F. ante, p. 42.]
 
 362 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 27, 81, 95), compiled for his daughters' use, he speaks with 
 approval of one wife being condemned by her husband to feed 
 with the swine as a punishment for peevishness ; of another who 
 was beaten for failing in instant obedience to some absurd 
 commands, and of a third who had her legs broken for going 
 out against her husband's will and those were the days of 
 chivalry ! As late as the sixteenth century, when Fran9oise de 
 Saintonges tried to establish schools in France for girls, her 
 father summoned a number of learned doctors " pour s'assurer 
 qu'instruire des femmes n'etait pas un ceuvre du Demon," 
 while she herself was persecuted, ridiculed, even hooted through 
 the streets of Paris. The women of Turkey are scarcely kept 
 more secluded than were Russian ladies in the eighteenth 
 century. We read in the life of Peter the Great that when a 
 doctor was called in to see the Tsaritsa, the windows were 
 darkened, and he was obliged to feel her pulse through a piece 
 of gauze ; and any one who believes with me that the more 
 woman is regarded as an individual entity, the more she has to 
 do with the management of society, the higher that society 
 stands, will not, when he reads of the place assigned to her in 
 the Greek Church and her position before the law, wonder at 
 the social disorganization which exists in that country. Not 
 many years ago the wif of a well-to-do peasant appealed to the 
 Court for protection from the cruelty of her husband, who, 
 during cold weather, had bound her nearly naked to a stake in 
 the street, exhorting passers by to strike her, and whenever 
 they refused, striking her himself. The Court declared the 
 man not to blame ; the wife had been guilty of insubordination ; 
 " we cannot afford," it said, " to teach a woman to disobey the 
 commands of her husband." But what can you expect? I 
 believe one of their marriage ceremonies is to present the 
 the husband with a whip for his wife's chastisement. Well 
 might one of their popular heroines exclaim on hearing of the 
 emancipation of the serfs, " God has forgotten the nook where 
 he hid the keys for women's emancipation ! " Though the 
 abolition of slavery in the Northern States of America was due
 
 WOMEN AND EVOLUTION. 363 
 
 in a great measure to the exertions of some few noble-hearted 
 women, and of the liberal-minded men who supported them, 
 yet so little share were they supposed to have in it, that when 
 Lucretia Mott, and other American ladies, equally distinguished 
 for their high character and abilities, came in the year 1840 
 to this country as delegates, after travelling three thousand 
 miles to attend the Anti-Slavery Convention in London, they 
 were actually to the shame of our countrymen be it spoken 
 excluded ; they might take their places with the audience, or 
 sit behind a curtain, but though they came as the chosen 
 representatives of certain American societies, they were not, 
 being women, admitted to the Convention, or allowed to take 
 part in the discussions. Two of their leading members, 
 William Lloyd Garrison and Nathaniel P. Rogers, were so 
 indignant that they also withdrew, while the scant justice, to 
 say nothing of courtesy, with which they were treated, set some 
 of these women thinking on the disabilities of their sex, the 
 result being that the claims of women, then but feebly urged, 
 began from that time to assume formidable proportions. So, 
 as in the dreadful civil war of 1861, did good come out of evil. 
 Women were not consulted on the making of that war, or, it 
 may be, the slavery question would have been settled by arbi- 
 tration ; but they bore themselves bravely none the less. It is 
 not generally known, but it was to the strategic genius of a 
 woman, Miss Carroll, daughter of a former Governor of Mary- 
 land, in planning the campaign on the Tennessee that the cause 
 of freedom triumphed. She had been herself a slave-owner, 
 and was a member of a class, therefore, strongly favourable to 
 slavery ; but she freed her negroes, and devoted herself 
 throughout the war to the interests of liberty. Her plan of 
 the campaign, accompanied by letters and explanatory maps, 
 was laid before the War Department in November, 1861, and was 
 declared by Colonel Scott, the Assistant Secretary, to be the 
 first clear solution of the war-problem in the West Scott went 
 himself to see it carried out in detail, and the result was that the 
 line of Confederate fortifications was broken, the decisive point
 
 364 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 was gained, and final success assured. A debate took place in the 
 House of Representatives as to the author of this campaign, 
 and it was variously ascribed to the President, the Secretary of 
 War, and to several officers in both services. The fact, how- 
 ever, of its being by a civilian, and that civilian a woman, is 
 proved by abundant testimony ; but so anxious was the Govern- 
 ment to keep this fact a secret, that Miss Carroll was entreated 
 to make no claim to the authorship while the struggle lasted, 
 to which, in her patriotism, she consented.* But it is not in 
 such fields as this that woman's influence will make itself felt in 
 the future elevation of the race. I trust the day is not far 
 distant when, thanks to their co-operation in the government of 
 all civilised countries, war shall have gone the way of other 
 barbarism, and, between enlightened nations, at least, arbitra- 
 tion will be universally resorted to for the settlement of 
 differences. 
 
 'An old Hindoo once had a remarkable dream in which 
 he saw the human race typified at different stages of progress ; 
 men appeared first in a state of bondage, the reins held by an 
 iron hand, pourtraying, of course, the age when physical force 
 was omnipotent ; but by-and-by, stage after stage, the yoke 
 grew lighter, the outward restraint less apparent, until, finally, 
 man was kept in check by the finest threads communicating 
 with the brain, and held by an invisible hand. Here we have 
 in a few words the history of human progress, the natural 
 evolution of a higher life in the adaptation of means to ends ; 
 brain power gradually supplanting the mere vigour of limb on 
 which men first based their assumption of superiority. Even 
 war itself, that heritage of savagery, depends less and less upon 
 the strength of individual combatants ; scientific slaughter has 
 taken the place of hand-to-hand struggles, and thoughtful 
 people watching the gradual perfecting of all instruments of 
 destruction are beginning already to foresee the day when, by 
 means of electricity, or it may be, some still more potent force 
 yet undiscovered, the science of wholesale murder shall have 
 * See History of Women's Suffrage, ii., 3. Fowler <fe Wells, New York.
 
 WOMEN AND EVOLUTION. 365 
 
 reached such a pitch of perfection, that nations will have to 
 keep the peace on pain of being annihilated ; and resources 
 which ought to be used for the advancement of knowledge, 
 or the relief of misery, will no longer be wasted on the false 
 glitter of so-called military glory. We might, perhaps, even 
 now, have reached this point had woman's voice been heard 
 more frequently in the councils of nations. " It is not good 
 for man to be alone." If our male ancestors had acted upon 
 this principle and, instead of attempting to rule the world un- 
 aided, had associated women more frequently with them in its 
 government, we should have been, I venture to say, in a very 
 different position from that in which we find ourselves to-day. 
 M. Legouve, the historian, declares it his honest conviction 
 that the first French revolution failed because the Republic 
 did not do justice to those who had borne their full share in 
 the struggle for freedom ; and, glancing over the chequered 
 history of that country, I can see many instances in which 
 political misfortunes might have been avoided but for the 
 operation of the Salic law, just as in this country the estab- 
 lished political rights of women, so far as royalty is concerned, 
 saved us, upon the death of William IV., from being ruled by 
 an autocratic foreigner in the person of the King of Hanover, 
 and gave us in his place a constitutional English Queen. It is 
 an undoubted fact that women have been exceptionally suc- 
 cessful as rulers. One of the most important treaties of modern 
 Europe, the Peace of Cambray in 1529, was negociated by two 
 women, the mother of Francis I. and the aunt of Charles V. 
 It was a woman, Isabella of Spain, who, when all Europe was 
 laughing at the projects of Columbus, recognised their impor- 
 tance, and supplied him with funds for his great discovery. It 
 was owing to the genius of Maria Theresa that the House of 
 Hapsburg was not swept away, and that the empire of Austria 
 still exists. Charles V. deliberately chose two princesses of 
 his family to rule in turn over the Netherlands. Mill, who 
 from his position in the India Office was well qualified to judge, 
 says, " If a Hindoo principality is strongly, vigilantly, and
 
 366 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 economically governed ; if order is preserved without oppression, 
 if cultivation is extending, and the people are prosperous, in 
 three cases out of four, that principality is under a woman's 
 rule." It seems worthy of note, too, that under three suc- 
 cessive queens, the once barbarous Madagascar has become 
 civilised. The status of the whole sex, too, has risen far above 
 that which prevails in most Eastern countries, the consequence 
 being that a people who, in the early part of the present 
 century were a nation of savages, have now a system of 
 national education (there are no less than 130,000 scholars in 
 the provinces). In Imerina and Betsileo, polygamy has been 
 condemned by royal decree, fair and open trial has been 
 secured to all offenders, treaties of commerce and frriendship 
 have been concluded with England, America, and Germany ; 
 and though the men are all liable to public service, teachers, 
 printers, every one in fact engaged in educational work is 
 exempted, that the advancement of the young may not be 
 checked. All vested interests have been abolished, and great 
 reforms, including trial by jury, are firmly established. Most 
 of these changes were instituted by the foresight and wisdom 
 of the late queen, and it is said that the fact of a woman in 
 the person of her niece being again chosen to occupy the 
 throne is received with general satisfaction. It would be easy 
 to multiply instances of the beneficial influence of women in 
 political matters, where, as responsible beings, their faculties 
 have been allowed full play ; and yet in the face of a hundred 
 facts such as I have quoted, we, who call ourselves an en- 
 lightened and liberal people, are found denying women even 
 the small share of self-government involved in voting for a 
 representative in Parliament. It is scarcely credible that so 
 recently as the year 1836, on a proposal being made in the 
 House of Commons to defray the cost of putting up a gallery 
 for ladies who wished to listen to the debates, Mr. Tooke said, 
 " It would endanger that grave and sober temper in which 
 they ought to discharge their duties in that House ; " he 
 further went on to say that " he objected to ladies being
 
 WOMEN AND EVOLUTION. 367 
 
 brought there to keep bad hours, and witness proceedings that 
 would not always be agreeable to their feelings." Sir John 
 Hobhouse, for his part, declared " That if they were to agree to 
 the proposition, he was quite satisfied, it would be quite im- 
 possible to continue society on the footing upon which it now 
 happily stood. He did not wish to see the peace and comfort 
 of men's homes disturbed by having the discussion of the over- 
 night renewed in the day, as would be the case if this pro- 
 position were acted upon. It was, in his mind, most indecent 
 to see high-bred females present during the debates, and when 
 he saw them in the House of Lords, he had often shuddered. 
 It was a practice which had always excited his disgust." 
 There is no one, perhaps, now, who can forbear a smile at the 
 very genuine alarm of thesp worthy men ; but that the most 
 palpable absurdities decently clothed in conventional garments, 
 have more chance of acceptance by the average mind than un- 
 familiar truth, experience shows us ; for many of the arguments 
 used to this day by honourable members in the House of 
 Commons against the extension of the franchise to women- 
 householders, are quite as illogipal as those I have just quoted 
 will no more stand the test of pross-examination, when sum- 
 moned to the bar of common-sense, and will, no doubt, excite 
 equal amusement and ridicule in the minds of future gener- 
 ations, though it will be some time, I fear, before narrowness 
 and prejudice are things unknown even in that august 
 assembly. Those who wear tight boots cannot be expected 
 to make any other than a halting progress ; we must give 
 them time. Everything comes to those who know how to 
 wait and work. I am convinced that there is for women in the 
 future a far wider and nobler influence than under present con- 
 ditions we find it possible even to realise. 
 
 ' A great deal of attention has been given of late years to 
 the subject of organic evolution, more especially to the origin 
 of man, and the manner of his development from some lower 
 form in the scale of being ; but to the thinker it is of even 
 greater interest to watch the process of intellectual advance-
 
 368 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 ment ; to observe how in the world of thought ideas unfold 
 one from another and differentiate according to the law of 
 evolution ; how, when humanity is ripe for certain changes, a 
 species of fermentation seizes the minds of men, and ideas are 
 evolved which, sooner or later, must intimately affect the 
 welfare of the race. It was the attempt to think out some of 
 the questions raised by women's claim to the suffrage, which 
 convinced me that amongst all the agencies now at work in 
 the political and social world, the so-called " woman-question " 
 is the most momentous, and one that is destined to work a 
 revolution in society more beneficent than any that has pre- 
 ceded it, representing as it does, the great movement of 
 humanity towards its highest destiny. Every generation has 
 its own particular work to contribute to the advancement of 
 the world ; the work of our age is to raise women to a position 
 they have never occupied before. In Punch, that mirror 'of the 
 times, there appeared some few years since a picture re- 
 presenting two little children a boy and a girl ; the former, 
 in a commanding tone calls out, as he stands at the top of a 
 flight of steps " Come here, Erne, I want you ; " but Miss 
 Effie, who evidently has not long learnt to speak so as to be 
 understood, replies, " Thanks, I wants myself," and toddles off 
 in an opposite direction. Now, the girl is the mother of the 
 woman, and one of the most hopeful signs of the times, in my 
 opinion, is the increasing sense amongst both "men and women, 
 girls and boys, that each individual of whatever sex " stands 
 single," as Aurora Leigh says, "in responsible act and thought ;" 
 that women have some raison d'etre other than ministering to 
 their men-relations, or submitting without question to their 
 behests. 
 
 'It has been remarked, that every social truth or public 
 reform, must pass through four stages : first, " neglect " ; 
 second, " epigram " ; third, " the guillotine " ; and fourth, 
 " universal acceptance." The cause of women with all its im- 
 portant issues, has, I think we may fairly say, outlived the 
 first stage; it is kept too well before the public, to be neglected,
 
 WOMEN AND EVOLUTION. 369 
 
 and though the " epigram," and the " guillotine," ridicule, and 
 despotic attempts at obstruction, are not unknown, we are 
 approaching slowly but surely the fourth stage of " universal 
 acceptance." The average man, it is true, is constitutionally 
 indolent, and opposed to change ; like the crab, he never feels 
 very comfortable between the casting off his old shell, and 
 the formation of a new one ; but the new one will fit him 
 better none the less, and all his grumblings will not defer the 
 inevitable. Education, however, must have done its work in 
 giving to women broader outlooks, loftier views of the part 
 they have to play in life; men must have learnt their own 
 vital concern in the progress of women, before we can hope for 
 an entire reform. Any existing state of things is apt to be 
 upheld by the narrow-minded and the timorous, long after it 
 has ceased to be desirable. " It is not natural," they tell us of 
 any proposed innovation, meaning that they are not accustomed 
 to it ; and forgetting that this very argument upon which they 
 think to have planted their colours so securely has, in its day, 
 been brought forward in reply to the opponents of human 
 sacrifice, of slavery, of despotic rule ; as it has been with every 
 abuse of the past so it is with the position assigned to women 
 each thinks that he has arrived in his conclusions at the 
 just limitations of her power and freedom, as if Nature were 
 fixed and unalterable, and that he, having concentrated in his 
 person the wisdom of the ages, has fathomed her designs once 
 and for ever. Many, very worthy people no doubt, so love and 
 reverence the accumulated dust of ages, that they will on no 
 account have it disturbed ; peering about, unable to see be- 
 yond the ruins of their own dull spectacles they fail to realise 
 that opposition to reform is worse than useless, for with creeds, 
 codes, and customs ever changing, immutable truth only grows 
 the stronger. Man is a progressive being, and those who, 
 thinking that we have now reached a stage at which advance- 
 ment must be stopped, persist in standing still, will inevitably 
 be swept away. Daily new ideas are born and old ones die ; 
 human life is one long succession of transitions, for there is no 
 
 B B
 
 370 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 Procrustean process by which growing humanity can be made 
 to conform to the cramped conditions of the past ; and you 
 can no more give permanence to institutions whose days are 
 numbered, than indefinitely perpetuate the limitations of child- 
 hood. You can no more expect ancient laws and customs to 
 fit into our era, than you can force the foot of a grown man 
 into the shoes he wore in infancy. " The old order changeth, 
 giving place to new," and it is open to each individual to range 
 himself on the side of truth or expediency, progress or pre- 
 judice, heroes or cowards, in other words, on the winning or 
 the losing side ; for, as I said before, if there is one thing in 
 this world more certain than another, it is the final destruction 
 of everything false, the ultimate triumph of everything good. 
 There are remote chances, no doubt, of our taking a wrong 
 turning now and then, but true reformers have never on this 
 account hesitated to go forward ; growth in one form or another 
 is the most familiar of natural phenomena, and the true con- 
 ception of human happiness is not to be found in passive en- 
 durance, but in active self-development ; not, on the one hand, 
 in being blindly satisfied with any given state of things, or on 
 the other, so oppressed by the evils around us as to sit down 
 in despair ; but in learning to distinguish wisely between what 
 is fixed and what is mutable in Nature's laws, so as to raise 
 ourselves, and if it may be, others with us, above the fogs of 
 prejudice. Let us see that we use such faculties as we possess ; 
 for it is of no use to any one that we have the best eyes in the 
 ship if we choose to loiter on deck instead of keeping a good 
 look-out aloft. 
 
 ' A mole, when asked why it did not adopt some other 
 mode of architecture, replied that science could go no further ; 
 and those people are just as blind who cannot read in the 
 history of the past, that human society, woman more par- 
 ticularly, is destined like the dragon-fly larva, to leave her 
 old creeping condition behind her, and come out a new-winged 
 creature to live a freer life in a higher atmosphere than the 
 old limitations of her cramped existence would allow. Like
 
 WOMEN AND EVOLUTION. 371 
 
 the sleeping -beauty she has long lain unconscious of the 
 possibilities of her being ; but Evolution, the fairy prince, has 
 come in his onward progress and roused her with a touch to a 
 higher sense of responsibility and duty. No spell can again 
 pi-oduce that enchanted slumber of the past ; and those who 
 thrust women back, put difficulties in their way, refuse them 
 equal freedom, and preach their subordinate position, do it at 
 their own peril. I have heard alarmists cry that those who 
 desire the advancement of women beyond the limits they are 
 pleased to prescribe, are going far towards changing the 
 relations of the sexes, but I answer emphatically, No. Society 
 is raised by every new right that women gain ; if men are 
 encouraged to advance while women are urged to stand still, or 
 follow at a distance ; if political privileges are given to an ever 
 widening class of men, and denied altogether to women ; if 
 freedom of labour be considered the undoubted right of the one 
 sex, while restrictions are placed upon that of the other, it is 
 then you change the relations of the sexes by creating a wider 
 disparity between them. Those who would restrict the freest 
 development of women's powers are imposing a wilful injury 
 upon society; for if women are ever to lead men onwards, 
 politically supporting them, encouraging them to good works, 
 they must be brought into contact with ideas of public life, of 
 national progress. In former days it may have been that, as 
 Bentham says, "No Government ever yielded a right unless 
 bullied into it ; " but it is to be hoped that rulers are beginning 
 to yield to other forces, the forces of reason, of justice, of 
 humanity, and therefore it cannot be long before it ceases to be 
 held either just or right that the one sex should presume to 
 prescribe limits to the functions of the other. Is it not then a 
 wiser as well as a nobler thing to enlist as a soldier in the 
 army of progress, to join the best in every age and country 
 who have fought for liberty even to the death, than to spend 
 our time in erecting barriers upon its highways ? If we have 
 any desire, 
 
 " So to act that each to-morrow 
 Finds us further than to-day."
 
 372 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 we shall spend some of our energies in removing from half of 
 mankind disabilities which are only worthy of a primitive and 
 semi-barbarous age. Vacancy, stupidity, and self-interest are 
 for ever fighting against advancement ; the war between truth 
 and error is raging without ceasing, but the survival of the 
 fittest means the victory of the most resolute. Time and 
 patience change the mulberry-leaf to satin, and though it may 
 seem sometimes ah almost hopeless task to fight against the 
 wrong and injustice one sees in all directions, yet there is some 
 encouragement in the thought that every ripple in the advanc- 
 ing tide means so much gained ; that no noble aspiration, no 
 earnest effort for the good of our race can ever be thrown 
 away ; that every protest against wrong, every good deed done 
 for the sake of others brings some rays of light into the sur- 
 rounding darkness, leaving us better, happier, and more 
 hopeful than beforte. The great tree of progress, too, with its 
 far-reaching branches, and roots planted deep in the soil of 
 humanity, goes on growing year after year, blossoming and 
 bearing fruit, and close observation of its development only 
 makes more and m'ore apparent the fact that all social advance- 
 ment has be'en, and ever will be, in the direct ratio of the 
 extension of equal freedom to the two halves of the human 
 family ; for the true laws which govern the relations of the 
 8*6X68, namely those that place them in precisely the same 
 stratum of civilisation, are, I repeat, the only ones whose 
 observance will secure humanity's highest development.' 
 ******* 
 
 ' I have been looking out for you,' said a familiar voice, as 
 Professor Wray, having got through the Well-meant, but 
 wearisome greetings and 'congratulations of his friends, and 
 their friends and acquaintances who " wanted to be introduced 
 to him," made his way through a Side-door into a quiet street 
 and was about to call a cab. 
 
 ' This is an unexpected pleasure,' he replied, recognising 
 and shaking hands with Sir Henry Tregarthen ; ' I had no idea 
 you were in town.'
 
 WOMEN AND EVOLUTION. 373 
 
 ' Nor had I yesterday,' was the reply ; ' in fact I have only 
 just come up. I have some business to look after with my 
 solicitors in Bedford Row on Thursday, and hearing of your 
 lecture to-night I hastened my journey by two days.' 
 
 ' What time did you arrive 1 I wonder I did not see you, 
 come in.' 
 
 ' Well, I reached Paddington after six, and so had not 
 much time to do justice to the dinner my old housekeeper had 
 prepared; but although I made all the haste possible I did not 
 get here until late, and so sat in the very back of the hall. 
 I am lucky in having heard the best part of your lecture 
 though. I would not have missed it on any account. But 
 come to my club with me, won't you 1 Or are you busy as 
 usual 1 ' 
 
 ' I have not seen or heard anything of my West- country 
 friends including yourself for so long,' replied the Professor, 
 ' that I really do not think I can resist the temptation, I have 
 nothing to do this evening that will not wait' 
 
 ' That is right,' replied Sir Henry, as he hailed a hansom, 
 which in view of prospective fares was crawling past them 
 with a perfection of slowness that one would think could only 
 have been accomplished by a horse who had served a funeral 
 apprenticeship, in other words, formed part of an undertaker's 
 stock-in-trade. The animal possessed still some suppressed 
 energy, however, as Sir Henry's practised eye had discovered, 
 and soon they were rattling along Piccadilly and drawing up 
 just off the great thoroughfare at the door of one of the 
 quietest, but best managed, and most comfortable clubs in 
 London. 
 
 ' Have you seen anything of Crag's Nest and its inhabitants 
 since we parted there in August S ' asked the Professor, when, 
 having adjourned to the smoking-room after a light supper, 
 the waiters had placed glasses and hot water on the table, and 
 left them to smoke their cigars undisturbed, except by the 
 heavy breathing of an old gentleman who had fallen asleep over 
 his newspaper in a remote corner of the room.
 
 374 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 ' They are going on just as usual, I believe,' said Sir Henry, 
 listlessly ; and the Professor struck by his manner, glancing up, 
 noticed that his companion who formerly appeared to have an 
 inexhaustible store of health and good spirits, looked, now 
 the excitement of their meeting had passed away, jaded, 
 dispirited, and at least ten years older than he had done 
 two months ago. 
 
 ' My dear fellow, I am afraid you are not well,' he said with 
 some solicitude. 
 
 ' Yes, I am all right thank you,' was the reply ; and as 
 though anxious to divert the conversation from himself, Sir 
 Henry hastily drew a note-book from his pocket and unfolded 
 and spread out on the table some plans and drawings of what 
 looked like model-cottages. ' I want to ask your opinion on 
 these,' he said. ' You are great, I know, on sanitary matters, 
 and I am anxious to make them as perfect as possible while I 
 am about it. I am going to put some up on my place, and as 
 it is part of my plan to be in a position to make a present of 
 small freeholds to deserving tenants, I shall have to talk over 
 the question with Gittit and Keepit, as they know more than I 
 do about the conditions of entail and of how far they will 
 limit me.' 
 
 ' But that will not interfere with the building of these 
 cottages which are, I must say, admirably planned.' 
 
 ' Oh, no, thanks be, there I am quite free, and can carry 
 out my plan of taking some good old folks off the parish. You 
 remember our talking of the hardship it seemed that men and 
 women, who had struggled all their lives together to maintain 
 themselves decently, should, when age or want drives them 
 into the Union, be forced against their will to separate.' 
 
 ' I remember Miss Acton speaking of it one day at Crag's 
 Nest, and your saying it was a disgrace to our boasted 
 humanity, and that Dis-union was a better name than Union 
 for a house where husbands and wives were in their old age 
 forced to part in this way.' 
 
 4 Did I really 1 I must have been in good spirits to make
 
 WOMEN AND EVOLUTION. 375 
 
 such a bad joke as that, on such a subject, too. Dear me, it 
 seems twenty years ago.' 
 
 ' But what,' said his companion, discreetly oblivious of the 
 sigh that had accompanied the last words; ' but what is this 
 larger building.' 
 
 ' Merely a village reading-room. There was nothing in the 
 place by way of counter-attraction to the ale-house, and I know 
 she I thought, perhaps, that put into the charge of some 
 trustworthy person it might be made available for men and 
 women, too ; even if the women have not much time to avail 
 themselves of it ; it would often, I think, be an advantage to 
 them in their small houses to have the men out of the way of 
 the washing and cleaning, and yet to know that they are not 
 spending their wages at the public-house ; the place is to be 
 opened next month, we hope.' 
 
 ' Well done,' said the Professor, with some enthusiasm, ' it 
 makes me feel quite small to think how little I have accom- 
 plished during the last two months, when you have evolved so 
 many things and set them going.' 
 
 ' I do not know that my projects, whether started or still 
 in nubibus, have anything very wonderful about them,' Sir 
 Henry said humbly ; ' having gone on the principle of pleasing 
 myself for so long, and made such a mess of it, I thought, 
 perhaps, it would be worth trying if other people could not be 
 made to get some satisfaction out of life ; I daresay I shall fail 
 in that, too,' and Sir Henry, flinging away his half-smoked 
 cigar, got up, sauntered to a side-table, and taking up the Times, 
 appeared, as he held it upside down, to be deeply interested in 
 the reversal of the Magistrate's decisions in the day's police 
 intelligence. ' By-the-way,' he said, presently coming back to 
 the fireplace and speaking, as though the idea had only just 
 occurred to him, ' where is Miss Acton ? Was she at the 
 lecture ] ' 
 
 'Oh, ho ! my young friend,' thought the Professor, 'so your 
 interest in my discourse was not so impersonal as I supposed ; 
 there is something wrong evidently and I wish from my heart
 
 376 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 I could act the benevolent fairy; but I suppose these things are 
 better left to right themselves. I am sorry to say she had 
 not been at all well when I heard last,' he said aloud, though 
 not looking up, and apparently still interested in the sanitary 
 arrangements of the four-roomed cottages on the plan before 
 him. ' She has been over-doing it I fancy ; going in all 
 weathers to a branch night-school in the East End, getting 
 her feet wet, reading and writing until any hour of the night 
 or morning, giving herself, in short, so her aunt told me, no 
 rest, burning the candle at both ends, and you know what that 
 comes to.' 
 
 ' That is so unlike her; she was always so reasonable.' 
 
 ' Yes, which makes it all the more provoking ; I took the 
 part of a severe parent last time I saw her, and told her plainly 
 that if she did not care for herself, she ought to think of 
 others ; that calling selfishness by the pretty name of self- 
 forgetfulness, did not make it a whit more creditable.' 
 
 ' How could you be so unfeeling ? If ever there was an 
 unselfish, a large-hearted girl in this world ' 
 
 ' Well I did feel rather a brute, I must say, when I saw the 
 tears in her eyes, for she seemed quite broken down, poor child ; 
 but there is some consolation in the thought that my severity 
 acted as a tonic, for she consented after that to leave town, as 
 she had been ordered to do long before, and go with her aunt 
 to Richmond for a month's change.' 
 
 'When was that V 
 
 1 About ten days ago.' 
 
 ' They are there still then.' 
 
 ' Yes ; I hope to go and see them on Sunday if I can 
 manage it ; why don't you come too ? They will be delighted 
 see you I am sure.' 
 
 ' I have had no invitation,' was the somewhat lame 
 reply. 
 
 ' I do not see well how you could have but is that 
 twelve o'clock striking 1 I really must say " good-night," for 
 I have to be up early to-morrow. Let me see as much of
 
 WOMEN AND EVOLUTION. 377 
 
 you as you can,' he added as they shook hands ; ' you will 
 find me on most mornings from ten to eleven at the Science 
 Club. Do not have the least scruple on the score of my 
 multitudinous occupations, for if I have any important en- 
 gagements for the day I will not hesitate to tell you, and minor 
 ones will keep.'
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 1 WHAT marriage may be in the case of two persons of cultivated faculties, 
 identical in opinions, and purposes, between whom there exists that best 
 kind of equality, similarity of powers and capacities with reciprocal supe- 
 liority in them, so that each can enjoy the luxury of looking up to the 
 other, and can have alternated the pleasure of leading and being led in 
 the path of development, I will not attempt to describe, .... but I 
 maintain with the profoundest conviction that this, and this only, is the 
 ideal of marriage. EJNGSLEY. 
 
 ' Beloved, let us love so well, 
 Our work shall still be better for our love, 
 And still our love be sweeter for our work.' 
 
 E. BARRETT BROWNING, Aurora Leigh, 
 
 1 Avoir souffert, comme c'est bon. Leur malheur faisait aureole a 
 leur bonheur.' VICTOR HUGO.
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 IT happened most opportunely that just at the time Pro- 
 fessor Wray had made Madeline promise, if she would not go 
 abroad, at any rate, to leave town for a time, that a pic- 
 turesque, comfortable, and well-furnished cottage on the banks 
 of the Thames above Richmond, which had belonged to a 
 bachelor uncle, and was now the joint property of her young 
 cousin and herself, had lately become vacant, and so it was very 
 easy for her to obtain the complete rest and change prescribed 
 by the physician, whom her aunt, in spite of many remon- 
 strances, had persisted in calling in. Mrs. Beaumont, being 
 really anxious about her niece, for whom she had an unboxinded 
 admiration and affection, made no difficulty about leaving her 
 own daughter in the temporary charge 'of one of the Queen's 
 College mistresses, so as to devote herself more completely to 
 the care of Madeline ; and it was greatly to the unselfish 
 woman's disappointment that though now in the second week 
 of their stay at Riverscot, Madeline's colour had not come back, 
 nor her step grown more elastic, while the fitful efforts which, 
 seeing her aunt's anxiety, she made to appear in good health 
 and spirits, however well Vacant, were generally the most 
 lamentable failures. 
 
 'I have been thinking, Madeline, that perhaps I made a 
 mistake after all in bringing you here.' They were seated at 
 luncheon in the little old-fashioned dining-room at Riverscot, 
 and Mrs. Beaumont had been looking ruefully at the almost 
 untouched contents of her niece's plate. ' The Willoughby's 
 have certainly improved the garden ; it is much prettier than 
 in your uncle's time, and certainly more open and healthy, 
 although you did predict that, though the river might be at the
 
 382 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 bottom of the lawn in summer, at this time of the year the lawn, 
 like another of which we have heard, was sure to be at the 
 bottom of the river. There is nothing of that sort to complain 
 of, but I am afraid it is dull for you to be shut up here with an 
 old woman. I ought to have thought of it ; you cannot be 
 reading the whole day, and there is nothing to compensate for 
 the loss of all your usual pursuits.' 
 
 ' I am sure I should be very unreasonable if I wanted more 
 than my books and your society, Auntie,' Madeline replied, 
 affectionately, but gravely ; ' besides, there is the boat,' she 
 added more lightly ; ' I enjoy the river, as you know, and in 
 your absence where could I find a more intelligent companion 
 than Mr. Isaacs,' she continued, stooping to stroke the white 
 Persian cat, who sat solemnly on a footstool beside her, and 
 who in virtue of his beauty and faithfulness to his mistress, 
 had been named, not inappropriately, after Mr. Crawford's 
 thorough-bred Eastern hero. 
 
 ' Perhaps it would have done you good,' said Mrs. Beau- 
 mont refusing to have her solicitude put aside or ignored 
 ' perhaps it would have done you good to go to town yesterday, 
 just for Professor Wray's lecture ; I should have suggested it, 
 had it not been for your cold.' 
 
 ' I did not care much about it, thank you,' said Madeline ; 
 ' he is sure to send me a copy when it is published.' 
 
 ' I wish your looks were as bright as your locks, dear,' her 
 aunt said, somewhat irrelevantly it seemed, as she came round 
 to where Madeline was sitting, and gently stroked her hair. 
 Suddenly she stooped and kissed the soft brown braids on the 
 girl's bent head. ' Something is troubling you, child, What is 
 it ? Am I not right, dear, in thinking it is the mind rather 
 than the body, or, rather, the mind influencing the body 1 ' 
 Her hand was taken and gently pressed, but there was no 
 reply. ' If I were your mother, Madeline in fact, as I am in 
 feeling I do not think you would refuse me your confidence.' 
 There was a tremour in the elder woman's voice which was 
 more than Madeline's sensitive and over-charged feelings would
 
 CONCLUSION. 383 
 
 stand, aud suddenly turning, she hid her face on her aunt's 
 shoulder, while her whole frame was shaken by suppressed 
 sobs. Though astonished at such an unwonted display of 
 emotion on her niece's part, Mrs. Beaumont, not being by any 
 means deficient in tact, if she knew when to speak, knew also 
 when to be silent, so for some minutes she took no notice of 
 Madeline's changed attitude, except by an occasional caressing 
 touch. Presently she said gently, ' I have known what it was 
 to have trouble, darling ; I have known what it was to make 
 mistakes, so I might be some help to you, perhaps, if you would 
 let me.' 
 
 ' Do you not think,' said Madeline, her cheek glowing, and 
 her words coming in short, broken sentences ' do you not 
 think if if from a love of independence, or a foolish notion 
 that there was something noble in the determination to be 
 self-sufficing in the deliberate choice of a single life, without 
 regard to to any one's feelings or one's own j should you 
 not think that one who felt so, and acted so, deserved her 
 punishment, and that the only thing left for her to do was to 
 bear it ? t 
 
 The speaker's language was not so intelligible as usual ; but, 
 by a sort of intuition, her aunt appeared to know or guess all 
 that had been left unsaid. 
 
 ' That depends upon circumstances,' she replied. c I believe 
 it is no uncommon case for many of the best, and most thought- 
 ful women, to cut themselves off from the happiness of loving 
 and being loved in that sense, just because they are to some 
 extent tainted by the too-common belief that she who would 
 be a true wife and mother must devote herself absolutely to 
 domestic duties ; keep her mind within the four walls of her 
 home, and abstract it from all larger interests ; naturally a 
 generous-souled girl or woman shrinks from the narrowing 
 selfishness of such a creed, and finds something much more 
 noble and attractive in a single life devoted to the interests of 
 humanity. It is not they, but the popular views of woman as 
 a mere domestic animal that are to blame if some of the best
 
 384 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 and most useful women are inclined to shun wifehood and 
 maturity. Do you not think so 1 ' 
 
 'Yes; but ' 
 
 ' My dear child, you of all people do not want to be told 
 that this view of marriage is a mistaken one ; for where two 
 human beings, loving each other above all else, bind themselves 
 to work together, both in the home and in the world, to sup- 
 port one another in all that is good, to fight hand in hand 
 against evil in themselves and in the world; bringing their 
 hitherto separate powers and interests into one common har- 
 mony for the good of all ; their strength is more than doubled, 
 they will bring more warmth of sympathy for the joys and 
 sorrows of others than if in their own lives they have con- 
 temptuously, or without sufficient cause, put aside the love and 
 happiness that might have been theirs.' 
 
 ' Excuse me, Aunt Helen, dear, the room is so warm, I feel 
 stifling, I must get some air ; ' and with a kiss Madeline disen- 
 gaged herself and hurried out. 
 
 Five minutes later she was walking with something of her 
 old briskness through the shrubbery which skirted the lawn 
 and led down to the water's edge, where was moored a small 
 boat, into which Madeline presently got, and soon was pulling 
 up the stream with a steady stroke, and a general savoir faire, 
 that showed her sailor uncle's training in former days had not 
 been thrown away. 
 
 Presently her grasp on the oars relaxed, their motion grew 
 more and more irregular, and from the expression of her face it 
 was evident that she was the victim of some severe mental 
 conflict. 
 
 ' This is just a picture of my life,' she soliloquised, with 
 arms crossed upon the now idle oars, and head drooping 
 wearily upon her breast. ' I thought myself so strong on start- 
 ing, and now I am not equal to more than just drifting aim- 
 lessly along upon the stream of circumstances, with no volition 
 of my own. There must be something radically wrong about 
 me, I am afraid ; other people have lived through mistakes and
 
 CONCLUSION. 385 
 
 troubles, and why should I give in 1 I am no wiser than our 
 old fowls, who ivould think the night had come and go to roost 
 because there was a partial eclipse of the sun. Why cannot I 
 rouse myself ? ' 
 
 Suddenly there was a cry of distress, and turning round, 
 Madeline saw that not far behind her a shaky little boat, such 
 as careless shop-boys and clerks seem to prefer to all others for 
 a day's pleasuring, had upset, and two people, a young man 
 and woman, were struggling in the water. Quick as thought 
 she flung to the former the life-belt which formed part of the 
 fittings of her own small boat, and pulling rapidly to the spot, 
 caught the girl's dress just as she was on the point of sinking ; 
 and, thanks to the strength born of excitement, it was with 
 quite her old energy that she towed the poor draggled creatures 
 in turn to the bank, then helped the man to right his craft and 
 make it at least as seaworthy as it had been before. 
 
 They would have been in a sad predicament, no doubt, and 
 probably one or both would ha've been drowned were it not for 
 Madeline's prompt assistance, for no one else was near, and ap- 
 parently neither of them could swim. 
 
 The girl's thanks, despite her lack of aspirates, were very 
 prettily expressed, while her companion's admiration and grati- 
 tude, it was evident through all his awkwardness, were no less 
 genuine. 
 
 ' Upon my word,' he said, ' I thought it was all up with us 
 when I saw there was nobody near but a young lady. I wonder 
 you were not afraid to come near us, Miss, I'm sure, with such 
 a little boat, for if we had clung to it, we should have been 
 safe to upset you, too.' 
 
 ' I had no excuse for being cowardly,' said Madeline, ' for I 
 am almost as much at home in the water as on land ; to have 
 learnt to swim always gives one confidence.' 
 
 ' Sure, and I wish I could swim, said the girl, as she shook 
 and squeezed her dripping garments, and tried to reduce their 
 appearance to something a little more respectable ; ' I was 
 awfully frightened I know.' 
 
 c c
 
 386 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 ' I will give you the address of some places in London where 
 you can learn,' said Madeline taking out her pocket-book. ' I 
 am glad to say there are a few, though Vestries, as a rule, do 
 not recognise the importance of a knowledge of swimming for 
 women, at least they think it a waste of time and money. But 
 you must have plenty of chances of learning,' she said to the 
 man. 
 
 ' Yes, Miss, and I shan't forget to-day's lesson I can assure 
 you,' he said, touching his hat respectfully, as he stepped into 
 the boat, and made as comfortable a seat for his companion as 
 was possible under the circumstances. We've got to be back 
 to Hammersmith before night,' he added in explanation. 
 
 ' It is no use then to ask you as I intended,' she replied, ' to 
 come to my house and dry yourselves, but you must at any 
 rate accept my oars, for I see your's have disappeared. Do not 
 hesitate, she added, ' I can get home with this,' pointing to the 
 paddle-shaped boat-hook which lay at her feet, it is not far. I 
 hope you will not be the worse for your wetting.' 
 
 The girl seized the speaker's gloved hand and impulsively 
 kissed it before she stepped into the boat. ' Irish,' thought 
 Madeline, ' no London-bred girl would have done that, whatever 
 she might feel.' ' Good-bye ; God bless you,' she said softly, 
 touched by this silent tribute of gratitude. In another minute 
 the boat and its occupants were growing smaller and smaller in 
 the distance, and still Madeline stood watching, until they were 
 out of sight, a momentary glow on her face at the thought 
 that even in her present state of self-discontent, she had been 
 able to be of little use to some one. Presently she seated her- 
 self in the stern of her small canoe-like craft, and succeeded, 
 after a time, not without some difficulty, but without any 
 serious contretemps, in steering into the little creek just 
 below the house. Having made the boat fast, she sat down 
 panting upon a felled tree just above the water's edge, her head 
 seemed to spin round, the reaction from over-exertion and excite- 
 ment had set in, and she was shaking in every limb. But Made- 
 line had not learnt to give in to any symptoms of weakness or
 
 CONCLUSION. 387 
 
 delicacy. 'This is disgraceful,' she said, with her hand pressing 
 agiansther left side ; ' I used to think nothing of an hour's hard 
 exercise, and now just look at me.' 
 
 A little robin came, and alighting beside her, turned his 
 head this way and then that, as though he would say, 'Well, 
 I am doing my best to look at you, but you are about as un- 
 trustworthy as most human beings.' Finding some biscuit 
 crumbs in her pocket, Madeline scattered them, trying to 
 attract him, but after fluttering his wings in momentary in- 
 decision, he presently flew away. 
 
 When mind and body are both below par, a very little 
 thing is sufficient to affect the spirits. A sudden sense of lone- 
 liness came over Madeline. On the lawn of a large house in 
 the distance, some people were playing lawn-tennis, and now 
 and then she could hear the faint echo of their voices, or catch 
 Kaleidoscopic changes of colour and arrangement, as they 
 flitted to and fro, and they seemed to her in her present mood 
 like beings from a different sphere. Never had the reach of 
 the river seen from this point looked more beautiful than now, 
 as it wound between its meadow-like or wooded banks, the 
 autumn tints on the foliage lighted up, and the water glistening 
 in the slanting rays of the sun. A year ago Madeline would 
 not have rested until with pencil or brush she had transferred 
 some idea of the scene to paper ; but now, the brightness of the 
 distant view, the chilliness and shade of the spot on which she 
 sat, only suggested depressing metaphors. 
 
 ' " Do the thing that's nearest, 
 Though it's dull at whiles, 
 Helping when you meet them 
 
 Lame dogs over stiles." 
 
 Isn't it Charles Kingsley,' she said, ' who gives this as a rule 
 for contentment 1 I ought to feel unspeakably happy at having 
 had the privilege of helping two lame dogs over a stile this 
 afternoon. Am I so selfish that I cannot find my happiness 
 in that of others? And yet what could I do more? I tried to 
 throw myself into my work and was told to drop it, it was doing
 
 388 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 me harm ; now I am trying idleness and I cannot see that this 
 is any improvement. I shall be turning into a malade imaginaire 
 if I don't take care, and do nothing but feel my mental pulse. 
 Aunt Helen is so good, I wish I could help giving her so much 
 anxiety. Take her advice no ; in anything else perhaps I 
 might, but if there is no other way. How could I go and 
 seek ' again she paused ; but there was a pathetic look in her 
 speaking eyes which said more than any words. 
 
 The air was growing chilly, but still Madeline sat on, truth 
 to say, somewhat dreading under the circumstances a tete-a-tete 
 with her aunt. There was a footstep on the turf-grown path 
 leading to the little cove, but pre-occupied by her own thoughts 
 she did not hear it ; suddenly, as a twig snapped close behind 
 her, she started, but before she could turn a shawl was dex- 
 terously thrown over her shoulders. In a moment Madeline 
 sprang to her feet, the blood rushing to her face and tingling 
 to her very finger-tips, as she recognised in the intruder one 
 who had claimed almost exclusive possession of her thoughts 
 for some time past 
 
 'Forgive me if I have disturbed you,' said Sir Henry, not 
 without some constraint, as, at seeing her, the remembrance 
 of how they had parted flashed upon his mind ; ' but I called 
 at the house and Mrs. Beaumont was anxious about you; so I 
 undertook to find you, if possible, and bring you this shawl.' 
 
 ' Thank you/ she replied, holding out her hand, but other- 
 wise greeting him with more formality than when they had 
 first met in the previous summer.' 
 
 'I had some business in town,' he went on hurriedly; feeling 
 that anything was better than this silence which seemed to 
 have fallen between them ; ' and finding that I thought my 
 sister would like to know that you were riot well. I mean that 
 I was ' 
 
 As he grew more confused so Madeline's scattered faculties 
 fell into order. ' I have not heard from Nellie for a long time,' 
 she replied ; ' but it is my fault, I have been in her debt so 
 many weeks. I will write, however, before another day has
 
 CONCLUSION 389 
 
 passed, to thank her for her solicitude, which is more than I 
 deserve.' 
 
 'But well, the fact is, she did not exactly tell me to call, 
 only I had not heard anything of you for so long, and when I 
 found you were ill ' 
 
 ' Not ill.' 
 
 ' Out of sorts, then, it was enough ; I could not keep away. 
 Good Heavens ! How I have thought about you night and day 
 ever since we parted. If you had ever known what it was to 
 love you would understand and I was fool enough once to 
 dream but I am not going to worry you,' he added hastily. 
 ' You are not one of the changing type I know, and I should only 
 kill such little regard as you may still have for me. And yet I 
 have thought sometimes, if I had loved you a little less, and so 
 had been more calculating, more politic, had weighed my words 
 and measured every action, I might have pleaded my cause better, 
 and not brought upon myself a decree of banishment which I 
 know you too well to hope can ever be reversed.' 
 
 ' It was a mistake,' she said ; ' it was all a mistake.' 
 
 ' No one can know that better than I,' he replied sadly. 
 
 ' But you do not understand ; I mean ' partly to hide 
 
 her trembling, partly because she could not find words to 
 express what she had now made up her mind to say, Madeline 
 taking advantage of the excuse offered by a premonitory drop 
 or two which were evidently the precursors of a heavy shower, 
 made some hasty allusion to the change of weather, and led the 
 way up the shrubbery path towards the house, her companion 
 following her slowly. ' You will stay and dine with us to-night,' 
 she said, waiting for him to overtake her ; ' we are quite alone.' 
 
 'I cannot, thank you,' he replied ; 'but I will walk back with 
 you. The fact is,' he added in an agitated voice, after a moment's 
 pause, 'I cannot trust myself. By-and-by, after some years 
 perhaps, I may manage to meet you as a friend ; but now it is 
 impossible.' 
 
 ' Oh, how hard you make it for me ! ' she exclaimed impul- 
 sively ; ' but I must say it.' She paused a moment, her cheek
 
 390 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 glowing, and her breath coming fast with the effort. ' There shall 
 be no more misunderstandings.' They had just reached the end 
 of the shrubbery-walk and she turned and faced him ; there was 
 a look in the expressive eyes raised for one brief moment to his 
 that he had never seen in them before. ' I told you it was all 
 a mistake,' she said; 'but the mistake was mine not yours I 
 want you to take back the " regard," or " pity," or " friendship," 
 or whatever it was I offered you, and to accept my love instead. ' 
 Both voice and head had been gradually lowered as she spoke, 
 until the last words were only just audible, and before he had 
 time to reply, or even to recover from his surprise, she had 
 vanished round the corner and into the house. 
 
 For some minutes Sir Henry stood bewildered by the 
 sudden revulsion of feeling, and hardly daring to move for 
 fear it should prove one of those idle dreams which had so often 
 mocked him of late. One thing, however, was certain, he must 
 follow her and learn the truth. 
 
 It was getting dusk ; and as he passed the drawing-room 
 window he could not resist glancing within, attracted first by 
 the glow of the firelight, and secondly by the interest which a 
 man cannot help feeling in the home, even the temporary home 
 of the woman he loves. A low chair was drawn up to the 
 hearth, two small fur-lined slippers lay warming side by side, 
 while keeping guard over them was 'Mr. Isaacs ' looking so much 
 a part and parcel of the white fluffy rug upon which he had 
 seated himself, that he might by a small stretch of the imagina- 
 tion be supposed to share the peculiarities of the stick and leaf 
 insects or other animals known to zoologists, which through a 
 long course of natural selection and survival of the fittest, have 
 reached such a perfection of protective mimicry as to be with 
 difficulty distinguished from their surroundings. A small brass 
 kettle was singing beside the fire, while half in the shade stood 
 a little table on which silver and old china, and a bright cosy, gave 
 a hint of afternoon tea, an institution at which, whatever his 
 mistress might do, Mr. Isaacs never failed to preside, with one 
 eye steadily fixed upon the cream-jug, and with a low purr of
 
 CONCLUSION. 391 
 
 that gratitude which was evidently, in his case ' a sense of 
 favours to come.' Of human occupants, however, at this 
 moment, so far as Sir Henry could see, there were none, but 
 Mrs. Beaumont met him in the porch. 
 
 ' Thank you for finding the truant,' she said in a motherly 
 tone, and with a smile that meant more than her words. ' I have 
 just sent her into the drawing-room to warm herself, if you 
 will follow her she will give you some tea. I am sure you must 
 must both want it, the evening is so damp and chilly.' 
 
 The door was half open and Madeline, who had thrown off her 
 hat and jacket, was drawing the heavy tapestry curtains across 
 the large window as he entered. 
 
 'Madeline, tell me that you meant it,' he said in a low tone 
 full of suppressed feeling, ' it is almost too good to hope for, but 
 is it true that you really love me 1 ' 
 
 Her only reply was to turn, and, with a smile whose equal 
 for brightness he had never seen, hold out both hands with an 
 action of complete self-surrender. 
 
 ' My queen ! ' he said, as he clasped them tenderly and 
 stooped to kiss first one and then the other. ' God helping 
 me, you shall never regret this moment.' 
 
 ' I am not afraid,' she answered, ' but I want to ask you to 
 forgive me for the pain I have caused you. When first you 
 spoke I was so unprepared. I did not know. I did not under- 
 stand myself, I only wish that I ' 
 
 ' Do not wish to be anything but what you are, dearest,' 
 he replied, as on the plea of moving to the fire he drew 
 her nearer to his side. ' I would not have had you less inde- 
 pendent on any account. I would not have had you won more 
 easily, if that is what you are thinking of. I pity the man 
 whose highest ideal of a wife is of one who shall be a feeble re- 
 flection of him, a purely receptive being, her mind a mere 
 piece of white paper void of all character except such as he may 
 be pleased to trace upon it. I would not go back to the old 
 days, darling, before you taught me more by what you were 
 than by anything you said, a truer conception of womanhood.
 
 392 MEN, WOMEN, AND PROGRESS. 
 
 Oh, Madeline, if I ever do anything in this world, it will be, 
 thanks to you.' 
 
 ' I have had some things to unlearn, too/ she replied, ' in 
 my revolt against the old ideas of women's necessary helpless- 
 ness and dependence, I was inclined in practice, if not in 
 
 theory, to go to the other extreme ; but, dearest, ' and 
 
 Madeline's low voice thrilled with deep feeling as she held his 
 disengaged hand fast between her own. ' You have taught me 
 that noble as a self-sufficing life may be, there are, perhaps, 
 still greater possibilities of usefulness for those to whom mutual 
 love does not mean mutual absorption.' 
 
 ' I trust I may never, even inadvertently, tempt you to 
 change your opinion, darling. Look ; do you see this V taking 
 from his little finger, what appeared like a plain but sub- 
 stantial ring with no device but two hands a man's and a 
 woman's clasped together. ' Will you wear it until I can get 
 you one that the world will think more worthy of you, al- 
 though to me it would be less appropriate ? This ring was 
 given by my father to my dear mother, by my grandfather to 
 my grandmother, and I am afraid to say how many more 
 generations used it as a pledge of faith, for it is said to date 
 back to the sixteenth century ; but you must know its 
 mysteries,' he continued, taking the ring once more gently 
 from her finger, and, touching a spring, whereupon the hands 
 unclasped, and the one thick ring became three slender circles 
 all hinged together, a hand upon each of the outer ones and 
 on the middle one, just under where the hands had clasped, 
 two hearts. 
 
 ' There is something engraved upon it,' said Madeline, 
 examining the ring with interest by the firelight. 
 
 ' Vis unita fortior,' he replied, as he showed her the way 
 in which the hands could be made to clasp again over the two 
 joined hearts with the motto beneath them, making again one 
 solid ring. ' I think I could scarcely give you a more appro- 
 priate pledge than this,' he continued, earnestly, ' that I have 
 adopted to the fullest extent your creed that only in equality,
 
 CONCLUSION. 393 
 
 iu common interests, whether great or small, can there in 
 marriage be the truest love and fellowship. I have thought 
 much on this subject since we parted, and I see more and 
 more plainly that while " Unity is strength," there can be no 
 perfect union between individuals, or between the two halves 
 of the human race, until we recognise the necessity not only 
 for " Two heads in council, two beside the hearth," but also 
 for, " Two in the tangled business of the world." ' 
 
 THE END. 
 
 LONDON: 
 Printed by STRANGEWATS & SONS, Tower Street, Upper St. Martin's Lane.
 
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