he will survive women's suffrage. The ladies, however, have stated their case with more moderation: they mention the undoubted fact that married women must either be included or excluded in any women's suffrage Bill: if they are excluded, many of the best women will be shut out; if they are included, changes will be introduced into home life which have not been adequately considered. For my own part, it has always seemed for many reasons right to recognise this, and therefore to support the measures which would enfranchise single women and widows, and not wives during the lifetime of their husbands. The case for the enfranchisement of women who are standing alone and bearing the burden of citizenship as ratepayers and taxpayers, seems unanswerable. If we have household suffrage, let the head of the house vote, whether that head be The enfranchisement of wives is an altogether

a man or a woman.

different question. The enfranchisement of single women and widows gives electoral power to a class who are in a position of social and financial independence. To give these women votes would be a change in their political condition, bringing it into harmony with their social, industrial, and pecuniary position. This would not be the case with wives. If they were enfranchised, the effect, in ninetynine cases out of a hundred, would be to give two votes to the husband. Wives are bound by law to obey their husbands. No other class in the community is in this position, and it seems inexpedient to allow political independence (which would only be nominal) to precede actual independence. The legal position of a married woman has changed considerably in the direction of independence, but the change is, after all, only partial (it is not argued here whether or not it is desirable to make it complete); and, in my opinion, a change in political status should always be attendant on a corresponding and preceding change in the social and legal status. The limitation of female suffrage to those women not under coverture would no doubt exclude from representation many women of high character and capacity. A similar objection can be made to every limitation of the suffrage. It must also be remembered that if the Bill lately before Parliament were carried, no set of women would be definitely and permanently excluded, as at present all women are. Marriage is to nearly all women a state either of experience or of expectation. There would be a constant passing to and fro, from the ranks of the represented and the unrepresented, and consequently the closest identity of interest would exist between them. In this way the direct representation of some women would become the indirect representation of all women. Many valued friends of the Women's Suffrage movement take a different view, and urge that we should seek to remove the disability of coverture simultaneously with the disability of sex; and that to exclude married women is to place a slight upon marriage. Others, with whom I

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sympathise, believe this to be a mistake alleged slight on marriage, married women ass referred to,ed sisters were enthey were insulted when their single or widow the large clas- and singe trusted with the school board, municipal, and county gings, such of 's It is on the lines laid down by our previous experie no difficult the future. suffrage that it will probably be found best to proceed in a valuable may In conclusion, the ladies of the Nineteenth Century F be reminded that the friends of women's suffrage value the ugbear grow liness of women as much as themselves. True womanliness. man and thrives on whatever strengthens the spontaneity and inde, of dence of the character of women. Women, for instance, are mo womanly in England, where Florence Nightingale and Mary Carpenter have taught them how women's work ought to be done, than they are in Spain, where they accept the masculine standard in matters of amusement and go in crowds to see a bull-fight. The most unfeminine of English women are to be found in those classes which are either so high or so low in the social scale as to have been comparatively little influenced by the emancipating process of the last fifty years. They set their ideas of pleasure and amusement by the masculine, not by the feminine standard. At the top of the social scale, these women (who are bad imitations of men) go on the turf, practise various kinds of sport, or if they do not kill with their own hands, stand by and see others kill pheasants in a battue, or pigeons at Hurlingham. At the other end of the social scale there are women whose feminine instincts are so little developed that betting and drinking are their chief enjoyments. These are the really unfeminine women. We do not want women to be bad imitations of men; we neither deny nor minimise the differences between men and women. The claim of women to representation depends to a large extent on those differences. Women bring something to the service of the state different from that which can be brought by men. Let this fact be frankly recognised and let due weight be given to it in the representative system of the country.

MILLICENT GARRETT FAWCETT.

IT has been no secret to the supporters of woman suffrage that a section of prominent women in London society have remained unconvinced by the arguments for the enfranchisement of women; but their opposition long remained of so indefinite and nebulous a character, that it was obviously difficult to grapple with it. Now that they have written an appeal and stated their objections in clear, straightforward language, and signed their names to the number of a hundred and more; now that they have entered the lists to fight, not for, but against the extension of political rights to their own sex, it is possible to gauge their strength, to test their reasoning powers, to place, indeed, once more before the public the reasons pro and con the most absorbing and important movement of the century. Those who have spoken and written repeatedly on this subject for the last dozen years have a feeling of hesitation and shyness at being obliged to use the same arguments again and again, and to bring but little. fresh fuel to feed the furnace of public opinion; but it is only necessary to read through the appeal with care to find that the opponents of further progress have simply burnished up the old weapons and sharpened the time-worn steel. No new artillery of novel design makes necessary the reconstruction of fortress or line of defence; the only real difference, and it is of importance in politics as in war, is that the sharpshooters and freelances who for long carried on a war of chance encounters and night surprises now find themselves in possession of an important fortress, and instead of devising a telling attack, they have to maintain their hard-won position and repulse an apparently formidable assault.

We have to thank these ladies for their approval of the reforms that have been already carried, to be grateful to them for their acceptance of accomplished facts. And yet with the honourable exception of Lady Stanley of Alderley, whose name, with a consciousness of its exceptional weight, they have placed at the head of the list, it is not in this list that we find the names of the women who have given time and energy and money to carry these reforms. It is notorious that those women who have the best right to speak for

their sex, as they have already made many and great sacrifices for it, have again and again signed memorials and petitions in favour of woman suffrage, pleading that their just work was made difficult, and even in the end was but inefficiently accomplished, because they had no vote to legalise their proceedings and facilitate its accomplishment. These ladies take upon themselves to say the time has come to arrest all further progress; ignoring the fact that as the old bonds and fetters fall away from women's limbs new requirements arise, new possibilities open out before them, and careers that but a short quarter of a century ago would have seemed far out of their reach now open before them and seem to call able and well-educated women to fill posts for which their training has fitted them.

While men have been considering the danger to society of allowing women to take the first step that is said to cost so much, that step and many others have been quietly taken, and women have already half climbed the ladder. But can any position be more useless and illogical than that of a person who having half climbed a ladder is told to pause, to remain 'twixt heaven and earth, and to forego the object with which the climb was undertaken? Ladies of intellect and social standing can always make their voices heard, can always write to the papers and magazines, can command the sympathy and attention of public men whenever they feel they receive less than justice. But the supporters of woman suffrage aspire to help those other women whose lives are spent in humble toil, whose work is ill paid, whose education has been defective or entirely neglected. They wish to see women's power and influence more evenly divided, more fairly distributed. They wish women to vote because they are different from men, and because no alteration of laws, or customs, or social habits will make them the same as men.

The supporters of woman suffrage do not believe in indirect representation under any circumstances, but least of all when the influx of women into the labour market brings them, whether they will it or no, into competition with those whose interests and capacities are different; it is not the Woman Suffrage Societies that have brought about this great social change. A man is no longer expected, even in well-to-do middle-class society, to support his adult sisters and daughters as well as his wife and infant children. The societies, accepting the new state of things, wish to protect the earnings of these women, to teach them self-reliance, to help them in the only way human beings can be efficiently helped-shown how to help

themselves.

It is strange that the vote should have come to be looked on as necessarily a masculine adjunct. It was certainly originally intended to give effect to the opinions of the quiet, orderly citizen, instead of leaving power in the hands of the strong and warlike. The citizen may be ill or crippled, immoral or sentimental, illiterate or drunken,

without risking his right to vote; and women will always resent having their claim to vote denied because individuals among them may suffer from any or all of these disadvantages. No reliable substitute for a vote has ever been invented, or is likely to be discovered in the future. A vote is not an end in itself, it is only a means to an end. It is as useful as a lever to lift a weight, or as a key to open a door, but has in itself no intrinsic value. Women do not imagine that the Millennium will have been attained when some or indeed all of them have votes; but as long as they have no votes they risk the loss of all those improvements in the position of their sex for which they have toiled so unremittingly. People without votes who deliberately say they do not want them are like a crowd standing outside a concert-hall, eager to hear every note of the music, refusing to take the key and unlock the door so that they may enter, and yet triumphantly pointing out to those who advise the use of that simple implement that, the windows being partly open, faint echoes of the melody reach them now and again if they listen with sufficient attention.

We are told again and again that society rests ultimately on force, and women, in the willing tribute they pay to brave, strong, and courageous men, are the first to acknowledge it; but more than half the men of every European country, even in these days of compulsory military service, have to stand aside and relegate the actual defence of their country to those who can most efficiently perform it. Women will always have to stand aside, and while battle wages give, like every other citizen, money to supply the sinews of war; and for their own special contribution, that care of the sick and wounded that has become so much more efficient and valuable since science and hospital experience and technical training of the best kind have developed their finest faculties. If the men had not some special sphere that of war-in which nature has intended that they shall specially excel, they would not be the equals but the inferiors of women, who have other spheres equally necessary, for which they and they alone are indispensable.

But there are other great facts of life besides force which are of equally paramount importance. One of these great facts is, that every mother who brings a child into the world risks her life in that most necessary beginning of all existence; and surely, if men take so much credit for endangering their lives in war, this should not be forgotten or ignored in calculating the services the two sexes severally give to society. Again, while we say that society rests ultimately on force, we also say with equal truth and cogency that society rests on work. The problems connected with the labour question are most urgent and pressing, and it is impossible to attempt to solve them without taking woman into account. Women's home work has always been unpaid, whether well or ill-performed, but, taken as a whole, has in past times been quite