In asking, in sober form and phrase, for the enfranchisement of women, the late member for Westminster, is quite aware of the difficulties of his position. In every respect the burden is hard on those who attack an old and deeply rooted opinion. The common rules of evidence will not benefit them. In his recent work on the “Subjection of Women,” Mr. Mill says:—“It is useless for me to say that those who maintain the doctrine that men have a right to command, and women are under an obligation to obey; or that men are fit for government and women unfit; are on the affirmative side of the question, and that they are bound to show positive evidence for the assertions, or submit to their rejection. It is equally unavailing for me to say that those who deny to women any freedom or privilege rightly allowed to men, having the double presumption against them that they are opposing freedom and recommending partiality, must be held to the strictest proof of their case; and unless their success be such as to exclude all doubt, the judgment ought to be against them. These would be thought good pleas in any common case, but they will not be thought so in this instance. Before I could hope to make any impression, I should be expected not only to answer all that has ever been said by those who take the other side of the question, but to imagine all that could be said by them—to find them in reasons, as well as answer all I find; and besides refuting all arguments for the affirmative, I shall be called upon for invincible positive arguments to prove a negative.” Many views expressed in this volume lie far apart from the thinking of ordinary intellects, but they must become familiar before life can be purified at its fountain. Is it creditable to English justice that women should be classed for electoral purposes with idiots, lunatics, and criminals? Nay, women are placed lower than the latter; for the House of Commons has deliberately resolved not to disfranchise felons permanently, on the ground that a citizen ought not to bear for life the brand of political disqualification. The principle which we so often hear enunciated in the epigrammatic form “that taxation and representation should be co-extensive,” logically covers the claim of women to be represented. All history teaches that women must have votes, in order to protect their own interests. In the words of Lord Macaulay: “Even in those countries where they are best treated, the laws are generally unfavourable to them, with respect to almost all the points in which they are the most deeply interested.” Lord Brougham said: “There must be a total reconstruction of the law, before women can have justice.” But we are told that the worst evils from which women suffer cannot be cured by legislation. Government can certainly give them the equal heritage, protection, and bequest of property; it can give them a Christian marriage law, instead of visiting matrimony with the same punishment as high treason—namely, confiscation; it can throw open to them the existing universities, or endow others to give them the high education that men value; it can restore to them the schools and institutions destined by their founders for girls as well as boys, but which are now used for boys only; it can distribute the public funds equally for the good of both sexes; it can make restrictions on the productiveness of female labour illegal. Concerning the evils which legislation cannot cure, women are making no public complaint.