women, and by the fundamental difference which must always exist between their main occupations and those of men. The cure of the sick and the insane; the treatment of the poor; the education of children: in all these matters, and others besides, they have made good their claim to larger and more extended powers. We rejoice in it. But when it comes to questions of foreign or colonial policy, or of grave constitutional change, then we maintain that the necessary and normal experience of women-speaking generally and in the mass-does not and can never provide them with such materials for sound judgment as are open to men.

"To sum up: we would give them their full share in the State of social effort and social mechanism; we look for their increasing activity in that higher state which rests on thought, conscience, and moral influence; but we protest against their admission to direct power in that State which does rest upon force-the State in its administrative, military, and financial aspects-where the physical capacity, the accumulated experience and inherited training of men ought to prevail without the harassing interference of those who, though they may be partners with men in debate, can in these matters never be partners with them in action.

"In conclusion: Nothing can be further from our minds than to seek to depreciate the position or the importance of women. It is because we are keenly alive to the enormous value of their special contributions to the community, that we oppose what seems to us likely to endanger that contribution. We are convinced that the pursuit of a mere outward equality with men is for women not only vain but demoralising. It leads to a total misconception of women's true dignity and special mission. It tends to a personal struggle and rivalry, when the only effort of both the great divisions of the human family should be to contribute the characteristic labour and the best gifts of each to the common stock."

The above deserves the most serious consideration of every woman in the kingdom. It reflects great credit upon

the women who wrote it, and I thank them for their moral courage in so wisely and temperately opposing a social change of momentous gravity, for which the mass of womankind are indifferent. To those who argue that there are injustices of the law towards women that only the possession of the suffrage by women would enable them to get remedied, the reply is the fact, as stated in this appeal written by women, that "during the past half century all the principal injustices of the law towards women have been amended by means of the existing constitutional machinery; and with regard to those that remain, we see no signs of any unwillingness on the part of Parliament to deal with them. On the contrary, we remark a growing sensitiveness to the claims of women, and the rise of a new spirit of justice and sympathy among men, answering to the advance made by women in education, and the best kind of social influence, which we have already noticed and welcomed. With regard to the business or trade instincts of women, here, again, we think it safer and wiser to trust to organisation and self-help on their own part, and to the growth of a better public opinion among the men-workers, than to the exercise of a political right which may easily bring women into direct and hasty conflict with men."

I regret not having space to quote from Mrs. Creighton's article in the Nineteenth Century, August, but agree with her that "The present need is that women should do their own work better."

Which seems most natural- women taking an active part in the turmoil and strife of elections, and wrangling in the Senate; or in studying how to make home happy, a cheerful resting-place to the toiler on his return home? Which does she seem intended for by Nature? Which is most likely to give us better men and women-woman as a political partisan, or devoting herself to secure the following prayer?

"On the grassy bank of a babbling brook, a dark-haired infant lay, Throwing bright flowers into the stream, and, as they passed away, Clapping its little tiny hands, and laughing in its play..

A young and gentle mother watched o'er that infant fair,
And she clasped it to her bosom with a fond and fervent prayer,
That when Time's mystic fingers wrote Manhood on its brow,
Its deeds might be as guileless, and its heart as pure as now.
"The Heart Memories."—Burlington B. Wale.

Briefly, woman is the helper and cheerer; loving, she is willing to do all she can to ease the husband's path; willing to co-operate with, and anxious not to plunge ahead on her own career. If wise, she will realise that her power for good is at home; her influence over man, in the house; her aspirations to excel as a "real help-mate" to the man who has chosen her, and she has accepted, as her companion for life.

;

"And where is there any station higher than the ordering of the house, while the husband is following his vocation or perhaps takes a share in the administration of the State? What is the highest happiness of us mortals, if not in being really masters of the means conducive to our aims; and where should or can our first and nearest aims be, but within the house? It is when a woman has gained this domestic mastery that she truly makes the husband, whom she loves, a master. Then he can divert his mind to lofty objects, and if fortune favour, he may act in the State the same character which becomes his wife so well at home."-Goethe.

In reflecting upon the difficult problem of marriage, bear in mind the Hindu saying, "In whatever family the husband is contented with his wife, and the wife with her husband, in that house will fortune be assuredly permanent.' Aye, not only fortune, but real happiness, based on peace and contentment.

"Blessed is the man that hath a virtuous wife, for the number of his days shall be double. He shall fulfil the years of his life in peace. A silent and loving woman is a gift of God; and there is nothing so much worth as a mind well instructed. A modest and faithful woman hath double grace, and her pure mind cannot be valued. As the sun when it riseth is the beauty of a good wife in the ordering of her house."-Sacred Anthology.

THE PROGRESS OF WOMAN.

"Seldom comes the moment

In life, which is indeed sublime and weighty
To make a great decision possible."-Coleridge.

THE time has come to make possible the desires of those celebrated women who had decided that woman should hold a higher position in this world. The history of this movement, the struggles and successes of those who laboured for "the Progress of Woman," is fully given in the Universal Review for November and December 1888. The articles were written by Mrs. Henry Fawcett, Lucas Malet, Miss A. J. Clough, Mrs. Scharlieb, M.B., Mary R. Lacey, Florence F. Miller, and Miss Emily Faithfull. I will give in a condensed form the essential parts of the two articles.

Mrs. Fawcett writes of woman's political education, that "The history of civilisation is, in one of its aspects, little else than the history of the gradual improvement in the position of women, and of the enlargement of the degree of liberty possessed by them. . . . The movement during the last twenty-five years has become more rapid, and it has become more self-conscious; but it never would have been what it is but for the momentum afforded by the steady, quiet pressure of the centuries behind our own. Previous

to our own time, the women's movement was like the movement of a glacier-silent, invisible, but immeasurably strong, and producing changes of infinite moment. During our own time the movement has been more like that of a stream; all who have eyes can see it, and each can form some estimate, according to the faith that is in him, whither it is tending."

Sir Henry Maine confirms the above in his Early History of Institutions, where he points out that the movement for the emancipation of women is not of modern growth. But to both Sir Henry Maine and Mrs. Fawcett I would respect

fully suggest, that this improvement in soci. and political education and position is not confined to women, but, on the contrary, they have benefited indirectly by the struggles for freedom and greater political power made by men; and the greater progress made during the last twenty-five years by women is due to the struggle by men during the last half-century.

was

That women have made great progress is a fact, and it seems incredible that they were refused to be admitted as delegates at the Anti-Slavery Convention held in London in 1840. From 1840 to 1865 the "Woman Question kept before the public by the writings of J. S. Mill, Charlotte Brontë, Mrs. Jameson, and Mrs. Browning. "The reform agitation which resulted, in 1867, in the passing of Mr. Disraeli's Household Suffrage Act for Boroughs, naturally turned people's minds to the basis on which the rights of representation rested, and led many to ask why, if liberty and self-government were good for men, they should not also be beneficial to women. In 1865, the comparatively small band of people who wished to extend to women the advantages of representation, found a Parliamentary leader of the first intellectual rank, by the return of Mr. John Stuart Mill as member for Westminster. In the following year a petition to Parliament in favour of the enfranchisement of duly-qualified women was placed in Mr. Mill's hands. It was signed by 1,499 women, and included many names, such as those of Mary Somerville and Harriet Martineau, of ladies whose attainments in literature or science gave great weight to the views they entertained. A society was also, this year, formed in London to promote the political enfranchisement of women. . . . Committees with similar objects were started almost simultaneously in Edinburgh, Dublin, Manchester, Bristol, Birmingham, and Belfast. In 1869, a Municipal Reform Act was passed which gave to women in England and Wales the right to vote in municipal elections."

Lucas Malet writes as regards women's progress in literature that " Frankly, then, the advance of women in literature has not been equal to her advance in other departments of