Report.

Your Committee, in resuming their labours this year, resolved on again petitioning Parliament, as they had done last session; but, instead of a general petition from the whole country as before, it was thought better that every large town and locality should, if possible, express its opinion, and this has been extensively done. 220 petitions have been already presented to Parliament by the London, Edinburgh, Manchester, and Dublin Societies, containing an aggregate of 41,000 names; and many more are in course of signature. Of this number, the London Committee has presented 111, including one with 12,000 names, which was presented by the Member for Finsbury; and another petition from London will follow next week, which we shall entrust to the care of Sir Charles Dilke.

During the past year our Society has circulated 18,500 pamphlets, written by Mr. Mill, Miss Cobbe, Mrs. Bodichon, Professor Newman, and other writers of eminence.

Our expenses have been necessarily heavy. The crises tried in the Appeal Courts last November entailed an expense of £272. Our general expenses besides, have amounted to £251. We began page 5 our financial year, July 14, 1868, with a balance in your Treasurer's bands of £155, whereas we have now, at the commencement of another year, only a balance of £9 5s. 3d.

On the whole, your Committee have abundant reason to be satisfied with the result of their exertions—in the wide and increasing interest the question has awakened—and a conviction that, ere long, our labours will be crowned by success.

Mr. Thomas Hare.—Mrs. Taylor, Ladies and Gentlemen, I have now to move the adoption of this Report, and I think the statements in at, as well as the explanation of what has been done, which has been given, Madam, by yourself, will convince all who have taken an interest in the matter, that the conduct of the movement is in the hands of those who will not allow themselves to be diverted from it by any discouragements. I think we must take into consideration the great question that has been agitating the public mind during the year, and the difficulty there is in bringing the general feeling and sense of the nation to apply itself to more than one tiling at a time. I think we ought to be well satisfied with the progress that has been made, and I cheerfully move the adoption of the Report.

Mr. Boyd Kinnear.—I have great pleasure, indeed, in seconding the adoption of the Report that has now been read, which records in few words a great deal of very hard work that has been done in the course of the year, in the good cause which we have met to-day to support I think we can all understand that those ladies who undertook the duty of bringing and keeping this question before the public mind, have undertaken a duty which is very laborious, and which requires very great patience and energy, which is exposed to some degree of misconstruction, and which nothing but a strong sense of public duty enables them to carry forward. As regards my Own share in it, I feel that I am to a certain degree a testimony, in however small an extent, to the Work which the Committee is doing, for I ant myself a convert to this cause—a convert made by the efforts which the Committee of this Society has carried out in distributing pamphlets explaining the motives, principles, and purposes of this Association. I hope I shall not be understood as having required much to convert me. I always recognised that many women were at least the equals of men in intellect and sense, and that it was most important that the influence of such as these should be felt in politics; but I had some practical difficulty as to the method by which we could discriminate those women who were fitted to have influence upon political questions from those who were not. But I owe it to the perusal, a couple of years ago, of the pamphlets of one of the members of this Association, Madame page 6 Bodichon, that I was brought to see clearly that these difficulties ought not to be allowed to forbid the extension of the franchise to women, and that in fact they are best-overcome by precisely those methods which we apply to those who are at present in possession of the franchise. I think, Madam, that one of the greatest necessities for this Society, is not so much to enforce the rights of women and what they want, as it is to explain what it is that women do not want When our opponents are called upon to argue the question; when they are fairly driven into a corner and obliged to give their reasons, we hear the most absurd assertions as to what it is women really require and wish in asking for the franchise. We are told that women would be compelled to leave their domestic avocations, to break through all the retiring modesty of their nature, and, driven up in the midst of shouting crowds, to give their votes in public. Madam, what you have said today sufficiently shows that this is all a delusion, that there is no such difficult, if only the right be conceded. And, one of the main things which this Society has to do, in addition, is to explain that women do not want the suffrage on any other qualification than that on which it is given to men, and do not want a Jaw to compel them to vote, any more than men, if they are not disposed to exercise their suffrage. With regard to the other objections that are taken against such a movement as this, we may say that we have heard them all before. We have heard, in the case of every movement for Reform, the objection that the individuals upon whose behalf the movement takes place are not fitted for the exercise of the franchise, and that, if admitted, they would come in such numbers as to swamp the electors of the kingdom. These are familiar sounds to us, and it is but the other day that they were pleaded in resistance to the enfranchisement of the working classes. But already experience has proved them to be entirely fallacious and without foundation. And I have no doubt experience will prove the same in regard to the movement in which we are now engaged. We have to satisfy the public mind that such is the case; that the object we have in view is not the absurd and excessive object imputed to us; that we merely desire what is fair and reasonable: that women who have intellect and capacity to understand great political questions, should not be excluded from them merely upon the ground of their sex. And although you have spoken of a considerable period being necessary to enlighten the public mind upon the question, I feel convinced that such a long period as you look forward to will not elapse. Public opinion, when it once fairly comprehends the real nature of the demand made, comes, in this age, very rapidly to page 7 a conclusion; and I have no doubt that in less time than you have anticipated, this great act of public justice, which will crown our edifice of political equality, will be carried into effect with the approval of the conscience and intellect of the whole nation. For these reasons I have the greatest pleasure in seconding the adoption of the Report.

The Resolution was then put and carried.

Mr. John Stuart Mill.— The first thing that presents itself for us men who have joined this Society—a Society instituted by ladies to procure the protection of the franchise for women—is to congratulate them on the success of this, their first effort in political organisation. The admission of women to the suffrage is now a practical question. What was, not very long ago, a mere protest in behalf of abstract right, has grown into a definite political aim, seriously pursued by many thousands of active adherents. No sooner did a few ladies of talent and influence, fostered in those principles of justice, and believing in those elements of progress, which are now renewing the life of every country of the world—no sooner did a few of these ladies give the signal that the time was come to claim for women their share in those blessings of freedom, which are the passion and the glory of every noble nation, than (here rallied round them unexpected thousands of women, eager to find expression for aspirations and wishes which we now learn that multitudes of our countrywomen have long cherished in silence. The thousands who have signed the petitions for women's Suffrage, year after year, are evidence that I am not exaggerating when I say this. For my part, I have all my life held the opinion, that women have the same right to the suffrage as men; and it has been my good fortune to know many ladies very much fitter to exercise it than the majority of the men of my acquaintance. I may flay, too, to the credit of my own perspicacity, that I have long been of opinion that most of the disclaimers of all wish for political or any other equality with men, which, until quite lately, have been almost universal among women, are merely a form of that graceful and amiable way of making a virtue of necessity, which always distinguishes women. Nevertheless, I must acknowledge, I did not expect the amount of sympathy, nay of more than sympathy, of ardent and zealous support, which this movement has called forth among women, and men also, of all ranks and all parties. We have had a success quite out of proportion to our apparent means, and which would be unaccountable, were it not for some potent allies that have been working for us.

First of these precious auxiliaries is the sense of justice. When not stifled by custom or prejudice, the natural feeling of justice is on page 8 our side. We are fighting against privilege on one side, disabilities and disqualifications on the other. We are protesting against arbitrary-preferences; against making favourites of some, and shutting the door against others. We are claiming equal chances, equal opportunities, equal means of self-protection for both halves of mankind. The political suffrage, which men are everywhere demanding as the sole means by which their other rights can be secured to them, we, for the same reason, and in the name of the same principles, demand for women too. We take our stand, therefore, on natural justice; and to appeal to that, is to invoke a mighty power.

The other auxiliary which is working for us, with ever increasing force, is the progress of the age; what we may call the modern spirit. All the tendencies which are the boast of the time—all those which are the characteristic features and animating principles of modern improvement, are on our side. There is, first, the growing ascendancy of moral force over physical—of social influences over brute strength—of the idea of right over the law of might. Then there is the philanthropic spirit; that which seeks to raise the weak, the lowly, the oppressed. There is the democratic spirit; the disposition to extend political rights, and to deem any class insufficiently protected unless it has a voice in choosing the persons by whom the laws are made and administered. There is the free trade spirit; the desire to take off restrictions—to break down barriers—to leave people free to make their own circumstances, instead of chaining them down by law or custom to circumstances made for them. Then there is the force of what, to the shame of past history, I am obliged to call the new conception of human improvement and happiness—that they do not consist in being passively ministered to, but in active self-development. And, over and above these specific practical forces, actively at work in society, we have with us one of the strongest and best modern characteristics—not pointing, as those do, to a particular line of outward action, but consisting in a general disposition of our own minds: the habit of estimating human beings by their intrinsic worth—by what they are, and by what they do: not by what they are born to, nor by the place in which accident or the law has classed them. Those who are fully penetrated with this spirit cannot help feeling rich and poor, women and men, to be equals before the State, as from the time of the Christian era they have been proclaimed equal in the sight of God. And this feeling is giving us powerful aid in our attempt to convert that Christian ideal into a human reality.

To show how unequivocally and emphatically the spirit of the age is on our side, we need only think of the different social improve- page 9 ments which are in course of being attempted, or which the age has fully made up its mind to attempt. There is not one of those improvements which would not help the enfranchisement of women; and there is not one of them which the enfranchisement of women would not help. Not one of them can be literally realised unless women, with their moral and intellectual capabilities properly developed, are associated in the work. From the moment when society takes upon itself the duties required of it by the present state of civilisation, it cannot do without the intelligent co-operation of women; and the pedantic nonsense now talked, about the sphere of women, will appear thoroughly ridiculous when pleaded as an excuse for excluding women from the minor matters of politics, when their assistance cannot be dispensed with in the most arduous. Look at education, for example. That is almost the one great cry of the day. Statesmen, scholars, public writers, all join in it: great and small, rich and poor, Tories, Whigs, and Radicals, the higher, the middle, and the working classes, with one voice declare, that the country cannot get of without a good, national education, descending to the very bottom of society, and (give me leave to add) ascending also to the top. The best people have said this for generations.; but after the political changes recently made, and with the prospect we have of more, the necessity has become evident to all. We say, then, to rich and poor, Tories, Whigs, and Radicals,—Are you going to educate a nation without women? Let alone the equal right of women to their share of the benefit; I ask—Can it be given to the rest of us without women's direct help? When we set about really teaching the children of all ranks of the people—it will not be like the nominal teaching they mostly receive now—we shall need a vastly greater number of schoolmasters than we can afford to pay, if we reject the assistance of half, or much more than half, the available force. Women are the acknowledged best teachers of young children; and numbers of them are eager, both as professionals and as volunteers, to put their hand to the work. The only hindrance to their being equally capable instructors of more advanced pupils, is that they cannot teach what they have not been allowed to learn. They will have to be taught all the more valuable branches of knowledge, if only that they may teach them to others. In the country where there is the widest diffusion of popular education, the Northern States of America, a large majority of the teachers are already women, and that not exclusively in the elementary schools; and they are found to be particularly efficient teachers of male pupils. Is it likely, then, that when women find themselves, side by side with the men of the present, teaching and training the men of the future, page 10 they will believe in any right of their pupils to political supremacy over them? Will they feel themselves less worthy of a vote, think you, or less entitled to it, than the men who have been taught by them how to use their vote? And I should like to see the face of the man, so taught, who would stand up and refuse it to them.

Let us turn next to the management of the poor: and by the poor I mean those in receipt of public relief—the pauper population. That formidable difficulty is weighing upon the spirits of all our thinkers, and of all conscientious public administrators; and the more they think, the more they seem to be overwhelmed with its arduousness, I venture to predict that this great national, and more than national, this human concern, will never be successfully treated until women take their share, perhaps the principal share, in the management of it. A wide experience has taught to thoughtful men that the right principle of a poor-law, is to give relief, except of a very temporary kind, to adults, nowhere but in public establishments—workhouses, and, for those who need them, hospitals. And this method has been tried: but the workhouses and the workhouse hospitals have been so execrably managed, the pillage has been so profligate, and the unhappy inmates so brutally neglected and ill-used, that the system has broken down, and public feeling shrinks from enforcing it. If this is ever remedied, it will be when pauper establishments are looked after by capable women. As mere visitors, it is to them we in great part owe the discovery of the enormities by which the public have been sickened, and which had escaped the watchfulness of men specially selected as fit to be inspectors of poorhouses. The fittest person to manage a workhouse is the person who best knows how to manage a house. The woman who has learnt to govern her own servants, will know how to do the same with workhouse servants. Few are the male guardians and inspectors sufficiently conversant with details, to be competent to check the dishonesty, to stimulate the zeal, or to overcome the indolence, of all the people concerned in administering to the wants of any large agglomeration of human beings. Every experienced traveller knows that there are few comfortable inns where there is no hostess. And the gigantic peculation of the commissariats of armies, as well as the dreadful sufferings of the wounded soldiers from the insufficiency of the medical and nursing staff, all bear testimony to the fact that men do not possess the heaven-born faculty they arrogate to themselves for doing well on a large scale what they disdain to serve an apprenticeship to doing on a small scale. If home is a woman's natural sphere (and I am not at all called upon to contradict the assertion) those departments of politics which need the faculties that can only be acquired at home, page 11 are a woman's natural sphere 600. But there are great spheres and little spheres; and some people want women to be always content with the little spheres. T don't.

In the same manner, in all that concerns the details of public expenditure: what superintendence and control would be equal to that of an experienced mother of a family, who knows, or has learnt to find out, what things ought to cost, and whose daily business it has been to discover and check malversation or waste in every department of a large household? Very few men have had much of this sort of practice; multitudes of women have had its. If we are to meet the demand of the age for a government at once cheap and efficient, which shall cost little, but shall give us alt 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.

One important public function, at least, has devolved on women from the commencement. Nursing the sick is a privilege which men have seldom denied to women. The nursing of the sick in most public establishments is, from the necessity of the case, mainly carried on by women; and it is now understood that they ought to be educated women. No ignorant person can be a good nurse. A nurse requires to know enough of the laws of health and the treatment of disease, to be at least able to observe sanitary rules, and to understand the meaning of symptoms. But much more than this will be required when the prevention and cure of disease become a branch of public administration; and to this things are rapidly tending. There are many difficulties in dealing with the poor—many hindrances, both moral and economical, to our doing for them what most of us would like to do: but one thing the nation is, I think, making up its mind that it will not grudge them, and that is, the care of their health. In this one respect at is felt that our poor-law, instead of doing too much, does not do nearly enough. The medical staff of our unions is wretchedly underpaid, and nothing like so numerous as at ought to be. And how is it to be made efficient—how can the localities afford the expense necessary for providing a sufficient number of persons with the required qualifications, if we persist in shutting the door upon those women who claim from us medical education, to fit them for such duties as these? Until the medical profession is opened to women, there will never be an adequate supply of educated medical practitioners for any but the rich. And independently of regular practitioners, there are numbers of women who, from their domestic occupations, cannot give all their time, but would willingly give part of it, either as volunteers or at a small remuneration, for work which would be too costly if paid for page 12 at the value of the time of medical men in good private practice. But when women are entrusted with public functions like these, and educated for them, will they be content to be excluded from the common privileges of citizenship? and how long will it be possible to exclude them?

Society is feeling every day more and more, that the services of women are wanted for ether uses than 'to suckle fools and chronicle small beer.' Many are now saying that women should be better educated, in order that they may be able to educate men; and truly if they are to educate men, the education of a well-educated man can hardly be denied to them. But these very moderate reformers fall into the mistake about women that was made about the working classes. People were willing to educate the working men, but expected them, after being educated, to content themselves will the same treatment which they had met with before. They would be quite happy, it was thought, when their improved faculties qualified them to be more useful servants, and would not think of claiming their share of mastership, or a voice in the choosing of masters. It has not so turned out with the working classes, neither will it so turn out with women. Those who are fit to train men for their work will think themselves fit to share in the work; or, at the lowest, in the choice of those who are to direct it. The higher education of women, and their political emancipation, are sure to go forward together.

We may safely affirm, then, that our cause has a powerful backing; since it has for its allies the great forces which are at work everywhere, striving to improve the world. Our success would greatly strengthen all these forces: and they, by their increasing strength, help to accelerate our success; illustrating the truth, that improvements aid one another. All good causes are allied; whoever helps forward one beneficial object, proves in the end to have promoted many more. In the assurance that it will be so with us, our business is to go on doing what, as a Society, we have hitherto done—to strive for the suffrage, and for the suffrage only. The suffrage, while it is the road to other progress, commits no one as to what other things progress consists of. Let us but gain the suffrage, and whatever is desirable for women must ultimately follow, without its being necessary at present to decide, or indeed possible to foresee, all that is desirable. The mere fact of claiming the suffrage is giving an impulse, such as never has been given before, to all proposals for doing away with injustice to women. Since the suffrage has been claimed a bill for allowing married women to be the owners of their own property, which had been laid on the shelf for ten years with page 13 other uninteresting trifles, has been reintroduced into Parliament with good prospect of success; and the movement for the higher education of women is spreading in all directions, with a considerable diversity of means, insomuch that women have a chance of obtaining a really good education almost as soon as men. We of this Society shall best promote these important movements by taking no part in them as a Society, whatever any of us may think it right to do as individuals; but pressing forward with all our efforts what virtually includes them all, the suffrage. With it, we shall in time obtain what is needed, whatever that may be; but till the suffrage is gained, we have obtained nothing that may not be resumed any day at the caprice of our rulers. In these days, the great practical distinction the line of separation between those who can protect themselves and those who are at the mercy of others, is the political franchise. All who have rights to protect now look to that as the only effectual means of protecting them. Even in America it was found that to abolish slavery was not enough; the negroes could not be really free until they had the suffrage. Representative assemblies, in the election of which they had no voice, inflicted or permitted treatment which would have brought them back to a servitude almost worse than their previous state. In a political age, such as the present is, let the laws in other respects be what they may, women will never be of equal account with men, will never be felt to be entitled to equal consideration, so long as men have votes and women have not. The great extension of the suffrage to others, so long as women are excluded from it, is a positive injury to them, since it is rapidly making them the only excluded class; the only persons whom the law either deems unworthy of a voice in choosing their rulers, or does not sufficiently care for to give them that protection. The suffrage is the turning point of women's cause; it alone will ensure them an equal hearing and fair play. With it, they cannot long be denied any just right, or excluded from any fair advantage: without it, their interests and feelings will always be a secondary consideration, and it will be thought of little consequence how much their sphere is circumscribed, or how many modes of using their faculties are denied to them. Let us, then, continue to concentrate our exertions on the suffrage; inviting all who wish for the better education of women, all who desire justice to them in respect of property and earnings, all who desire their admission to any profession or career now closed to them, to aid our enterprise, as the surest means of accelerating the particular improvement in which they feel a special interest.

Mr. Mill then moved the 1st Resolution:

page 14

'That this Society declares its strong conviction that it is in the highest degree unjust and impolitic to make sex the ground of exclusion from the exercise of political rights.'

The Rev, Charles Kingsley— Ladies and Gentlemen, I have considerable difficulty in saying anything towards seconding this Resolution; because everything that can be said upon the point, seems to me to have been said already by Mr. John Stuart Mill; not merely in the speech which we have just heard, but in his recent book upon the subject of women, a book, which for its matter, as well as for its style, I trust to see handed down to posterity as one of the standard works of the English language, I have to thank him very deeply for that book, not because by it he converted me to this cause—I did not need that—but because he did for me, what he has done for so many upon so many different subjects, put his readers thoughts and beliefs into coherent and logical shape. He has, I think, exhausted the subject, as far as I can see; and therefore I shall keep you but a very few moments with any words of mine; only saying, what is the out-corae of twenty-live years' thought and feeling upon this point, that I have been led to something more than a suspicion, 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 case they have ignored—very often utterly, all of them too much—the rights and the powers of one-half of the human race, namely, woman. I believe that nothing will go right; that politics will not go right; that society will not go right; that religion will not go right; that nothing human ever will go right, except in as far as woman goes right; and to make woman go right she must be put in her place, and she must have her rights; and as to what those rights are, I have very definite opinions, which 1 shall not give up for any arguments which I seem likely to meet with in this present generation.

This Resolution says, that `it is unjust and impolitic' to exclude women from the suffrage. I think those are the words. If they are, 1 shall only speak to the first epithet 'unjust;' for if that be granted, the second must follow. Whatsoever is unjust must be impolitic, because it is contrary to the moral and physical laws of the universe, and, I hold, to the mind and will of the Maker there of; and whatsoever is unjust, must cause one impolicy, that again another, that a third, and ultimately a fourth or a fifth, very often most unexpected—for injustice is like a fungus, which not only grows and spreads rapidly, but comes up under the most unexpected and protean forms. Thus every injustice is an act of folly, which becomes, if page 15 persevered in, dangerous; if persevered in still more, ruinous, to every individual family, class, or nation which practises it. But that the present political status of woman is an injustice, I do not see how it is possible to deny. It began in injustice. It began historically, in barbarous times, out of man's wish to keep woman as his slave. It was carried on in mediaeval times by an anthropology—I will not disgrace the sacred name of theology by calling it that—backed by a whole literature of unreason, and backed also by very practical methods of persecution and torture, until it succeeded, as Michelet has well observed, in really persuading women to distrust and despise themselves, and to look upon themselves its inferior, and half accursed beings. It was perpetuated (in Spite of some noble outbursts in opposite directions, in Italy, France, and England in the 15th and l6th centuries), it was perpetuated, I say, although not under such grass forms, by that great moral collapse which happened in the latter half of the 17th century; by the growing disbelief in justice and mercy, as practically useful virtues; and by the growing dependence upon statecraft and expediency, both in England and on the Continent, till the fool's paradise into which man had fallen, was rudely interrupted by the French Revolution. But one advantage accrues from the position in which the political status of woman was left at the end of the 18th century; and it is this, that it now stands as it is, simply I think, because no one has had the courage or perseverance to thrust it down. The exclusion of women from the suffrage, and from public life, rests no longer in the mind of any cultivated person, upon any fancied principles of nature or morals, or of the will of the Maker and ruler of the world, as it did in the middle ages. It rests simply upon custom and permission. I have been unable to find any arguments against admitting women to the suffrage, save such as are derived merely from fear of change, from fondness for established habit, and from a vague dread that anything new will not work well; as if anything on this earth ever did work well, or ever could work well, in the sense of perfection. We must disregard any argument drawn from an improvement not working well. The question is not whether it will work well, but whether it will not work better than that which exists already; and I cannot say that our present representative system works so perfectly, and is to be considered so spotless, that we are to be afraid of tainting its immaculate purity by admitting a few women to a share in it. I have never troubled myself much about contested elections; but I should not think that a contested election would be made much more violent, much more venal, much more drunken, page 16 by the interference in it of a few dozen, or even a few hundred women; even such women as I have been accustomed to meet with, plain women of the labouring class, who work out ah the fields. I think they would, at least, bring their husbands home all the soberer, and perhaps keep them all the truthfuller, at the poll. But we have not to look to expediency. We have not to look to results. I hold that the truly wise man is the man that looks not-so much to results as to what is right. The question, Ladies and Gentlemen, which we have to press upon the people of England is, I believe, simply this. Is the present state of things right? And if it is not right, then set it right, and let the right take care of itself, as I believe the right has always the power of doing. We shall have to ask continually, again and again, in the course of the next few years, of very reasonable and kindly folk, as our fellow countrymen and countrywomen are—is it right that an educated man, who is able independently to earn his own livelihood, should have a vote, and that an equally educated woman, equally able to earn her own livelihood, should not? Answer that, people of England; is it right or just? We have to ask again, Is it right that a man owning a certain quantity of property should have a vote in respect of that property; and that a woman owning not only the same quantity of property, but perhaps a hundred or a thousand times more, should have no vote, simply because she is a woman? Answer that—Is it right, people of England, or not? And even in the much more delicate case—I agree that it is a delicate case—in which married women hold property in their own right, we must ask, Is it right that because the woman is married, the vote which is due to her property, should be transferred to her husband, even against her will? You must have one of two cases. Either the husband and wife agree in opinion, or not; if they agree in opinion, are you not committing a superfluous injustice in robbing the woman of a vote, which she would after all use in the same sense as her husband would use it: and if they do not agree in opinion, are you not committing an injustice in robbing the woman of her right to her own independent opinion, by transferring her vote to her husband, to be used against her opinion and will. People of England, is it right? we have to ask. I have found but one answer—that in my conscience—for many years. We have to press these questions as simple questions of right and wrong, and to leave all practical consequences (as I said) to take care of themselves. As for ridicule, of which there has been a little too much employed upon this question lately, I suppose that it is used because there are no other arguments to be found, and that people find it necessary, as Plato forewarned us page 17 they would, a good many years ago, to 'pluck against us laughter, the unripe fruit of wisdom.' So said old Socrates, talking of this very matter. Let us tell these people who have been 'plucking against us the unripe fruit of wisdom'—let us tell them, gently and kindly, 'My good friends, take care that fifty years hence the laugh is not against you.' Bear in mind that every injustice is not merely, as we said just now, impolitic: but it is also certain to be more or Jess absurd and ridiculous, when we come to look into the reason, beauty, and fitness of things—and I do hold that there is an eternal reason, beauty, and fitness in everything that is morally just; and then trust that we shall be able fifty years, perhaps fifteen years hence, to turn round and ask the gentlemen who laugh at this movement, 'Who were the absurd people? Who were the ridiculous people?—we who have tried to reform the present state of things, or you who have supported the present state of things'—a state of things in which the franchise is considered as something so important and so sacred, that the most virtuous, the most pious, the most highly-educated, the most learned, the most wealthy, the most benevolent, the most justly powerful woman, is refused it, as something too precious for her—and yet it is to be entrusted, freely and hopefully, to the hands of any illiterate, drunken, wife-beating ruffian, who can contrive to keep a house over his head? Answer us, people of England, who were the absurd persons—those who wished to alter that, or those who did not? I beg to second the Resolution which Mr. Mill has so ably moved.

Professor Faweett, M.P.—I trust, Mrs. Taylor, you will not think me unduly critical if I venture to differ from one small point in your speech. I think, if you will allow me to say so, that you took a somewhat gloomy view of the time when our victory is to be achieved. The principles laid down in this Resolution seem to me to be so self-evidently true, the arguments which have been adduced in its favour have been so conclusive, and experience has shown that they are so absolutely unanswerable, that I venture to think we shall not have to wait, at any rate, the longer time to which you have alluded. Nothing is more extraordinary than to watch the growth of public opinion upon certain questions. A subject remains dormant and actually at a standstill for years—some incident occurs—a speech is made, a book is written, such, for instance, as the one to which Professor Kingsley has referred, and the subject becomes at once, as it were, animated with life, and in three or four years, what before had seemed hopeless, becomes a reality and is achieved. This is particularly the case with regard to a subject to which Mr. Mill has alluded. I refer to education. I well remember page 18 the time when it was considered almost an extravagance to advocate upon a public platform compulsory national education. You were told that it was anti-English, that it was a Continental eccentricity. Now, I can only say, from my experience of the last few years, that whether you go to Manchester, whether you speak in London, whether even you speak in the country, there is no political, no social statement, which is received with half as much enthusiasm and popular favour as a strong unmistakeable avowal of your determination to do everything in your power to get national compulsory education. So, I believe, will it be with regard to the female franchise question. For years this subject was looked upon simply as the dream of philosophers, and you must remember that there are some persons (I shall not more particularly describe their local habitation or name) who think it is far more contemptuous to call a man a philosopher than to denounce him as an ignoramus. Two years ago, the subject was introduced by Mr. Mill into Parliament: I remember well the things that were said about the motion before it was brought forward. Men said, 'Oh, you must come down on such a night; it will be worth while giving up a dinner party or any kind of entertainment; what fun we shall hare over this female franchise question!' In one night, it is no exaggeration to say that it passed at once and for ever out of the region of ridicule. No man in the House of Commons would now think of treating this subject with ridicule. This Session it was proposed to admit women to vote at municipal elections. That proposal three years ago would have been considered as absurd and ridiculous as admitting them to the Parliamentary franchise; but when it was proposed, in a most able and temperate speech, by Mr. Jacob Bright, there was not a single laugh; it was treated as a proposal so sober, so reasonable, that the whole thing was settled in a quarter of an hour—settled with as much celerity and with as little discussion as if he had brought forward a proposition with which every one agreed. Feeling this, therefore, I am convinced that if the Society, over which Mrs. Taylor so ably presides, will go on in their persistent efforts, circulating arguments and pamphlets, in five years' time we shall at least be able to congratulate ourselves upon seeing that this injustice of placing women under political disability will have been destroyed for ever. Having mentioned Mr. Jacob Bright's name, and as this is a meeting of business, perhaps I may be allowed to make a practical suggestion. It is unnecessary for me to describe the intense regret with which we feel the loss in Parliament of the man who is our natural leader upon this question; but in his absence from the page 19 House of Commons, judging from what Mr. Jacob Bright has done this Session upon the Municipal Franchise question, seeing the admirable tact with which he brought it forward, the clearness of his statements, the closeness of his reasoning, his devotion to the cause, the firmness of his principles, and the honoured name which he bears, I think it is absolutely impossible for the cause to be in better hands than in his. Mr. Mill has alluded to many of the advantages resulting from conferring the franchise upon women, and I shall not go over this subject again. I will content myself with saying, that upon all questions connected with woman, and with man also, we should keep this cardinal principle steadily in view to guide our political action and our social conduct; we ought to consider that civilisation is not a reality, and that freedom does not really exist, until every man and woman in the community shall feel that in their youth their faculties have been duly and reasonably developed, and when those faculties have been developed, society shall place in their way no barrier to their turning them to the best possible advantage. I look upon the question of women's franchise as one department, and an important department of the great subject of education, but we Ought not to be satisfied until they have the same use of the educational endowments of the country as men have, until they have the same opportunity of turning the faculties with which they have been endowed to the best possible advantage. It is unnecessary to enter into the disputed point—whether women's intellectual powers are equal to those of men. Let them have the same opportunities of education, let them have the same liberty of career, let them have the same chance of developing their individuality, and then, and not till then, it will be proved what careers in life they are fitted to succeed in and those in which they are not. Feeling that the political franchise conferred upon women will be a most important, and, perhaps, the first essential step in placing women in their proper position, I most cordially and heartily support the Resolution which has been so ably proposed and seconded by Mr. Mill and Professor Kingsley.

The Resolution was then put and carried.

Mrs. Faweett.— The Resolution I have been asked to move, is, 'That this Society pledges itself to use every lawful means to obtain the extension of the franchise to women; and it therefore considers that a Bill for that purpose should be introduced into Parliament as early as possible in the ensuing Session.' Those who desire to see the extension of political rights to women, have already done a great deal to further the success of their cause. They have petitioned Parliament—some of them have written upon the subject page 20 —others have spoken in public upon it—all have talked about it in private. But it is sometimes needful to be reminded that a continued effort is necessary. A great many things combine to make us forget what a small minority we are, and I think we are rather too much apt to congratulate ourselves. The great interest we ourselves take in the subject, the books we read, the friends we associate with, all combine to hide from us the numerical strength of the opposition that we have to overcome. These considerations should be our strongest incentive to increased exertion, especially when we remember that the opposition we have to overcome is on the whole passive. It does not arise so much from those who have thought upon the subject and disagree with us, as from those who have never given the subject one moment's serious consideration. The members of this Society have a great deal to do, as long as 'I never heard of such a thing' is the particular objection urged against the claims of women to the franchise. The Resolution suggests that a Bill should be introduced into Parliament next Session, I am so little qualified to speak upon that point, that I shall leave it to those who are more competent to deal with it. I will only remind you, what you have already been reminded of, that the present House of Commons and the present Government has not been unfavourable to the claims of women.

I beg to conclude by moving the Resolution.

Lord Houghton.—Madam, Ladies, and Gentlemen.—In Sir. Mill's admirable work is a very impressive sentence, that laws would never be improved unless there were numnerous persons whose moral sentiments were better than the existing laws. And I think we have a right to assume that there are numerous persons, many here and many elsewhere, who think the laws with regard to the women of this country impolitic and unjust. The graver points of this question have been so well gone into, that I am almost tempted to ask you to come down a little from the higher ranges of theory and thought, and to follow me for a very few moments into some practical considerations of this matter. I own that my own education in this question has been very much guided and impelled, first, by an accident in a portion of my own life, and secondly, by a portion of my studies. The portion of my life to which I refer, was the time I passed in the Eastern countries of the world, and I think it is almost impossible for any man fully to understand all the relation between the sexes who has not, either through his study or his experience, had before him the interesting spectacle and curious contemplation of a society in which women are invisible, and in which the whole of the outer world goes on without them, and in page 21 which it is almost sacrilege for them to be seen. In those countries you have not by any means, as is commonly thought, any worse state of moral society than exists in European capitals; you have the sacredness of home-life, such as only exists in the best European communities; and yet you have a condition of women living almost universally in a state of mind and of body which we should consider peculiar to childhood. How is it that there is such a difference in the societies in which we ordinarily live, with regard to the condition of women? How is it that women rose from that Eastern condition to what they are now; and is there a larger space, is there a broader difference between the highest aspiration and what you are, compared with what you are and the women of the East? Mr. Mill, in an interesting note in his work, has shown that even that peculiar life, even that singular seclusion, does not prevent women from showing remarkable capacity for Government, and becoming most eminent personages in the State. He has told us that the Indian Governments of which we can speak with the most comfort and applause, are almost solely those directed by women, and Sir Richard Temple, the Chief Commissioner of Central India, whom I saw yesterday, and who expressed his hope of being here to-day, says that a long experience of India fully convinced him in that opinion. If, under such peculiarly unfavourable circumstances, a woman of talent can be found in the East, surely it is very little to say that political rights and thoughts, if they become part of the education of the Western women, might not be developed with at least equal success and advantage.

Again, in reference to a story which I followed with much interest, and I doubt not there are very few men in this room who have not done the same—I mean the story of the French Revolution—there is one peculiarity in that which has always struck me, and that is the political equality which was then given to women, and especially the political equality of the scaffold. I do not find in the whole history (and I have looked at it with great particularity) a single instance in which a Frenchwoman, for fear of appearing before a political tribunal, or of being condemned by it, ever claimed an exemption on account of her sex, nor that it was proposed that any should be given her; not only did such women as Madame Roland go to the scaffold with the same sense of responsibility and the same recognition by society as other victims of political violence; but you find that it went down to the very lowest classes, and that women there received that sad homage of equality such as they have never received anywhere else. Then, at any rate, there was not, what exists at present, both in France and England, a large amount of page 22 power upon the part of women unaccompanied by responsibility. I am always inclined to wish to connect power with responsibility as much as possible. There are women, especially amongst the upper classes, in this country, possessing a very large amount of social and political power, but without social and political equality, and that seems to me an additional argument to those you have heard, that woman should feel that she is a citizen as well as the man; that her duties with regard to the State are just the same as those of the man; that there is no reason whatever why her affections or her passions should be more likely to guide her wrong than the affections and passions of men. I believe that if women were educated in this feeling, you would find that the political force they would exercise would be a great deal better than the power they exercise now; because, I am bound to say, that I believe if the mass of women in England were at once invested with political power, the result might not at present be quite according to our desires and expectations, and that we might be a little disappointed at the manner in which it would be exercised. I don't know that it could be otherwise: but I do not think for a moment that any such contemplation as that should induce us not to wish the power to be given, because it is by the education which they would receive through political power, that their use of that political power would be justified and improved. The same argument should be used with regard to the extension of political power to women as has been used by all wise men with regard to the extension of the suffrage to men.

With regard to the effect this alteration would have upon the home, upon the daily life, and all those matters, I believe there never was a greater amount of rubbish talked than has been spoken as to that. Are husband and wife always agreed upon questions far more agitating, far more passionate, than those of ordinary politics? On the question of the destiny of man in this world and in eternity, is it supposed that husband and wife cannot live together unless they are perfectly agreed upon religions principles? Upon all matters most important, affecting the daily life of mankind, do not we see the happiest households where husband and wife, just as parents and children, exercise a fair critical judgment upon one another, doing it with mercy, justice, kindness, and benevolence; nevertheless not losing the sense of individual independence. And why should we suppose for a moment, because a woman was holding and exercising a difference of opinion upon ordinary political subjects, there should be any more disunion and discomfort in the family? This is the case, J doubt not, of a great many ladies here, who bring to bear probably a very strong opinion upon religious and other sub- page 23 jects, differing from the rest of their family, but nevertheless doing so without breach of courtesy, respect, and honour. These considerations lead me to think that this question requires only to be agitated to be at once clearly understood. As Professor Fawcett very properly said, this question does not necessarily entail with it any other considerations with respect to the faculty of women for different professions; but I think the great value of this question will be, if it is properly settled, that it will test this question. I do not presume to say that this question is by any means decided. And upon all occasions upon which I am asked to express opinions, to advocate the liberty of women with regard to professions in life, I simply say, let them have their fair chance, and that is all I ask for them. There is no doubt this danger: that women will try, as women always try, to get the best for themselves. Why should they not? They will try to get both advantages—the advantage of independence upon the one side, and the surrender of the independence on the part of men Upon the other; because you know we have a great deal of surrender of independence with regard to women; and no doubt we must expect them to lose something not only in their place of society; but when women come into strong competition with men, in matters of profit and business, no doubt man will exercise his power and authority, probably as unjustly as he has hitherto done. You see it in the trades of London; in the difficulty of women getting into that skilful trade of watch-making, in which the Swiss women are so apt. You find it in the almost impossibility of women getting into the position of compositors in printing offices, notwithstanding the efforts of Miss Faithful, and notwithstanding it is an art for which their delicate fingers so deftly fit them. In all those matters they will have to struggle hard, but no doubt they have that energy and strength in them which will enable them to overcome these difficulties; and what will aid them most will be a sense that they do not labour tinder any state of moral or political degradation.

Mr. John Morley.—Mrs. Taylor, Ladies, and Gentlemen,—As this is a meeting in which we are all agreed probably as to the ultimate issue of the purposes of the Association, our object will rather be conference than conversation. And, indeed, it was perhaps doubtful policy on the part of the Committee to ask Mr. Mill to speak first, for his speech, like his book, contains nearly everything that can be said upon the subject, and, like the major premiss of a syllogism, every inference that can be drawn from it. It is, therefore, a comparison of experiences rather, for which we seem to be met. Mr. Boyd Kinnear exhibited himself as a recent specimen of a convert page 24 by the pamphlets and other productions of this Society. I would claim for myself perhaps an older connection, or an older fidelity, to the aim of this Society, for Mr. Mill's 'Dissertations and Discussions' appeared when I was an undergraduate at Oxford, and I believe that the essay upon the enfranchisement of women in one of those volumes, effected not only my own conversion, but that of a considerable number of men, who will not be found wanting when the practical necessities of the work press. As far as any more recent experience goes, it has not shaken the views which I formed when perhaps I was hardly mature enough to form a view. It was my misfortune not very long ago to have to contest a borough in a part of the world where women have been excessively active—in the county of Lancaster. The conviction on the part of the majority of the women in that borough was that I and my colleague had been expressly sent down by Mr. Gladstone in the interests of the Pope: and this conviction was so strong within their minds that on one occasion I and a friend very nearly paid for it with grievous bodily maltreatment; and he whispered to me in the thick of the affray, 'How about female suffrage?' I confess that exhibition only strengthened my conviction that the time had come when women should have a vote; because this conviction of theirs, mistaken, as I believed it to be, did at least show in them the capacity for taking an exceedingly active interest in public affairs.

The Resolution I have to speak to, enjoins or prescribes the necessity of a Bill being presented to Parliament. Now, we have here to look at a practical point, and in looking at this Resolution from this practical point of view, it appears to me that we ought to do our utmost to dissever the object of this Bill from any particular ideal of the characteristics, or any special theory as to the functions of woman in society. There are various temperaments of men, and each temperament will be converted by a special and peculiar method. There are many (and this we may say without spiritual pride) of not the least elevated temperament, who will be most quickly drawn by such a presentation as Mr. Mill has made in his work, of a firm elevation of character, the woman being the equal partner of the man. But those who are drawn by that presentation of character are, after all, not the majority. And, moreover, reformations working in that method are always tardy, and not only tardy, but dependent for their success upon the propitious working of a number of collateral forces, over which none of us can exercise a very immediate or personal influence. But the basis upon which I would rest this proposal, and the argument to which I would appeal, in inviting support for the Bill, will be that to which Mr. Mill page 25 alluded among his other considerations, by appealing, 1 mean, to the principle of free trade. From this point of view our measure is simply permissive—it is no more than a removal of a disqualification And it appears to me, farther, that, presenting it from this point of view, we shall be most likely to secure the two kinds of persons, both of whom it is well worth our while to secure, firstly, persons without any ideals of character, and therefore without prejudice: and, secondly, some of those whose ideals of character are most antipathetic to those which Mr. Mill and, I dare say, most of us here hold to be desirable. For example, there is a body of men tor whom personally I have the greatest liking, and for whose principles, in the main, I have hearty sympathy, who cannot understand how we, who, like them, are working for a social reformation, should think of inviting women to take any part in political action. I allude to the Positivists. They expressly preclude any direct action on the part of women in public affairs. Now, if we put aside alt questions of the final cause, we may then appeal to them most forcibly, and, as I venture to think, most irresistibly, upon their own principles, to support the Bill; because they, and all persons of their school, demand that we shall accept no conclusion which has not been verified by experiment. We, who wish this Bill to become law, hold that it will be the only possible opportunity of testing experimentally what is the end of woman, and her truest and most normal position in the social organisation. In the writings of one of the most illustrious of their society, one expressly finds such sentences as these—that our race is one that needs duties to form our feelings—we read that although women ought, as a rule, to confine themselves to domestic employments, still there will now and again be persons of extraordinary genius, to whom it is desirable to give the fullest possible scope. I say, accepting such propositions as these, upon purely experimental principles, we have no choice, we have no other means of determining what are their duties, or, when this extraordinary genius does arise, forgiving it the desired opportunity. Our only chance is to give them the fullest possible opportunity of testing every faulty they may possess. It has been well said by some one, I think by Du Maistre, that every social truth, and every public reform has to pass through three stages, first, the stage of neglect; secondly, that of the epigram; and thirdly, the guillotine; finally, universal acceptance. I think we may say that the temper of the times is adverse to the employment, as against ourselves, of the guillotine—although, as it is said, the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church, that would not seem to be a matter of congratulation. The first stage, that of neglect, I think, page 26 we may most honestly congratulate ourselves, has passed away. It is now universally felt that this movement can no longer at least he ignored; but, differing from my friend Professor Fawcett, I do not think the time for ridiculing us has by any means gone by. On the contrary, I believe we are in the very mid-heat and central fire of the epigrammatic stage; and, assuredly, this is a fact not entirely without encouragement. If we find many persons, otherwise of a high intelligence and of a deep and undoubted degree of public spirit, who can think a movement which affects one-half the human race worthy only of jocular treatment, then it shows fully that the time has come when we should endeavour to bring them to a more serious mind. I am very glad that this project of ours no longer remains an idea, but is to come practically before the public as a measure for which they may sign petitions, and for which members of Parliament may record their votes. This is desirable, if for no other reason, because it will reveal to themselves and to others, all who are Laodicean and hazy-headed. This is a question in which the Laodicean temper is untimely; and I think we may fairly say to those who decline to support the Bill which Mr. Fawcett has moved should be drawn, and eventually introduced, that they are in truth not with us, and that they do not fully understand the true force and meaning of what I hold to be incomparably the most progressive sentiment of this time.

The Resolution was then put and carried.

Sir Charles Wentworth Dilke, M. P.—Mrs. Taylor, Ladies, and Gentlemen,—I have received, within the last few days, a letter from the Secretary of the Manchester National Society for Women's Suffrage, which contained a Resolution passed at a meeting of that Society, so closely in accordance with the resolution that has just been carried, that I will, with your permission, read it to the meeting. It states 'that at a meeting of the Executive Committee of the Manchester National Society for Women's Suffrage, held on the 13th of July, it was resolved, that having regard to the great advance of public opinion shown in the unanimous assent of the House of Commons to the proposal of Mr. Jacob Bright' and myself, 'for restoring to women ratepayers their ancient rights, this Committee respectfully requests those gentlemen to prepare and present, to the House of Commons, at the next session, a Bill for procuring the Parliamentary Suffrage for women.' A similar resolution was sent to Mr. Jacob Bright; and before I come to move the resolution that has been committed to my charge, perhaps it is as well that I should mention to the meeting the opinion which Mr. Jacob Bright (as he is not here) holds upon this question, his name having page 27 been much mentioned to-day. I may preface that, however, by referring the meeting to what my friend Mr. Fawcett has said, with regard to the way in which the proposal was received in Parliament. I think perhaps he began his account at somewhat too late a period. He has told you how favourably the proposal was received at the time when it was actually made to the House. But there was, among the friends of women's suffrage (not municipal, but political), a very considerable reluctance to bring forward even the municipal question this session; for it was believed, at the time I first suggested to Mr. Jacob Bright the striking out of the word "male" in the Municipal Bill, and up to within a day or two of the resolution proposed, that we should obtain no considerable support to that proposal. I would therefore express to the meeting the great debt of gratitude we owe to Mr. Bruce and Mr. Gladstone, because I believe, had it not been for the support which the Government gave to that clause, it would not have been possible to have carried the Bill this session. Having said so much upon that point, I would give the meeting the feeling of Mr. Jacob Bright, as he has been named as the probable introducer of the Bill to be drafted by this Society. He says, first, that the leaders of this movement are strongly in favour of such a Bill being introduced, and that he will have no objection to introduce it; but I should say he would not consider a general expression of the opinion of a meeting to be sufficient; he would wish to know that the Executive bodies of the Association are in favour of the Bill being introduced, and not only that they are in favour of it at this moment, but that when the next session actually begins, they shall still continue to be in favour of that course. I can only add, for my own part, if my name is to be on the back of the Bill, that any aid, in any way that I can render it, will be willingly given. In proposing it to the House or otherwise, I shall be excessively glad to have the opportunity of showing the strong opinion I entertain upon this question. The Resolution which has been committed to my charge is to the effect, 'That this meeting desires to record its satisfaction at the progress the Society has already made, which it regards as the earnest of success which cannot for long be delayed.' With regard to the progress the Society has already made, this meeting is itself sufficient evidence of it in London. But, with regard to the future—to the success which cannot long be delayed—I would venture to point out to the meeting that what we should ask for in any Bill that may be drafted upon the Report of the Committee of this Society, should be, as Mr. Morley has said, a mere experiment; because the argument that has been used here to-day by Mr. Mill, and continued page 28 by Mr. Kingsley and other speakers, is in the direction of giving a large share of political power to women. Now, any Bill, in the present state of the franchise, that we could draft, would evidently propose to admit women under the same conditions as men; and the effect of admitting them in that way would be to admit a very limited number, and, as it were, Co reach the more accidental and exceptional, and not the normal case of women who happen to be householders, or lodgers paying ten pounds a year. It is clear that this would be a very limited measure, admitting in London very few, the largest number probably in Manchester, but even there, supposing all could be registered, admitting under 10,000 women to the register. We should be able to ask for support to this measure, upon the ground of its being a purely experimental one, and by that means we should obtain support from a large number who might otherwise be disinclined to give it. I am equally hopeful, with the other gentlemen who have addressed you, that we shall be able to carry such a measure in a very few years indeed: but even supposing such an experimental measure is to be carried, we shall have carefully to guard ourselves beforehand that such an admission of women to the franchise would be any termination to the question: therefore if such a Bill is to he introduced, it should be regarded as experimental on both sides. The question of success leads, perhaps, to the consideration of the actual practical means of working. I think we have had an admirable example set us of the way in which we should set to work, by the way in which the Birmingham people have set to work in the matter of education. They have got up there a League, chiefly headed by Members of Parliament, and they have calculated the number of members upon whom they can depend in point of principle. I would suggest that the Executive of this Society should be urged to work in that direction, to work in every quarter, not only on the Liberal, but also on the Conservative side, where I believe we may expect considerable support, to ascertain exactly those men who may be counted on upon the reading of the Bill. I believe if we could get a small band of twenty or thirty men who are so strong in their feeling that they will not only promise to vote, but take pains to be present when the Bill comes on, that would prove to be a ball that would gather as it goes. Those who have once promised their support to the question will be led to consider it with perhaps greater care than they have yet as a body given to it, and, talking it over and meeting the arguments of others, who ask them how they can be so foolish as to support such a ridiculous proposition, meeting such arguments and such ridicule, they will themselves make page 29 converts throughout the House of Commons. I shall be perfectly prepred to take my humble share in the work in introducing such a measure next session. I have been led on by the Resolution passed at Manchester to speak more to that Resolution perhaps than the one entrusted to me. I will not dwell upon it any longer, because I conceive that the fact of the satisfaction we feel at our past progress has been already sufficiently expressed in and by this meeting; and with regard to our success not being long delayed, I believe we shall be best "able to test that when the Bill is introduced next Session.

Mr. P. A. Taylor, M.P.—After the many admirable speeches we have heard, it would be unpardonable if I did not compress within the smallest space the very few observations I have to make. I desire to express my gratitude to the Executive Committee for having given me the opportunity upon this occasion of expressing my entire loyalty to the cause for which we are banded together; and I may add, likewise, of expressing the ever-increasing estimation on my part, of the importance and necessity of its success, if we would secure the progress and healthfulness of the community in which we live.

I trust you will not consider it pure egotism if I say, that perhaps to our opponents there might appear some special significance in the fact of my making this observation, considering the relations I have the honour to hold with the lady who presides over our meeting this afternoon. It may tend to show, in a degree, however trifling, that one of the commonest, I had almost said vulgarest, opinions, sentiments, or prejudices—call it what you please—cannot at any rate be of universal application, if I venture to say that I have never seen cause to regret that the lady to whom I have ventured to allude, has extended her aims, aspirations, and activity, beyond the walls and threshold of our home. The Resolution which I have to second, expresses satisfaction at the progress the Society has already made, which it regards as the earnest of a success that cannot long be delayed. In regard to the probability of rapid success, I regret to say that I hold more with the opinion of Mrs. Fawcett, than with the opinion of the Professor; while I take this doubt, however, entirely as an incentive to renewed exertion. I do not think we are quite so near success as my friend Mr. Fawcett would have us think. It is indeed quite true that the success we have achieved at present is something wonderful—we have jumped per saltum to the amount of success that we have obtained. I remember well when my late revered friend William Johnson Fox spoke upon this question twenty years ago, there were not six men in the country who dared have said what he did; but it must be page 30 remembered that when Mr. Mill entered upon the conduct of this question—and it is not the language of compliment, for we are all profoundly convinced of the fact, that to Mr. Mill it is due that at this moment this question has a practical existence—when he undertook, as it were, to garner into his barn the harvest upon this question, he did not garner in the harvest of one season only, but the harvest of a quarter of a century; he gathered around him all those who had been previously convinced, or half convinced, and whose thoughts were tending in the right direction, more or less consciously to themselves. To use another figure, we may now say that we have conquered the outposts, and find ourselves face to face with an almost impregnable fortress of prejudice and custom. Argument is not, by a great deal all that we have to contend with. We are not, I fear, going to breach that wall very easily with soundness of argument. We must depend upon what might be described as the mineral acid of slow working public opinion. Nothing is further from my desire than to discourage; but we must not suppose that the difficulties we have yet to encounter and overcome, are to be measured either by the rapidity of our progress up to this time, or by the strength of the arguments that can be brought against us. We have to meet arguments whose very strength is in their weakness—arguments only considered good enough to support a foregone conclusion, or of which it may be said, to use a more vulgar phrase, 'any stick is good enough to beat a dog with.' Let me illustrate this by mentioning an argument, common as the day. We are appealed to in this manner—'Would you really entrust the vast and important questions of State, all the great social questions of the day, to a being so weak, so frivolous, so superficial, as woman, and so given up altogether to fashion and frivolity.' We are asked, the next moment, and perhaps by the very same man—' What! would you really sacrifice all the valuable influence '—(I observe that the term 'influence' is never thus used except in the inverse ratio of power)—'would you really give up all the sacred, purifying influences of woman and introduce her into the brutality of a political contest, the chicanery of trading speculations, and to all the selfish and hardening influences of our life of struggle?' Of course I do not bring forward these arguments in order to answer them. I leave them, like the Kilkenny cats, to settle with each other; but I bring them forward with another object, not unimportant to bear in mind, and it is this—that these and all similar arguments are based upon this fallacy, that when we have improved the political and social condition of woman, the intellectual and moral condition of page 31 men and women, in themselves and in regard to each other, will remain the same as it is now. Small indeed could be our hope of success, or the good we should do, if such could be the result. On the contrary, if women are, and to any extent that they may be, justly chargeable with being frivolous and weak, we charge this upon the very system which we seek to alter—the laws which we desire to reform—limiting as these do the arena in which she is allowed to exercise her faculties and aspirations. Again, if men are, and to any extent to which they are, fairly chargeable with being brutal, sensual, selfish, and self-seeking, we charge that also, not in a little degree, upon those very laws and customs which we desire to amend,—in that he is isolated, so far as sex is concerned, in the great struggles of life, from those influences which would tend, as we think, to elevate and purify him. To oppose, therefore, the changes which we desire to see effected upon such grounds, is neither sensible nor logical; our desire for change being largely (minded precisely upon the evils which have been done to both. To plead that men and women are not fitted to associate with each other in the affairs of life is to repeat and enforce our argument and not to destroy its force. We may well admit that if the changes winch we seek to bring about, in regard to the political and social enfranchisement of women, were suddenly effected, the mischief done may be so deep that it would be long before their full advantages would be realised; nay, we may perhaps admit that the first result of the change would be but to make more evident how far in such matters we have wandered from the paths of nature and common sense; but, to use this argument against us, is no more sensible or logical than it would be to refuse to take the manacles from off a prisoner, lest, in the first days of freedom, the marks of the iron upon his flesh should be but so much the more patent and palpable. I beg to second the Resolution.

Professor Masson.—It would be very difficult, madam, for any one to say anything new upon the great question that has been occupying us—anything that could be relevant, and at the same time new, after what has been already impressed upon you. So all I shall do is to repeat one statement of Mr. Mill, and to connect that with another incidental remark of Professor Fawcett. Mr. Mill, in pleading this question, implied that the enfranchisement of women is desirable upon two grounds: in the first place, because only by that means will the flagrant injustices which women now suffer he effectually removed; and in the second place, because the direct influence and co-operation and political responsibility of women are necessary, both for men and for women, to bring our page 32 whole social life up to that elevation which it ought to reach. I will single out the first of these two things, and, under that, one injustice, which has been alluded to by Professor Fawcett, committed upon women. It is a gross disgrace upon this nation that, at this moment, when everything is made free and open for men, when all facilities are afforded to men for the cultivation of their minds to the utmost, there are no corresponding facilities for the cultivation of the minds of women. We have schools and universities, and scholarships, and fellowships, and all young men have these advantages. What corresponding advantages are there for women? There may be a poor governess trying her utmost to cultivate her mind for its own sake, and also that she may teach—so that cultivation for her is a means of livelihood—but there are no encouragements of the same sort for her as there are for her brothers; and this injustice will never be removed until women have the power of saying who shall be members of Parliament, and who shall go into Parliament to make new laws. This is but one instance, but it is an instance with which I am familiar, and therefore I bring it forward here. And, upon the whole question, I may just say this, that it seems to me that the recent large increase of the franchise for men is an additional reason why women should now have the franchise. It is possible that the enlarged franchise of men may put women to a greater disadvantage than they were at before, unless it is accompanied by their own enfranchisement; because you give power, as has been said, to an ignorant, rude, uncultivated man, with no particular qualification for the trust reposed in him, and you refuse it to an experienced, wise, and thoughtful woman. At this moment there may be danger of less justice being done to women in all particulars than there was before; for all their interests, their fortunes, and even their lives, are now subject to the uncouth tramp of multitudinous masculine hoofs.

The Resolution was put and carried.

Mr. Stansfeld, M.P.—Ladies and gentlemen, my duty will be short and, to me, grateful, as I trust that your response will be to you. It is usually a formal duty; it is that of proposing a vote of thanks to the person who has occupied the chair at the meeting which has been brought to a close. But, upon this occasion, that will be no formal Resolution, because this chair has not been occupied, as the chair is generally occupied at meetings, for whatever purpose. And never has the chair at a public meeting, as far as my experience goes, been occupied by one who could perform its duties with more business-like skill, and yet simple and modest and graceful earnestness. When I listened to the few remarks of page 33 my friend Mrs. Taylor, and to the statement of m) friend and relative, the Secretary of this Association, I could not help—as those of us who, like me, bear years enough to look back upon not a few successful movements—I could not help thinking of the announcement of the number of pamphlets that had been issued and distributed, and the number of petitions which had been signed, made at the early meetings of other movements, whose success we have ourselves witnessed, beginning modestly, like this, but ending in success. I have no doubt that, at some future time—I will not define the number of years, but I take a hopeful view—we shall look back with a peculiar interest to this day and to this occasion, and that our friend who has presided will feel that it was a privilege to have occupied that place. Our friend Mr. Mill has shown us to-day, with that perfection of reason and of demonstration—that wide and wise and comprehensive philosophy—that subtle and exhaustive analysis, before which no error can remain unexposed, and which have ever distinguished every speech and every writing of our eminent friend—he has shown us how and why that success will be attained. This movement and this cause has its relation to other movements and other causes with which the time is pregnant. It helps them, as Mr. Mill has told us, and it will be aided by them to its own success. If I might venture upon a simile, I would liken the progress of humanity to the on flow of a mighty river, of which every thought, translated into word or deed, is a confluent. The course of those isolated thoughts or conceptions, before they reach the great stream of progress, may be difficult, and doubtful, and slow; but when, as tributaries, they join themselves to the mighty stream, they add to its impulse and to its volume and to its flow, and their juncture with it is the assurance of their own success. Ladies and gentlemen, that great stream of progress varies at different periods in the rapidity of its flow. There are times of stagnation, and there are eddies sometimes upon this stream; but I think that we have arrived at a period, as far as our generation is concerned, when it is a mighty and an abounding river. Prejudices seem to be vanishing as the night, and I sometimes almost regret that in their place nothing hardly more reputable or substantial appears to remain than the likes and dislikes, the tastes and distastes, which seem all that the opponents of the great progressive movements of the age have to offer to that progress. As far as I am immediately concerned, my sympathies are and have ever been with this movement; I know, and many of my friends here know, how absorbing, I will say exhaustingly absorbing, is ordinary political, and still more, ordinary official life. We have often heard, and we are sometimes told, that when we plunge into page 34 ordinary politics, and still more when we betake ourselves to the occupations and duties of official life, we are apt to forget our old philosophies and to be no longer true to the faiths of our earlier years. There is too often a truth in that accusation; but there is something to be said for those of us who are not prepared to admit it in its more serious aspect; and that is, that the wear and tear, and the strain upon the mind and the body and the strength of those of us that are not blessed with more than the average mental and bodily strength of our kind, is so great in political and official life, that, despite ourselves, we feel from time to time left, as it were, stranded on the shoals of thought, and longing for periods of holiday—longing sometimes for that which is called 'the cold shadow of opposition,' in order that we may go back to those thoughts and take our part again in those great movements in which our interest has never really flagged. I will say for myself, that whether the time for this movement, and for the effort of this Association, be five or fifteen years, or more, I know that opportunities will occur, and I shall embrace them with eagerness and satisfaction, of paying my tribute to the principals involved, and of endeavouring, as far as opportunity may serve, of aiding a cause which I have most sincerely at heart. I beg to propose to you, that the cordial thanks of tin's meeting be given to Mrs. Taylor for presiding upon this interesting occasion.

Mr. John Stuart Mill.—I beg to second the motion. It is quite unnecessary that I should make any remarks, or add anything to what has been said. I am sure the whole meeting feels the grace, the dignity, as well as the business-like spirit in which the proceedings have been conducted by Mrs. Taylor, and all will join most heartily in voting thanks to her.

The Motion was put and carried with acclamation.

Mrs. Taylor.—I really have no words adequate to express my feeling of deep gratitude for the favour you have shown me, and also for the appreciation of my small efforts made to-day; I can only express a hope that the kind sympathies which have been exhibited by this meeting will be continued to this Society.