CUSTOM AND SEX.

            While political questions are rarely or never settled by the natural action of logical force, it is unreasonable to expect that social problems should be more fortunate.  All the arguments, and nearly all the facts, which can be brought to bear upon the enfranchisement of women have been worn threadbare; and if it were not to be feared that the fate of Mr. Jacob Bright’s bill may condemn us to at least another year of agitation, the present writer would not have been tempted to hazard a few remarks which, waiving the question f right, deal only with minor points of fact and expediency.  The debate in the House of Commons last year on the extension of the suffrage to women, so far as it advanced the consideration of the question at all, did so by bringing into relief the fact that an apparently political question was being decided upon entirely extra-political grounds.  Both parties were doubtless aware of the fact; the rambling arguments of the opponents of the bill gathered cogency from the compact force of tradition behind them, and the advocates of innovation were compelled, like the victims of some enchantments, to blunt their swords upon the armour of phantom adversaries, whom they seem to slay, but who are revived again, after every battle, by the magic touch of the mighty witch, whom friends call Habit, and enemies Prejudice.  Conservative defeats are brought about, not by the establishment of speculative doctrines, but by the recognition of an accomplished fact.  Just as the supreme power in state is lost, when the right of those who held it is questioned, so the laws of custom must have been abrogated before it can occur to any one to question their validity.

            The practical convenience of barbarous or semi-civilised races determined a rough-and-ready division of labour bween warriors, priests, women, and slaves.  Subsequent subdivisions were sanctioned as they were established; but while the world was young they were certainly not established to satisfy an ideal requirement.  No doubt the practical reason of mankind accepted these classifications like all other established facts, and theoretic minds were amply employed in hymning the beauty and use of ends and means, each existing for the sake of the other.  But with material changes of all kinds fresh tastes and fresh interests were created, and the work of innovation once begun always proceeds with accelerated velocity.  Habit, on the other hand, when it has reached its full dimensions does not bloom or propagate, it takes root, and its roots are strongest when generations looking upon it with changed eyes cease all at once to see the beauty of adaptation to which their forefathers bore witness.  The effect of the [End Page 310] collision between the new and natural and the old and artificial may be traced in the absence from  modern life of harmony, confidence, and transparency.  For the advocates of both new and old are driven by the apparent uncertainty of facts—whose decision would be final—to the still more uncertain arbitration of right, which, in the nature of the case, must depend upon fact.  There is only one way of escape.  Harmony may be restored by a return, if that be possible, to the conditions under which old habits were formed, or else by the deliberate abandonment—and here for the first time there is an opportunity for the voice of reason to be heard—of all habits of cause thought and action which would not naturally have been contracted under existing circumstances. 

            The application of these remarks to the position of women is sufficiently obvious.  The claims of women to the franchise, and a good many other things, are opposed in the House of Commons and else-where because the habits formed when women’s position was very different from what it is now, are still supposed to prevail, and in point of fact do so far still prevail as to confuse the minds of politicians like Mr. Bouverie with images of a lost ideal.  It is, on the whole, pretty generally understood what the woman of the good old times is supposed to have been like, and therefore it would be capricious to object that her admirers omit to particularise the precise period of her greatest glory and abundance.  The only point to be insisted on is that she does not exist in England now.  Mr. Trollope, passim, proves it as conclusively as every lady lecturer.  But let us do justice to her memory; for the woman of the past has been nearly as badly treated by reformers as the woman of the present by the majority of the House of Commons.  The woman of the past as beautiful, she was useful, and, chief and greatest, she was natural; she was a contented fraction of a harmonious whole.  Her course in life was traced out for her by opinion, which she shared, and custom, which was her own second nature; her intellect exercised itself upon the objects within a circle which was as clearly defined as the duties of her guardian or spouse; there was as little uncertainty about her social functions as about her material fortunes; nothing but an irresistible inclination towards vice or martyrdom could enable her to outrage the public opinion of her world; no necessity of choice or effort was laid upon her; nor could any accident disturb her in the serene enjoyment of domestic emotions, not the less real for having, perhaps, less sentimental effusiveness than we generally suppose.  In a word, she was happy, she was pretty, and she didn’t lecture of the rights of women.  Unless it were quite certain that modern progress is from good to better, much might be said in favour of an attempt to restore the type, but unfortunately we should have first to remodel society.

            It is often said that the true vocation of women is marriage, and [End Page 311] this is something more than an opinion:  woman, in the minds of those who take their ideal from the past, means a wife, or a sister of charity.  Whatever local habitation we assign to the ideal of feminine excellence (giving to the word feminine its customary connotation), neither India, nor Greece, nor Italy, neither the barbarians nor the Renaissance, can give us any help as to the treatment of that lusus naturae, an old maid.  The woman of the past is the produce, the admirable and amiable product, of a state of society which has ceased to exist in England and America, and is threatened with dissolution in the rest of Europe, and perhaps even in Asia.  She flourished in the zenana, in the salon, in the still-room.  Civilisation by itself was not fatal to her existence; for marriage by usage or convenance has been practiced in many highly civilized communities.  But human progress has an unfortunate tendency to reverse the allegory of Saturn, for it devours that which gives it birth.  Civilisation refined beyond a certain point destroys what made its beauty.  Almost as soon as society has recognized the idea of womanhood to be such as we have endeavoured faintly to describe, the growth of luxury and population places its existence in jeopardy by rendering it difficult, and by degrees impossible, for every man to maintain a wife in the manner prescribed by public opinion and class custom.  Polygamy was the first and readiest way of evading the difficulty, and it had the advantage of leaving the material position of women as nearly as possible the same as before; but its general tendency was, not doubt, to impair the grace and purity of the ideal type, and for this reason, apart from social prejudices and religious scruples, it is unnecessary to discuss its adaptability to the needs of the nineteenth century.  The same may be said of a still more primitive expedient, the exposure of female children.

            It is unnecessary to enumerate all the causes which have contributed to deprive women of the present day of the power (and to a lesser degree of the inclination) to obey the unabrogated prescription of what was once healthy public opinion.  Competition, over-population, free-trade, radicalism, education, the poor laws, infidelity, whatever public measure, whatever intellectual tendency occurs to the reader as most peculiarly and pre-eminently mischievous, may, with very little hesitation, be set down as contributing its fair share, or rather more, to the result which a numerical majority still professes to deplore.  Every liberal measure during the last three centuries has helped to break down the distinctions between the privileged and the non-privileged classes, and in assuming women to have ranked amongst the former we do not prejudice the argument which has been often used in similar cases, that artificial protection is a doubtful benefit even to those who enjoy it.  The main point to be remembered is that for good or ill the protection and privileges formerly accorded [End Page 312] to women have been in, great part already withdrawn. Whether the forms of modern society have become too various for opinion to legislate on their relations, whether private interests have become too strong to submit to legislation, or whether a new code adapted to modern circumstances be actually preparing for publication, the duties of the sees are at the present moment enveloped in at least as much obscurity as their rights.

The English theory of marriage is partly cause and partly effect of the impending revolution; cause, for it first admitted an uncertain quantity (i.e., inclination) among the forces which disposed of a young woman's future; effect, because an innovation in itself so startling could only have been sanctioned in the hope of making the recognised duty of men as little onerous as possible. The only question is, how long a duty generally felt to be onerous may, under favourable circumstances, continue to be observed. The revolution began when heads of families ceased, as a matter of course, to dower and "establish " the daughters of the house; it was completed (constructively) when daughters with the option of an establishment were first found to choose independence in preference. The movement did not originate with women, but the alterations in their position brought about by material and external causes proved that, like other animals, they possessed the power of modifying or adapting themselves to changed conditions of existence. If this were not so their extermination would be a natural and speedy consequence of the struggle for existence; or rather, as this is a scientific age, which mourns the reckless destruction of the dodo, a few choice specimens of the lost  sex would be preserved with care in menageries and museums, and studied like the Aztecs or the last of the New Zealanders. The argument of the natural subordination of the woman to the man goes too far; for in a state of nature both man and woman go without clothes, and eat. raw roots, very state of society has its advantages, but it is idle to think of reviving the Warden of Eden in London or New York. Whatever is, is natural, and those who believe in the instincts of nature may add, is therefore right ; but it is only natural, and, a fortiori, only right, so long as it continues to be, and when it shows signs of ceasing no argument derived from the nature of things can be employed to retard its decay.

It is for the historian of` society to enumerate the changes of custom and taste which pare co-operated with more fundamental causes in modifying the position held by women even so lately as a century or two ago. Our concern is only with the discrepancies between the actual present, and the present as it appears to us when viewed by the light , or rather in the shadow, of the past. The sober womenfolk of a work-a-day world are expected to model themselves upon the heroines of chivalrous romance, and to “make believe” the [End Page 313] mediaeval scenery and sentiment which sober men have neither time, patience, nor money to provide; and in return for this complaisance men undertake also to make believe that an indifferent personation is the life itself. One of the favourite virtues comprised in the old ideal of womanhood was modesty; but in what sense can womanly modesty of the old type be supposed to survive the present dulness of the marriage market, and the only means recognised by public opinion for its relief? It is true this is one of the points upon which the voice of public opinion is indistinctly heard. Girls are to try to get married, but without husband hunting; they are to aim at fascinating the men they meet, but without flirting; and public opinion has very prudently refrained from attempting to fix the line which separates, in each case, legitimate enterprise from unlawful speculation. Not only is the question difficult to determine in itself, but the fact that society leaves its solution to the private judgment of every individual maid, is in itself an admission that the time‑honoured landmarks and bulwarks of feminine virtue are shattered and obliterated. A period of transition is always one of disguised anarchy, and for that reason alone is better abridged. If our present usages were final, or likely to last without substantial variation for the next two or three hundred years, it would be worth while to recast our ideal, and to frame fresh laws to maintain its new form in undiminished purity and perfection; to restore, in fact, the lost harmony between our moral and aesthetic instincts and the world in which we are condemned to live. But the causes which destroyed one ideal are still in such active operation that it is only by following them in fancy to their remotest consequences that we can hope to give a degree of permanence to our conclusions. We must look forward rather than backward; for opinion, whenever it is a real force, acts, not only to sanction the intellectual tendencies amongst which it has arisen, but also to pre­scribe in advance the course which society must pursue, in obedience to those tendencies. We are only concerned with the past in so far as it is prophetic of the future.

            The stages of liberal progress symbolised in the popular mind by Magna Charta, Oliver Cromwell, the great and glorious Revolution, and two Reform Bills are, after all, only so many steps towards the most liberal consummation possible-‑the creation of a political tabula rasa. Hereditary privileges and presumptive disabilities of all kinds have given way in turn when summoned to render a reason for their existence. Appeals to the nature of things were regularly made on their behalf, and as regularly disallowed; and no one seemed to suspect that the question, whether nature was blue or yellow, was best answered by the fable of the chameleon. The genesis of liberalism was the empirical discovery that the nature of things, did alter, and might mend. Hence the Protestant character of the [End Page 314] true liberal formula--liberty and equality, freedom from vexatious restraints, and the levelling of artificial inequalities (for the positive element, fraternity, is an after-thought, introduced to satisfy the human penchant for trinities). We are already so near the tabula rasa that some Liberals of the old school are beginning to grow uneasy at the thought of what may happen after the end, and the possibility of its becoming their duty to protest against the rise of new and strange inequalities, instead of against the maintenance of old abuses, the best and worst days of which are past. The disabilities of sex are by far the most considerable social and legal inequalities that survive, and their removal is recommended by exactly the same arguments of principle, analogy, and convenience which, in every preceding case, have been found successful. The enfranchisement of women may, therefore, be considered certain ; but there are special causes which  make it desirable that the last triumph of Liberalism should be effected as promptly and peacefully as possible. .The demand for political privileges has always been in the main disinterested, the fractional material advantage to be gained from their exercise being too small and remote for consideration. But it is to be feared that when Liberal legislation has done all its work, progress, in sheer desoeuvrement, having no more abuses to destroy, may take to creating fresh ones. Should there come a time when the central majesty of law is threatened once more with perversion to the service of class selfishness, the cause of what will then be Liberalism may owe everything to the possession of political power by a sex which has not had time to develop interests adverse to the public welfare. Nor is this all; if we could suppose universal suffrage carried without female suffrage, the principle of equality would lose the opportunity of a double triumph which it would enjoy if the political education of two newly-enfranchised classes proceeded simultaneously. By proving that, in the eye of the law, a countess is as good as a mechanic, we should weaken incalculably the force of the presumption that she is a great deal better too.

It is impossible to notice all the piecemeal arguments which have been urged against the expediency of what is felt to he imminent; but as an example of the kind of assumption which opinion, on its onward course, will doubtless discard, we may take the one which dwells on the peril to which the principle of authority is exposed when there is a divorce between the physical and moral force of the State. The danger is a very real one, and much older than the 3rd of December or the 18th of March, though it was first brought home to English journalists by the military collapse of the National Guard of Paris, which had been embodied to represent the principles of peace, order, and domesticity. But it is not easy at first to see why the idea of a female householder should suggest the idea of [End Page 315] a mercenary army. The connection lies in the strange assumption that the woman of the future will never learn to shoot--not, of course, that members of Parliament or electors are ex officio members of a volunteer corps, but it is felt, with great reason, that the discharge of one political right or duty would practically entail, if it did not logically imply, the exercise of every other. Undoubtedly when women have seats in Parliament and on the Bench they will also hold commissions in the army, and it may even be surmised that the profession of arms will be rather a favourite with them than otherwise; for military glory has more in common with the aims . which they have hitherto been encouraged to pursue than any inducements held out by learned or commercial careers. The few cases on record of women who have disguised their sees in order to enter the army offer no criterion as to the number who would do so when the necessity for secrecy was removed. The contrary, assumption is so much the creation of habit that; it is scarcely possible to argue either for or against it. The physical strength of women is the principal difficulty contemplated, lint it is obvious, quite apart from the effect of education or training, that the women of some races are taller and stronger than the men of others; and if that consideration appear too remote, it could easily be ascertained how many maids-of-all-work in London work harder than a dragoon. But it is supposed that women will be particularly influenced by the reluctance which we all feel at the prospect of slaughtering our fellow-creatures. Similarly it was held quite recently that they could not--it is still thought in some circles that they should not--cut off babies' legs. Now, to shoot an invader, who may be out of sight, and to cut off a baby's leg, are both painful surgical operations, which no right-minded. person would perform except for the benefit of the infant or the fatherland; but there can be no question as to which of the two is most trying to the nerves and harrowing to the sentiments. Unless antiquity--as is possible--was quite mistaken as to the natural instincts of the female sees, it will prefer the science of destruction to the art of healing.

            One great advantage of this and. kindred modifications of the social framework is that they will keep, society amused; it will be quite impossible to get up a serious alarmist agitation against them, and by the time the general laughter has subsided, the revolution will be over; and like other revolutions, leave the world so very little the worse or the better, that the leaders of opinion on both sides will have nothing to do but condole with each other on the baselessness of their respective hopes and fears. After all, it will make no difference to the personal comfort of the stanchest Conserva­tive that his house was perhaps built by a woman, that the convey­ance of his estate was drawn up by a woman, that a woman had [End Page 316] contracted for the railway which takes him to town, or that women called for his rates and taxes. It is not qua women that our grand­-daughters will trade with China, or profess Sanskrit, and when they take their place fairly amongst other human beings desirous of earning an honest livelihood, it will be quite unnecessary to form a priori theories in explanation of their success or failure. If, an the whole, they fail oftener than men, so much the worse for them;

" All labour, yet no less

 dear up beneath their unsuccess."

And it is easy to bow to the decision of remote and unimpassioned natural causes. In the laws of nature, the sanction and the precept are one ; their violation is a contradiction in terms, like the arguments by which opinion endeavours to reinforce them. The only reason why women should not do a variety of indifferent things, such as buying and selling, is that they can't or don't; but so far as they do, and therefore manifestly can, the objection ceases, and opinion need only modify, very slightly, the notion of women current in the popular mind. This process has already gone further than is generally imagined, as we see from the readiness with which every fresh fait accompli is accepted and forgotten. There is, for instance, a strong opposition to the desire of women to study medicine, but as soon as a lady has succeeded, by any means, in obtaining a medical degree, we hear no more about it; except, perhaps, a casual recognition of whatever ability she may possess. Similarly in the towns where women were elected members of the local school boards, the controversy about their claims and qualifications, elsewhere rampant, is peaceably extinct; and the only monument to its past vivacity is a tendency, which will soon wear off, on the part of their male colleagues, to listen with rather unphilosophical deference to what the lady orator may have to say, and not resume the interrupted conversations until she has sat down. A very short time would accustom people to the sight of women in less public, but perhaps even more influential situations.

The wildest dreams of female emancipationists go no farther than a state of things in which both sees receive the same education, and have the same opportunities of acquiring fortune or competence by marriage, industry, or inheritance, without let or hindrance from the power which is called custom, when it regulates the conduct of both sexes, and fashion when it only regulates that of one. The same power which at one time made such amusements as riding and slating infra dig. for the ladies of Germany and England respectively, and which in certain circles makes it not quite “the thing” for women to publish, still rules that they shall not engage miscellaneously in remunerative pursuits. Opinions may differ as to the [End Page 317] utility of the prohibition, but it dates from a time when social usages were such as to tempt few women, and compel none, to violate it. The more usage can be proved to have changed already, the more it may be expected to change in future, and as opinion can never quite keep pace with innovation, unless its dicta are periodically revised, it is left increasingly far behind. The objections which apply to opening all professions to female enterprise, apply to opening any, and these were, so to speak, turned, when women first began to write novels for subsistence. The key of the position was an assumption that marriage was the only right and satisfactory, provision for women, and only experience could make it untenable.*  As a matter of fact some women cannot, and others do not marry, and though the breach of usage by the latter class is winked at, public opinion still hesitates about legalising any alternative provision for the former. In the case of women, either married or single, whose means are merely nut such as to supply them with the luxuries or conveniences to which they may have been accustomed, society is tolerably well agreed in recommending the exercise of resignation, patience, and self-denial. But custom is quite at sea in prescribing the duties of really destitute gentlewomen ; and beyond a despairing hope that the same three Christian virtues may somehow or other turn out to be useful, the advocates of the feminine ideal are reduced to such wild suggestions as that the ladies in question should go to service as upper nurses or professed cooks. Happily, if consistency cannot be maintained in one way, it can be restored in another; that is, by repealing restrictions which have ceased to be operative, except as a stumbling-block to tender consciences. Some women are allowed, under the pressure of necessity, to teach, or to write for the press, or, if they have very great energy, to profess medicine; it only remains to allow all who have the necessary material inducement to enter the Civil Service (where Mr. Gladstone is evidently prepared to let them have clerkships cheap), the army, the navy, the universities, and any other learned or lucrative profession they may fancy.

The practical effects of the innovation would be less considerable than is generally assumed. Men. who, as it is called, marry money, find in spending it a satisfactory and tolerably absorbing occupation for life, and there is no reason for supposing that the case would be different with women. Neither the wives nor the daughters of rich

*A writer in a German periodical who had collected some useful information about the number, age, and occupation of the self-supporting women of Berlin, was not content with pointing out the unpractical nature of the argument from abstract political right. He proved satisfactorily that women ought not to have votes because the daughters of Kaiser Karl and Kaiser Otto learnt to spin, and because her Royal Highness the Crown Princess Victoria of Prussia excels in fancy needlework. This is the right method, and by following it consistently, Germany will probably soon make up the century or so of social experience by which she is at present our junior.  [End Page 318]

men are likely to disturb the labour-market by their competition. Life would be made comparatively easy to the class of lone women who at present find it difficult to live at all; but the large majority of those affected by the change--the wives, widows, and. unmarried daughters of those who are neither poor nor rich--would find their position modified, not revolutionised. Women who had engaged in a merely bread-winning profession before marriage, would give it up or not according to the circumstances of their husband ; while a profession embraced from choice would probably only be abandoned if the advent of ten or twelve children made their education a more pressing and interesting consideration. For, no doubt, when women are educated, the education, technical and literary, of a large family will actually engage the time and thought which, by an amusing fiction, ladies are now supposed to bestow on the difficult task of engaging their housemaids and ordering dinner. With the majority, professional life would always be an interlude, more or less seriously conceived, between school and marriage, and a provision against possible accidents or bereavement ; with some it would take the place or supply the want of domestic interests, while a few choice souls would know how to harmonise the claims of public and private life. The only reason for anticipating an increase in the number of old maids would be if it should appear that that amiable class draws more than a fair proportion of recruits from amongst the women of independent means. If this be the case, as is far from unlikely, it follows that some of the marriages at present contracted are based upon mercenary interest rather than free inclination, and. the sentimental portion of society would be relieved at the prospect of diminishing the number of such inauspicious unions. Marriages, on the other hand, based upon a complete identity of moral and intellectual tastes and principles, might perhaps be expected to became rather more common in proportion as the tastes and principles of the two sexes become more nearly the same.

The indirect consequences of the new order of things would, no doubt, be more numerous; the life insurance companies, for instance, would suffer, and perhaps, though that is doubtful, the milliners but details of that. kind may safely be left to be adjusted by practical experience. The effect upon the statistics of marriage and population is a more important question ; but it can scarcely be doubted that the contemplated changes would, on the whole, act as a check upon both, and so far meet the dangers which are expected to arise from doubling the number of candidates for employment. Married life, like the woman of the past, is so exceedingly admirable at its best, that it is a pity it should become familiar in any other form. The standard of conjugal felicity may be permanently raised when other refuges are provided for destitute spinsters of mediocre attractions. It is even probable that by restoring the social position [End Page 319] of women to its former stability, and by setting the public conscience once more at ease as to actual usages, we should have done something towards restoring to woman qua woman those qualities which lend a poetical grace to the relation of the sexes. A girl who had been too busy working for scholarships to read many noels, and who went into business directly after taking her degree, might easily have affections as unhackneyed as those of a convent-bred ingenue, though perhaps harder to touch; at any rate her maiden self-respect would contrast favourably with the blase daring of young ladies in their twelfth or fifteenth season.

There is only one career which is really mischievous and demoralising to those who pursue it, and at the same time fraught with no possible advantage to the community; the career, namely, of an agitator.  It is good to do a thing, however small; it is bad to talk about doing a thing, however great ; and the consequences to the sex may be truly disastrous if a considerable number of women are induced, by the difficulty of obtaining other employment, to adopt platform oratory as a profession. The human intellect may innocently and profitably be set to work upon any raw material; "there is nothing from without a man that entering into him can defile him;" but the evil thoughts which proceed out of the heart of men and, it is to be feared, of women also, can have no more congenial fields for development than the discussion of a chronic grievance.  It can make no possible difference to the higher moral life of either man or woman whether a certain portion of time be spent in the study of bookkeeping or of German, of engineering or of illuminating; and it depends upon circumstances whether pursuits, of themselves indifferent, shall serve for innocent distraction, mental discipline, or economical profit.

But one thing at a time is as much as most people can accomplish, and there is a clear loss to the public when an average woman is withdrawn from some productive pursuit in order to prove over and over again to an exhausted world that women pay taxes, can keep the ten commandments when they try, and have occasionally been taught to read and write. The loss to the individual is still more serious; for how can a woman cultivate her natural talents when a curious world keeps pulling them up, as children do flower-seeds, to see why they don't grow? It is small wonder if in revenge she takes to the promulgation of shallow generalities, which leave the real strength of her own and her adversaries' position exactly the same as it was before. It is always irritating to have to argue seriously in defence of a truism, but when the defence itself is part of what helps to make the truism true, the result is an imbroglio from whence the logical sense can scarcely be expected to emerge uncontaminated. Of course the mind can, by an effort, reaffirm the distinction between fact and inference, fallacy and right reason, but confusion is contagious, [End Page 320] and the desultory education of women has not fitted them to set an example of method.

            To " orientate " ourselves we must ask, "Are a majority of women really the gentle, retiring, reverential, self-sacrificing creatures which we are adjured to allow them to remain?" Neither man nor woman would dare to answer with a plump No; but the question, "Is it absolutely necessary for them to be so ?" may be more fortunate. The tendency of early speculation was to lay undue stress upon natural or accidental distinctions; but modern science, after pointing out the slender physiological barrier which separates man and ape, cannot fail to perceive that however close the connection between different species may be, that between different members of the same species must be indefinitely closer still. The male and female gibbon exhibit some slight structural dissimilarities, but for the greater part of their life they are morally and intellectually indistinguishable. Perhaps this is one of the points in which they approximate to the higher or human type. Virtue, at any rate, is for the most part sexless. In spite of all the rhetoric expended on the subject, society still requires men to obey the calls of natural affection, and women to observe the rules of personal probity. The moral law binding upon both sexes might, no doubt, be tightened with advantage; but by merely generalising its application we should guard against a danger which sometimes suggests itself, namely, that certain virtues may fall to the ground altogether, while the sexes are tossing up to see which shall have the honour of practising them. It is for the interests of society that all its members should practise all the known virtues, and the exemptions, bar which particular classes or sexes mar at different times have compounded for the indulgence of a favourite sin by the ostentation of an easy virtue, are alike condemned by morality and reason. Refinement, modesty, and disinterestedness are invaluable qualities, which are never likely to be too common; but their place is poorly represented by the mere absence of energy, intelligence, and justice. In the general relations of life the same qualities are admirable and serviceable in all human beings ; special conditions of life add their claims ; but the range of virtues peculiar, let us say, to the marriage state is not much wider than the professional morality of a physician or a tax-collector. Beyond that range the ideal of womanhood has hitherto been chiefly negative, and it is here that additions are requisite, or, at least, unobjectionable; the positive elements within that range can only be discredited by injudicious advocacy. The present confused state of the question arises from the error of mistaking a part for the whole; the duties of women as citizens or labourers are determined by analogy, which could only be appropriate if every woman were separately engaged to be married to creation at large.  [End Page 321] The arguments in favour of the status quo seem, as far as it is possible to sum up the course of a very desultory controversy, to be about four in number; and though we have endeavoured to prove that the question is not one for the decision of the pure reason, the existence and credit of these arguments are among the facts which must be taken into account. The first one rests upon the inferiority of woman's powers, but this may be briefly dismissed, for both the detractors of women and their eulogists seem disposed, by mutual agreement, to leave the precise degree of inferiority to be decided by experience. This is as it should be, for while, of course, the greater ought to rule the less, natural superiority can only be verified by a trial in which the competitors enjoy equal advantages. The next argument is the one of a priori morality, assigning different functions and duties to the sexes. It is the most influential, and we have endeavoured to meet it, first, by pointing out how far duty is the creature of opinion, and opinion the creature of practice ; and, secondly, by distinguishing between generic differences, and others which are equally real, but too narrow to form 'a, sound basis for philosophical speculation. The third class of considerations are altogether practical. Is it for the interests of society as a whole to maintain the state of things now existing, or can reforms, which may or may not be for the advantage of one half the world, be carried into effect without loss or injury to the other half? Latent uncertainty as to the solution of these questions is probably at the root of most passive and undogmatic opposition to the claims of women. The interest of society, of course, must coincide with the highest interest of all its members, and it is scarcely conceivable that these should clash. If they could, a measure would have to be very clearly indeed for the advantage of woman, to reconcile us to the prospect of its being even possibly injurious to man. But difficulties of this kind are apt to diminish or disappear on a near approach. In the first place, social changes are gradual and almost imperceptible to those most concerned in them; in the second place, such changes are not possible until they are unavoidable, and civil life, is one long apprenticeship in the art of making a virtue of necessity; lastly, in the particular case before us, there is no reason to suppose that the innovations contemplated will have any injurious effect at all, though, until they have been tried, it is impossible to say whether they will prove as beneficial to the whole human race as their promoters hope and believe.

There remains only one other difficulty, compounded of most of the others, which is a great favourite with practical people and men of the world. What, it is said, will happen when the clerks in an office marry, or the politicians on opposite benches flirt? and again, but somewhat inconsistently, what is to become of the world if women, instead of flirting and marrying, do nothing but make laws [End Page 322] and railways ? The first inquiry is almost frivolous, for it admits of only one answer the clerks will marry, and the politicians will.  No doubt it would he thought a joke if a young lady were dismissed from her office for gross carelessness, which was soon afterwards explained by her marriage to the occupant of the next desk. No doubt it would be thought a scandal if the sudden conversion of a member of the House could be ascribed to the bright eves of his wife, or some other lady opposite. But jokes and scandals are not unknown in society now; the former ought to be restrained within the vales of good breeding, and the latter proscribed by those rules; but this is a matter to be looked to by public opinion, which is now far less powerful than it ought to be, or than, in a thoroughly healthy state of society, it would be. The next suggestion is not, at first sight, much more serious, fox since men and women marry in spite of vice and folly, only confirmed misogamists would maintain that they will be deterred, by wisdom and virtue. But the assumption that emancipated, or. strong-minded women will be less affectionate than their predecessors, is meant to tell in two directions ; if less affectionate, therefore, it is implied less amiable, and if less amiable less womanly, and so the social changes would be made answerable for a definite loss to society of one of the elements which made its charm. At the risk of repetition; we must revert to what has been said before as to the distinction between qualities of race and of sex. The attraction of an attractive woman is partly physical, partly the result of a subtle impression that all she says, and does, and thinks is but an inadequate representation or reflection of what she essentially is. It may be that this is one of the compensatory balances by which democratic nature preserves the level of equality amongst her children, so that, though women on the whole are capable of doing less than men, what they do produces as much effect, and adds as much to the general satisfaction. But if this be indeed a law of nature, no parliamentary measure will avail to repeal it, and it is quite superior to the need for parliamentary support.

            These doubts and difficulties may be met more or less satisfactorily ; the knot which must give us pause lies behind them all. Every Utopian scheme requires to be perfectly executed by perfect instru­ments ; but if that condition could be complied with, out of Utopia, the result would also be perfection, and we should have no need to seek further for the best possible world. Theoretically, the perfect state of society is that in which every citizen discharges as many duties as possible in as admirable a manner as possible; practically, the soundest opinions on the distribution of duties and privileges between the sexes will not, it is to be feared, lead members of either sex to approach much more nearly than they do at present to the high ideal, which, for the purpose of argument, they profess to have in view.

H. Lawrenny.