tell what fanciful people have said about them. And thoroughly to understand Christianity as professed by the Church of England will be sufficient to confirm her in the truth, though she have not a catalogue of those practical errors which oppose it. Indeed a Learned Education of the women will appear so unfashionable that I began to startle at the singularity of the proposition, but was extremely pleased when I found a late ingenious author (whose book I met with since the writing of this) agree with me in my opinion. For speaking of the Repute that Learning was in, about 150 years ago, 'It was so very modish'1 (says he) that the fair sex seemed to believe that Greek and Latin added to their Charms and Plato and Aristotle untranslated were frequent ornaments of their Closets. One would think by the effects that it was a proper way of educating them, since there are no accounts in History of so many great women in any one age, as there are to be found between the years 1500 and 1600. ”

The incidental remarks of other writers of the period confirm the impression of the miserable standard for

women.

Thus Sir William Petty, writing of his daughter Anne, who inherited much of her father's talent for business, hopes that "one day arithmetick and accountantship will adorn a young woman better than a suit of ribands and keep her warmer than a damnable dear manteau.” 2

1 Mr. Watson's Reflections on Antient and Modern Learning, pp. 349, 350.

Life of Sir William Petty, by Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice, 1895, p. 227.

When John Aubrey (1670) contrasts the schools of his day with the nunneries where "young maydes were brought up with the good example of the nuns and learnt needlework, the art of confectionery, surgery, physick, drawing, writing, etc."-it is an indication that whether or not the convent schools attained to all that might be desired, at any rate these arts were not attained by the schools of his own day, and we begin the better to understand how it became possible for a judicially minded writer to class women freeholders with those who "lie under natural incapacities and therefore cannot exercise a sound discretion, or so much under the influence of others that they cannot have a will of their own in the choice of candidates-of the former description are women, infants, idiots, lunatics, of the latter persons receiving alms and revenue officers."

And yet even at the worst of times, what a partial view this is. England was never so poor in her children but some women were found to pass the lamp from hand to hand, and at the very time the words just quoted were being written, a group of able women were practically by their own lives refuting the imputation-women of whom a writer of undoubted impartiality has said, "They did two things: they gave a great impulse to the literature of the country and they raised considerably

"

1 The passage is curious, and will be found in full in Appendix B. 2 Samuel Heywood, Digest of the Law respecting County Elections, 1790, p. 158.

"Mrs. Barbauld and Her Contemporaries," a paper read before the Bath Literary and Philosophic Association by Jerome Murch, 20th October 1876.

the mental and social position of women; both results were probably attained to a greater extent, because the efforts were comparatively quiet." They were women in whom were combined the forces of inherited character and of liberal-minded nurture, who had been encouraged by their parents to share in the more robust studies of their brothers. Of such were Elizabeth Carter (17171806), Mrs. Trimmer (1741-1810), Mrs. Barbauld (1743-1825), Hannah More (1763-1833), Mrs. Marcet (1769-1858). These all devoted their best powers to the production of books for the young, therefore stand foremost as preparing the way for the awakening of just discontent in the generations that followed.

CHAPTER II.

FIRST STAGES OF THE MOVEMENT.

Preliminary Statement.

(1) FREEHOLDERS. The earliest statute regulating the election of Knights of the Shire (7 Henry IV., c. 15) expressly mentions suitors as persons qualified to be electors, suitors being freemen who owed suit to the County Court.

The next statute on the subject (10 Henry IV., c. 2) uses the word People (gentz demeurant et resiantz) dwelling in the county and having freehold of forty shillings. The 7th and 8th William III., c. 25, uses the words "all freeholders there and then present." The Act 18 George II., c. 18, says no person shall vote without having a freehold estate of forty shillings.

(2) FREEMEN.-By George III., c. 15, persons claiming as freemen to vote must have been admitted to the freedom of the city twelve months before they can be admitted to vote. The qualifications which admitted to the freedom of cities varied greatly from city to city, but nearly all were as applicable to

women as men.

§ 4. The Reform Act of 1832.

The old electors might have been women. No bar stayed them-in law. Only the bar of non-user that had been drawn across their path by custom during the long period of discouragement. Such was the status of women in regard to the electoral law when the Reform Act of 1832 enacted the first statutory disability. The seed of the Women's Suffrage agitation lay in that one short word "male" introduced into 19 and 20 of 2 W. IV., c. 45 (1832).

That one word gave the sanction of law to the custom which had been for two centuries insidiously working to press women back from all interest or care for public duties. In that word the prevalent idea as to the relations of women to public life reached the culminating point. The well-known passage in Mr. James Mill's celebrated Essay on Government1 concisely expresses the popular view now reflected by the House of Commons.

"One thing is pretty clear, that all those individuals whose interests are indisputably included in those of other individuals may be struck off from political rights without inconvenience. In this light may be viewed all children up to a certain age, whose interests are involved in those of their parents; in this light also women may be regarded, the interest of almost all of whom is involved either in that of their fathers or that of their husbands."

This passage drew forth the vigorous protest of

1 1 Encyclopædia Britannica, Supplement, p. 500.