William Thompson, who in 1825 published his Appeal of one-half the Human Race, with an introductory letter to Mrs. Wheeler, at whose suggestion it was written. This was the first piece of literature written with a direct bearing on legislation on this questionit is one of the ironies of history that the earliest publication in defence of Women's Suffrage should have been called forth by the father of the future author of the "Subjection of Women," and that the first legislation excluding women should have been encouraged by the philosophy of the man whose son was to be the champion of their restitution.

The disabling process thus set up soon spread further: the first Parliament elected under the Reform Act showed its representative character by introducing the same restrictive word "male" into the enfranchising clauses of the Municipal Corporation Act of 1835, by which the various local charters, with their various generic franchises, were reduced to one uniform male franchise. Thus from those who had not, was taken even that which they had.2

§ 5. The Avowal of Discontent.

However much statute law might tamper with ancient rights and Parliament treat women as politi

1 The full title of this book was, "Appeal from one-half the Human Race, Women, against the pretensions of the other half, Men, to retain them in political, and thence in civil and domestic slavery, in reply to a paragraph of Mr. Mill's celebrated article on Government."

2 Another example of a similar character was given two years later, when the right of widows to a share of one-third their husbands' estate was barred, so that they only became entitled thereto if so expressed by his will. 314 W. IV., c. 105 (29th August 1833).

cally of no independent standing, socially they remained untouched, they caught up the prevailing enthusiasms, they felt the pulsations of the excitement over the political questions which filled the air. Many readers will remember-as does the present writer-to have heard their mothers or grandmothers speak of the eager excitement they shared with husbands and brothers about the great liberating measures of the "thirties" and "forties."

Writing in 1870 Mrs. John Mylne remarks: "In my young days it was considered rude to talk politics to ladies. To introduce them at a dinner party was a hint for us to retire and leave the gentlemen to such conversation and their bottle. But the excitement that prevailed all over the country at the prospect of the Reform Bill of 1832 broke down these distinctions, while the new and, as it seemed to us, splendid idea of a 'hustings at the Cross of Edinburgh' drove its inhabitants, both male and female, half frantic with delight. I caught the infection, and as soon as ever I understood the benefits expected from a £10 franchise I began to wish that female householders should have it too, thinking it only fair play they should."

In her little book, A Plea for Women, published in 1843, Mrs. Hugo Reid gives us a glimpse of the "curious and inconsistent ideas prevalent about the civil duties for which women are fit or not fit. . . . The necessary property qualification admits her to vote for an East India director, nor have we heard the faintest hint of any inconvenience resulting from the

practice. What great and obvious difference there is between voting for the governors of India and those of England-so great and so obvious as to make the one a matter of course for women, the other an absurdity which cannot be so much as named without exciting the most contemptuous laughter-we confess we do not very clearly see. Nor is it alone in the government of that foreign country that women equally with the other sex are allowed a voice. In the local government of our own country we often see women invested with a vote for some one or other of the public servants."

The daughter of Mr. Joseph Pease of Darlington(Mrs. Pease Nichol, who died in 1897 in her ninety-first year) was her father's devoted secretary and fellowlabourer in the great movements in which he took prominent part-Catholic Emancipation, Abolition of Tests, Abolition of Slave Trade. She attended the AntiSlavery Convention in London in 1840-an occasion ever memorable in the Women's Suffrage movement as giving the impetus to the first Convention for Women's Suffrage in the United States, that Convention being the direct result of the refusal of the AntiSlavery Convention in London to receive as delegates the duly accredited ladies sent from the United States.1

The Anti-Corn Law agitation was, however, still more educational for Englishwomen. In his History of the Anti-Corn Law League, Mr. Prentice says, writing of

1 See for full account, History of Women's Suffrage, by Mrs. Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, vol. i. chap. iii. (New York, 1881). 2 Prentice's History of the Anti-Corn Law League, vol. i. p. 170.

the year 1840, “Another influential agency had now its origin. It was found that wives, mothers, and daughters took a deep interest in the question which so much engrossed the attention of sons, husbands and brothers." The great tea in the Corn Exchange, Manchester, in October of that year, was the beginning of a co-operation in which women rendered effective service. The Anti-Corn Law circular of 30th December 1841 says: "The women of Manchester have set a noble example to their sisters throughout the country. They have already obtained more than 50,000 signatures to the memorial adopted at the Corn Exchange. The ladies of Bolton, Wigan and Stockport are engaged in canvassing their respective towns." The services thus rendered by women drew forth the encomiums of Mr. Frederick Bastiat, the French economist, in the following enthusiastic terms:1 "I doubt not that the reader is surprised, and perhaps scandalized to see women appearing in these stormy debates. Woman seems to lose her force in risking herself in this scientific méléc bristling with the barbarous words, tariffs, salaries, profits, monopolies. What is there in common between dry dissertations and that ethereal being, that angel of the soft affections, that poetical and devoted nature, whose destiny it is solely to love and to please, to sympathize and to console? . . .

"She has comprehended that the effort of the League is a course of justice and reparation towards the suffering classes; she has comprehended that almsgiving is not the only form of charity. We are ready to succour 1 Prentice's History of the Anti-Corn Law League, vol. i. p. 171.

the unfortunate, say they, but that is no reason why the law should make unfortunates. We are willing to feed those who are hungry, to clothe those who are cold, but we applaud efforts which have for their object the removal of the barriers which interfere between clothing and nakedness, between subsistence and starvation; and he concludes with these words, "If an atmosphere of lead weighs down our social life, perhaps the cause is to be sought in the fact that woman has not yet taken possession of the mission which Providence hast assigned her."

The Anti-Corn Law agitation was the nursery in which many a girl of that generation learned to know. how closely public questions concerned her. At the great meeting held in Covent Garden in January 1845, when the key-note of the speeches was "qualify— qualify," as voters, Mr. Richard Cobden said, "There are many ladies, I am happy to say, present; now it is a very anomalous and singular fact that they cannot vote themselves and yet that they have power of conferring votes upon other people." He wished they had the franchise, and went on to say how a lady had come to them in Manchester to enquire how she could convey a freehold qualification to her son.

Nor was Mr. Cobden the only prominent upholder of the Anti-Corn Law movement whose sympathies were in favour of women sharing political power. So long before as 1832 Mr. William Johnston Fox (M.P. for Oldham), in an article entitled "A Political and Social Anomaly," which appeared in the Monthly Repository just after the passing of the Reform Act, commented on