need to point out is that this happiness is not the result of legal protection, but of the fact that the vast majority of our countrymen are too just to abuse the enormous powers at their discretion.

How greatly such powers are abused by some, however, and almost with impunity, is partially detailed in a painful article on the "Maltreatment of Wives," which appeared in the March number of the Westminster Review of this year, by Miss Mabel Sherman Crawford. This article opens with a quotation from the address of Mr. Justice Denman at the Liverpool Assizes last July. In commenting on the many serious cases for trial of aggravated assaults on wives by their husbands, the judge said: "It is lamentable to find the view pervading certain classes that the life of a wife is less sacred than that of other people."

It may be lamentable, but it is not surprising, that ignorant and brutal men should not show more respect and consideration for their wives than is shown by the law of the land, and by the magistrates, who often deliberately refuse to use the meager powers the law allows to protect married

women.

Mr. Gladstone is fully aware of the moral importance of supporting the case for the wife, and has denounced in strong language some of the inequalities of the laws with regard to her. Indeed, with regard to the position of women generally he has shown that his conscience is not quite at ease. While suggesting a doubt whether the Creator intended woman for political life, he acknowledges in a recently printed letter that " men have been most unfaithful guardians of her right to moral and social equality.”

We ask these "unfaithful guardians" to give up a charge for which they are obviously unfitted. There is no such thing as "moral and social equality" apart from political equality. An unrepresented class is always a neglected, abused, and degraded class.

The present is a very serious as well as a most interesting crisis. What will the Liberal party do for us? Will it

be true to its own traditions and to the great principles which have given it the preeminence it now enjoys? The Women's Franchise League is supported by advanced thinkers in all ranks of society. The leaders of the working-men are almost to a man on our side. The chiefs of the Liberal women-Lady Aberdeen, Lady Henry Somerset, Lady Carlisle, Lady Stevenson, Lady Trevelyan, among others—support our programme and are vice-presidents of our society. At the last election we were strongly appealed to not to make a test question of the women's right to representation, on account of the Home Rule Bill for Ireland. How long are we to be expected to postpone the pressing necessities of a whole sex to the convenience of party politicians? The country is quite ready for woman suffrage. Everywhere men gladly welcome our help in elections. While Welshmen, railway men, miners, teetotalers, and every section of the labor party were pressing their claims with scant consideration for the convenience of the party, women alone quietly resigned longcherished hopes and worked with a will for the party pledged to do justice to the sister island. The women of the Liberal party know, however, that they could do better work for others if they were themselves free; and they wait for the symbol of their freedom in the vote.

WORK OF THE FRANCHISE LEAGUE-ADDRESS BY FLORENCE FENWICK MILLER OF ENGLAND.

In alluding to the lady whose paper you have just heard, Mrs. Jacob Bright, sister-in-law of the Hon. John Bright, and well worthy to bear that honored name, I should like to tell you it was almost entirely owing to Mrs. Jacob Bright that the Married Women's Property Act was passed, by which men voluntarily gave over from their own management about thirty millions of money annually. That is what is computed to be the amount of property owned by

married women in England. It was a grand thing to do. I feel that when men have been induced in England to allow married women to have control of their own property, there is not anything that they can not, by degrees, be induced to do.

The Women's Franchise League for the first time in the history of the women's movement has claimed simply equality between men and women. By this we do not mean equality in physical capacity or an equality which is unnatural; we are all of us well aware that there is no such thing as natural equality. We are born with very unequal powers. When we ask, therefore, that women shall be on an equality with men, we are not standing forward as say ing, I am as good as you. What we claim is not a pretended equality; we make no wild assertion that we are as wise and as good as men; nothing of that kind enters into the minds of women. We simply claim, as your Declaration of Independence claims, that we shall not be stigmatized by disabilities and have disadvantages placed upon us, because of an accident of birth. We ask only an absolutely free field, in which the natural equalities or inequalities may be developed. We do claim for one-half of the human race a fair field and no favor in this battle of life which we all have to pass through. We demand equality in opportunity for education; we demand equality in every respect before the law. The days of slavery should be over for women as well as for the black race. We demand equality between the father and the mother in the household; we demand equality between men and women in every trade and profession. We ask that the disability that has been put as a great stumbling-block in the way of women shall be lifted out of the way, and that when a child begins life, that child, be it a boy or a girl, shall find no artificial difficulties, no unnatural obstacles in the way. It shall be allowed to go along through life cultivating to the best of its capacity that which is given it, yielding to the world the utmost service of which it is capable. In the first place, we must

have equality in education and training. It may be true that women as a sex are inferior to men as a sex; I am not disposed to discuss that matter further. But if the woman is naturally inferior to the man, then there is all the more reason why every advantage of training and education should be presented to the girl. When you handicap a horse in the race, I am not aware that you put the heavier weight on the weaker horse.

I suppose the American women have greater educational opportunities in many respects, and have gone, far beyond us. On the other hand, Englishmen have opportunities of education which are not equaled anywhere else in the world. Although Englishwomen have within a comparatively recent time been admitted to the various universities, they are still educationally left far behind their brothers. Our old universities are to some extent open to women, but far from efficiently. In the universities of Oxford and Cambridge we have scholarships - I don't know what you call them here; but there is a very large income belonging to both of those universities for this purpose. The professors are also paid by endowment. When a man goes to one of these great universities he reaps the advantages of centuries of hoarded learning. Women are expected to be thankful, and are thankful, that they are admitted to one little tiny corner; but in that tiny corner there are no free places. The women have to pay their own professors entirely for the extra work which is done. The women have had to help the men from the very foundation with money that has been accumulating for centuries. But this help is entirely lacking in the case of the women, although a great number of those institutions have been left money by women for the education of men; that is one respect in which the Englishwomen are still very far from equality. We are, however, encouraged in regard to the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. They are doing very well. Saint Andrew's University has this very year set aside a sum from its funds of no less than forty thousand pounds a year for women.

Ladies and gentlemen, I have stated why we ask for equality in education; I now proceed to invite your attention to the necessity of equality before the law, and equality in domestic life. I can not, with the brief time at our disposal, attempt to tell you what our civil laws about women. had become in England under an absurd theory that women were to be legislated for as something quite different from men, not equal beings with men, or the other half of the human race; but I will tell you briefly this: In 1837, the year that Queen Victoria came to the throne, the greatest law reformer England has ever known, Lord Brougham, said the laws about women were in such a bad state that he dared not endeavor to amend one of them, because, so vile were they, as soon as the attention was directed to them he believed that most of them would crumble away, and most of the human relationships would be left without a law. This was said as recently as when the queen came to the throne, and this condition lasted for many years afterward. The position of English married women was that of slaves; they had no personal liberty. It had been held by judges that a husband had the right to imprison his wife if she was about to do anything contrary to his wishes. She could not hold any property which came to her by any means whatever; it was her husband's and not hers. The married woman could be deserted by her husband and left to struggle alone in the world. She had absolutely no rights over the child whom she bore in pain to him, and whom she nursed with her very heart's blood. If it pleased her husband, without giving any reason whatever he might take the babe from her breast, and he might take the growing girl and hide her from the mother at that very moment when the mother most yearns for her. As a judge declared only ten years ago, "The English law does not see the mother; the English law sees only the father of the child, and not the English wife." In short, the wife is "under coverture," as it is called in civil law. She is as completely covered by the personality of her husband as though she did not exist. When her husband was a good man, she