to read it, because they take it all for granted.

There are those who for years past have held opinions concerning women identical with those of Mr. Mill.  They thought it best, however, to keep them to themselves; trusting to the truth of the old saying, ‘Run not round after the world.  If you stand still long enough, the world will come round to you.’  And the world seems now to be coming round very fast towards their standing-point; and that not from theory, but from experience.  As to the intellectual capacity of girls when competing with boys (and I may add as to the prudence of educating boys and girls together), the experience of those who for twenty years past have kept up mixed schools, in which the farmer’s daughter has sat on the same bench with the labourer’s son, has been corroborated by all who have tried mixed classes, or have, like the Cambridge local examiners, applied to the powers of girls the same tests as they applied to boys; and still more strikingly by the results of admitting women to the Royal College of Science in Ireland, where young ladies have repeatedly carried off prizes for scientific knowledge against young men who have proved themselves, by subsequent success in life, to have been formidable rivals.  On every side the conviction seems growing (a conviction which any man might have arrived at for himself long ago, if he would have taken the trouble to compare the powers of his own daughters with those of his sons), that there is no difference in kind, and probably none in degree, between the intellect of a woman and that of a man;

and those who will not as yet assent to this are growing more willing to allow fresh experiments on the question, and to confess that, after all (as Mr. Fitch well says in his report to the Schools Inquiry Commission), ‘The true measure of a woman’s right to knowledge is her capacity for receiving it, and not any theories of ours as to what she is fit for, or what use she is likely to make of it.’

This is, doubtless, a most important concession.  For if it be allowed to be true of woman’s capacity for learning, it ought to be—and I believe will be—allowed to be true of all her other capacities whatsoever.  From which fresh concession results will follow, startling no doubt to those who fancy that the world always was, and always will be, what it was yesterday and to-day: but results which some who have contemplated them steadily and silently for years past, have learnt to look at not with fear and confusion, but with earnest longing and high hope.

However startling these results may be, it is certain from the books, the names whereof head this article, that some who desire their fulfilment are no mere fanatics or dreamers.  They evince, without exception, that moderation which is a proof of true earnestness.  Mr. Mill’s book it is almost an impertinence in me to praise.  I shall not review it in detail.  It is known, I presume, to every reader of this Magazine, either by itself or reviews: but let me remind those who only know the book through reviews, that those reviews (however able or fair) are most probably written by men of inferior intellect to Mr. Mill, and by men who have not thought over the subject as long and as deeply as he has done; and that, therefore, if

they wish to know what Mr. Mill thinks, it would be wisest for them to read Mr. Mill himself—a truism which (in these days of second-hand knowledge) will apply to a good many books beside.  But if they still fancy that the advocates of ‘Woman’s Rights’ in England are of the same temper as certain female clubbists in America, with whose sayings and doings the public has been amused or shocked, then I beg them to peruse the article on the ‘Social Position of Women,’ by Mr. Boyd Kinnear; to find any fault with it they can; and after that, to show cause why it should not be reprinted (as it ought to be) in the form of a pamphlet, and circulated among the working men of Britain to remind them that their duty toward woman coincides (as to all human duties) with their own palpable interest.  I beg also attention to Dr. Hodgson’s little book, ‘Lectures on the Education of Girls, and Employment of Women;’ and not only to the text, but to the valuable notes and references which accompany them.  Or if any one wish to ascertain the temper, as well as the intellectual calibre of the ladies who are foremost in this movement, let them read, as specimens of two different styles, the Introduction to ‘Woman’s Work, and Woman’s Culture,’ by Mrs. Butler, and the article on ‘Female Suffrage,’ by Miss Wedgewood, at p. 247.  I only ask that these two articles should be judged on their own merits—the fact that they are written by women being ignored meanwhile.  After that has been done, it may be but just and right for the man who has read them to ask himself (especially if he has had a mother), whether women who can so think and write, have not a right to speak, and a right to be heard when they speak, of a subject with which

they must be better acquainted than men—woman’s capacities, and woman’s needs?

If any one who has not as yet looked into this ‘Woman’s Question’ wishes to know how it has risen to the surface just now, let them consider these words of Mrs. Butler.  They will prove, at least, that the movement has not had its origin in the study, but in the market; not from sentimental dreams or abstract theories, but from the necessities of physical fact:—

‘The census taken eight years ago gave three and a half millions of women in England working for a subsistence; and of these two and a half millions were unmarried.  In the interval between the census of 1851 and that of 1861, the number of self-supporting women had increased by more than half a million.  This is significant; and still more striking, I believe, on this point, will be the returns of the nest census two years hence.’

Thus a demand for employment has led naturally to a demand for improved education, fitting woman for employment; and that again has led, naturally also, to a demand on the part of many thoughtful women for a share in making those laws and those social regulations which have, while made exclusively by men, resulted in leaving women at a disadvantage at every turn.  They ask—and they have surely some cause to ask—What greater right have men to dictate to women the rules by which they shall live, than women have to dictate to men?  All they demand—all, at least, that is demanded in the volumes noticed in this review—is fair play for women; ‘A clear stage and no favour.’  Let ‘natural selection,’ as Miss Wedgwood well says, decide which is the superior, and in what.  Let it, by

the laws of supply and demand, draught women as well as men into the employments and positions for which they are most fitted by nature.  To those who believe that the laws of nature are the laws of God, the Vox Dei in rebus revelata; that to obey them is to prove our real faith in God, to interfere with them (as we did in social relations throughout the Middle Ages, and as we did till lately in commercial relations likewise) by arbitrary restrictions is to show that we have no faith in God, and consider ourselves wise enough to set right an ill-made universe—to them at least this demand must seem both just and modest.

Meanwhile, many women, and some men also, think the social status of women is just now in special peril.  The late extension of the franchise has admitted to a share in framing our laws many thousands of men of that class which—whatever be their other virtues, and they are many—is most