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