e themselves
others who have no legal claim upon them. Who does not know, if he knows
anything of society, the truth of Mr. Butler's words?--'It is a very
generally accepted axiom, and one which it seems has been endorsed by
thoughtful men, without a sufficiently minute examination into the truth
of it, that a man--in the matter of maintenance--means generally a man, a
wife and children; while a woman means herself alone, free of dependence.
A closer inquiry into the facts of life would prove that conclusions have
been too hastily adopted on the latter head. I believe it may be said
with truth that there is scarcely a female teacher in England, who is not
working for another or others besides herself,--that a very large
proportion are urged on of necessity in their work by the dependence on
them of whole families, in many cases of their own aged parents,--that
many hundreds are keeping broken-down relatives, fathers, and brothers,
out of the workhouse, and that many are widows supporting their own
children. A few examples, taken at random from the lists of governesses
applying to the Institution in Sackville Street, London, would illustrate
this point. And let it be remembered that such cases are the rule, and
not the exception. Indeed, if the facts of life were better known, the
hollowness of this defence of the inequality of payment would become
manifest; for it is in theory alone that in families man is the only
bread-winner, and it is false to suppose that single women have no
obligations to make and to save money as sacred as those which are
imposed on a man by marriage; while there is this difference, that a man
may avoid such obligation if he pleases, by refraining from marriage,
while the poverty of parents, or the dependence of brothers and sisters,
are circumstances over which a woman obliged to work for others has no
control.'

True: and, alas! too true. But what Mr. Butler asserts of governesses
may be asserted, with equal truth, of hundreds of maiden aunts and maiden
sisters who are not engaged in teaching, but who spend their money, their
time, their love, their intellect, upon profligate or broken-down
relations, or upon their children; and who exhibit through long years of
toil, anxiety, self-sacrifice, a courage, a promptitude, a knowledge of
business and of human nature, and a simple but lofty standard of duty and
righteousness, which if it does not fit them for the franchise, what can?

It may