ely as a boon
to be begged from the physically stronger sex, but as their will, which
they, as citizens, have a right to see fulfilled, if just and possible?
Woman has played for too many centuries the part which Lady Godiva plays
in the old legend. It is time that she should not be content with
mitigating by her entreaties or her charities the cruelty and greed of
men, but exercise her right, as a member of the State, and (as I believe)
a member of Christ and a child of God, to forbid them.

As for any specific difference between the intellect of women and that of
men, which should preclude the former meddling in politics, I must
confess that the subtle distinctions drawn, even by those who uphold the
intellectual equality of women, have almost, if not altogether, escaped
me. The only important difference, I think, is, that men are generally
duller and more conceited than women. The dulness is natural enough, on
the broad ground that the males of all animals (being more sensual and
selfish) are duller than the females. The conceit is easily accounted
for. The English boy is told from childhood, as the negro boy is, that
men are superior to women. The negro boy shows his assent to the
proposition by beating his mother, the English one by talking down his
sisters. That is all.

But if there be no specific intellectual difference (as there is actually
none), is there any practical and moral difference? I use the two
epithets as synonymous; for practical power may exist without acuteness
of intellect: but it cannot exist without sobriety, patience, and
courage, and sundry other virtues, which are 'moral' in every sense of
that word.

I know of no such difference. There are, doubtless, fields of political
action more fitted for men than for women; but are there not again fields
more fitted for women than for men?--fields in which certain women, at
least, have already shown such practical capacity, that they have
established not only their own right, but a general right for the able
and educated of their sex, to advise officially about that which they
themselves have unofficially mastered. Who will say that Mrs. Fry, or
Miss Nightingale, or Miss Burdett Coutts, is not as fit to demand pledges
of a candidate at the hustings on important social questions as any male
elector; or to give her deliberate opinion thereon in either House of
Parliament, as any average M.P. or peer of the realm? And if it be said
that th