pray, but to listen very attentively to a theme which has so much to be
said in its favour that it is a pity to complicate its advocacy by the
introduction of an extraneous and most difficult question. So it was,
however; with pale, earnest face, and accents more incisive than before,
Praxagora said if Bible and religion stood in the way of Woman's Rights,
then Bible and religion must go. That was the gist of her remarks. I
need not follow her in detail, because the supplementary matter sounded
more bitterly still; and, had she not been reading from MS. I should
have thought the lecturer was carried away by her subject; but no, she
was reading quite calmly what were clearly enough her natural and
deliberate opinions. I said I was surprised at the line she took.
Perhaps I ought scarcely to have been so, for she was flanked on one
side by Mr. Bradlaugh, on the other by Mr. Holyoake! but I never
remember being so struck with a contrast as when at one moment Praxagora
pictured the beauty of a well-regulated home, and the tender offices of
woman towards the little children, and then shot off at a tangent to
fierce invectives against the Bible and religion, which seemed so
utterly uncalled for that no adversary who wanted to damage the cause
could possibly have invented a more complete method of doing so.

The lecture over, the chairman invited discussion, and a fierce little
working man immediately mounted the platform and took Praxagora to task
for her injudicious onslaught. But, as usual, this gentleman was wildly
irrelevant and carried away by his commendable zeal. Over and over again
he had to be recalled to the question, until finally he set his whole
audience against him, and had to sit down abruptly in the middle of a
sort of apotheosis of Moses--as far as I could hear, for his zeal outran
his eloquence as well as his discretion, and rendered him barely
audible. A second speaker followed, and, though cordially sympathizing
with the address, and tracing woman's incapacity to her state of
subjugation, regretted that such a disturbing element as religion had
been mixed up with a social claim. He considered that such a subject
must inevitably prove an apple of discord. For this he was at once
severely handled by Mr. Bradlaugh, who, consistently enough, defended
the line Praxagora adopted towards the religious question, and justified
the introduction of the subject from the charge of irrelevance. He also
deprecated the sur