prise which the last speaker had expressed at the
excellent address of Praxagora by pointing out that in America about
one-third of the press were females, a fact which he attributed to the
plan of Mixed Education. Then a new line was opened up by a speaker--it
was as impossible to catch their names as to hear the stations announced
by porters on the Underground Railway. He predicted that if women did
get the franchise, Mr. Bradlaugh's "Temple" would be shut up in six
months, as well as those of Messrs. Voysey and Conway and Dr. Perfitt.
The ladies, he said, were swayed by Conventionalism and Priestcraft, and
until you educated them, you could not safely give them the franchise.

A youthful Good Templar mounted the rostrum, for the purpose of patting
Praxagora metaphorically on the back, and also ventilating his own
opinions on the apathy of the working man in claiming his vote. Then
somebody got up and denied that ladies were by nature theological. Their
virtues were superior to those of men just as their voices were an
octave higher. He was for having a Moral Department of the State
presided over by ladies. Only one lady spoke; a jaunty young woman in a
sailor's hat, who said that in religious persecutions men, not women,
had been the persecutors; and then Praxagora rose to reply. She first of
all explained her position with regard to the Bible, which she denied
having unnecessarily attacked. The Bible forbade a woman to speak; and,
that being so, the Bible must stand on one side, for "we" were going to
speak. That the highest intellects had been formed on Bible models she
denied by instancing Shelley. If she thought that this movement was
going to destroy the womanhood of her sex she would not move a finger
for its furtherance. She only thought it would give a higher style of
womanhood. As to women requiring to be educated before they would know
how to use the franchise, she pointed triumphantly to the Government
which men had placed in power. It was significant, she said, that the
first exercise of the working men's franchise had been to place a
Conservative Government in office.

I daresay I am wrong, but the impression left on my mind by the
discussion was that the liberty of thought and action claimed was the
liberty of thinking as "_we_" think and doing what "_we_" want to have
done--a process which has been before now mistaken for absolute freedom.
Stripped of its aggressive adjuncts, Praxagora's advocacy of he