done, and obtained a notoriety beyond doubt. Instead of this,
she has preferred to prowl about, picking up a precarious publicity by
giving lectures to willing lyceums, writing books for eager publishers,
organizing schools, setting up hospitals, and achieving for her sex
something like equal rights before the law. Either she has shown herself,
as a seeker after notoriety, to be a most foolish or ill-judging person,--
or else, as was said of Washington's being a villain, "the epithet is not
felicitous."

THE ROB ROY THEORY

"The Saturday Review," in an article which denounces all equality in
marriage laws and all plans of woman suffrage, admits frankly the practical
obstacles in the way of the process of voting. "Possibly the presence of
women as voters would tend still further to promote order than has been
done by the ballot." It plants itself wholly on one objection, which goes
far deeper, thus:--

"If men choose to say that women are not their equals, women have
nothing to do but to give in. Physical force, the ultimate basis of
all society and all government, must be on the side of the men; and
those who have the key of the position will not consent permanently
to abandon it."

It is a great pleasure when an opponent of justice is willing to fall back
thus frankly upon the Rob Roy theory:--

"The good old rule
Sufficeth him, the simple plan
That they should take who have the power,
And they should keep who can."

It is easy, I think, to show that the theory is utterly false, and that the
basis of civilized society is not physical force, but, on the contrary,
brains.

In the city where the "Saturday Review" is published, there are three
regiments of "Guards" which are the boast of the English army, and are
believed by their officers to be the finest troops in the world. They have
deteriorated in size since the Crimean war; but I believe that the men of
one regiment still average six feet two inches in height; and I am sure
that nobody ever saw them in line without noticing the contrast between
these magnificent men and the comparatively puny officers who command them.
These officers are from the highest social rank in England, the governing
classes; and if it were the whole object of this military organization to
give a visible proof of the utter absurdity of the "Saturday Review's"
theory, it could not be better done. There is no country in Europe, I
suppose,