Or they hold North-Western shares; and then they are
supported by the labour of colliers, and stokers, and guards, and
engine-drivers. And so on throughout. The plain fact is, either a woman
must earn her own livelihood by work, which, in the case of the mothers
in a community, is bad public policy; or else she must be supported by a
man or men, her husband, or her labourers.

My day-dream was, then, to make every woman independent, in precisely
the same sense that women of property are independent at present. Would
it give them a consciousness of being unduly controlled if they derived
their support from the general funds of the body politic, of which they
would be free and equal members and voters? Well, look at similar cases
in our own England. The Dukes of Marlborough derive a heavy pension from
the taxes of the country; but I have never observed that any Duke of
Marlborough of my time felt himself a slave to the imperious taxpayer.
Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace is justly the recipient of a Civil List
annuity; but that hasn't prevented his active and essentially
individualist brain from inventing Land Nationalisation. Mr. Robert
Buchanan very rightly draws another such annuity for good work done; but
Mr. Buchanan's name is not quite the first that rises naturally to my
lips as an example of cowed and cringing sycophancy to the ideas and
ideals of his fellow-citizens. No, no; be sure of it, this terror is a
phantom. One master is real, realisable, instant; but to be dependent
upon ten million is just what we always describe as independence.

THE END.

PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE, HANSON AND CO.
EDINBURGH AND LONDON.

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