ink not. At
present women have not adopted any such principle of action. They are
divided rather than otherwise, according to the relations they occupy
with regard to men. The married woman, on the one hand, seems opposed
to the claims of the widowed and single, on the other--and _vice
versa_; and both together combine to ostracise some of their own sex.
It seems probable, however, that we women will have to learn to drop
all such rivalries, and determine to form one vast organisation, which
shall include within its ranks all sorts and conditions of women, and
shall extend over the whole of the United Kingdom, if we would not see
this nineteenth century completed without Woman's Emancipation
becoming an accomplished fact.

(DR.) ALICE VICKERY.

On the Admission of Women to the Rights of Citizenship.

BY THE MARQUIS DE CONDORCET.

Custom may familiarise mankind with the violation of their natural
rights to such an extent, that even among those who have lost or been
deprived of these rights, no one thinks of reclaiming them, or is even
conscious that they have suffered any injustice.

Certain of these violations (of natural right) have escaped the notice
of philosophers and legislators, even while concerning themselves
zealously to establish the common rights of individuals of the human
race, and in this way to lay the foundation of political institutions.
For example, have they not all violated the principle of the equality
of rights in tranquilly depriving one-half of the human race of the
right of taking part in the formation of laws by the exclusion of
women from the rights of citizenship? Could there be a stronger proof
of the power of habit, even among enlightened men, than to hear
invoked the principle of equal rights in favour of perhaps some 300 or
400 men, who had been deprived of it by an absurd prejudice, and
forget it when it concerns some 12,000,000 women?

To show that this exclusion is not an act of tyranny, it must be
proved either that the natural rights of women are not absolutely the
same as those of men, or that women are not capable of exercising
these rights.

But the rights of men result simply from the fact that they are
rational, sentient beings, susceptible of acquiring ideas of morality,
and of reasoning concerning those ideas. Women having, then, the same
qualities, have necessarily the same rights. Either no individual of
the hu