Women and Politics | Page 3

'The true measure of a woman's right to knowledge is
her capacity for receiving it, and not any theories of ours as to what she

is fit for, or what use she is likely to make of it.'
This is, doubtless, a most important concession. For if it be allowed to
be true of woman's capacity for learning, it ought to be--and I believe
will be--allowed to be true of all her other capacities whatsoever. From
which fresh concession results will follow, startling no doubt to those
who fancy that the world always was, and always will be, what it was
yesterday and to-day: but results which some who have contemplated
them steadily and silently for years past, have learnt to look at not with
fear and confusion, but with earnest longing and high hope.
However startling these results may be, it is certain from the books, the
names whereof head this article, that some who desire their fulfilment
are no mere fanatics or dreamers. They evince, without exception, that
moderation which is a proof of true earnestness. Mr. Mill's book it is
almost an impertinence in me to praise. I shall not review it in detail. It
is known, I presume, to every reader of this Magazine, either by itself
or reviews: but let me remind those who only know the book through
reviews, that those reviews (however able or fair) are most probably
written by men of inferior intellect to Mr. Mill, and by men who have
not thought over the subject as long and as deeply as he has done; and
that, therefore, if they wish to know what Mr. Mill thinks, it would be
wisest for them to read Mr. Mill himself--a truism which (in these days
of second-hand knowledge) will apply to a good many books beside.
But if they still fancy that the advocates of 'Woman's Rights' in
England are of the same temper as certain female clubbists in America,
with whose sayings and doings the public has been amused or shocked,
then I beg them to peruse the article on the 'Social Position of Women,'
by Mr. Boyd Kinnear; to find any fault with it they can; and after that,
to show cause why it should not be reprinted (as it ought to be) in the
form of a pamphlet, and circulated among the working men of Britain
to remind them that their duty toward woman coincides (as to all
human duties) with their own palpable interest. I beg also attention to
Dr. Hodgson's little book, 'Lectures on the Education of Girls, and
Employment of Women;' and not only to the text, but to the valuable
notes and references which accompany them. Or if any one wish to
ascertain the temper, as well as the intellectual calibre of the ladies who

are foremost in this movement, let them read, as specimens of two
different styles, the Introduction to 'Woman's Work, and Woman's
Culture,' by Mrs. Butler, and the article on 'Female Suffrage,' by Miss
Wedgewood, at p. 247. I only ask that these two articles should be
judged on their own merits--the fact that they are written by women
being ignored meanwhile. After that has been done, it may be but just
and right for the man who has read them to ask himself (especially if he
has had a mother), whether women who can so think and write, have
not a right to speak, and a right to be heard when they speak, of a
subject with which they must be better acquainted than men--woman's
capacities, and woman's needs?
If any one who has not as yet looked into this 'Woman's Question'
wishes to know how it has risen to the surface just now, let them
consider these words of Mrs. Butler. They will prove, at least, that the
movement has not had its origin in the study, but in the market; not
from sentimental dreams or abstract theories, but from the necessities
of physical fact:--
'The census taken eight years ago gave three and a half millions of
women in England working for a subsistence; and of these two and a
half millions were unmarried. In the interval between the census of
1851 and that of 1861, the number of self-supporting women had
increased by more than half a million. This is significant; and still more
striking, I believe, on this point, will be the returns of the nest census
two years hence.'
Thus a demand for employment has led naturally to a demand for
improved education, fitting woman for employment; and that again has
led, naturally also, to a demand on the part of many thoughtful women
for a share in making those laws and those social regulations which
have, while made exclusively by men, resulted in leaving women at a
disadvantage