really dissected? The man fears loss of favour. The retaliation of fair argument he does not fear, but something else; something disturbing of social pleasantnesses to come. And the consequence is that the women are apt to go prosing on, with infinite self-belief, innocent of the sturdy interruption which would be administered to males. There is mischief even here, for it leaves in females the sense that that which is not is; and it is a sense to which as a sex they are already too prone. And it leaves especially a sense of having vanquished males and left them behind; from which comfortable platform they step forth to other and more practical conquests.

I would appeal also to those who have taken part in serious meetings upon subjects in which both sexes are interested, and at which both are speakers, to consider whether latitude of subject, and exceeding of time-limits, and silence of men in the face of direct observations, is not conceded to women in such assemblies. And I should like to ask the question whether it is not felt that among gentlefolk it must always be so, and to ask all to consider the import of such facts, if there be fact in what I say, upon the admission of women to yet more practical public discussions.

It will be well to give a more detailed illustration of what is likely to happen by the free blending of women with men in discussions from which the most important action is to follow, by considering the case of parish councils. Here, of course, the system is already in full swing. Women are already important factors in them. Let us take a purely imaginary case of a small country parish. It is in these small country parishes that more important results might follow from the Act under which they are created than in any other. In such places it has always been taken for granted that two or three houses round the village green will manage everything. The parson's is one, the squire's, or the so-called squire's, is another; and there are two or three more who are permitted to dine with these. There is a great deal of management of small local rights going on in a small parish. In these rights a great deal of law is really involved, and in the course of years a great deal of law and right is given up; and this through the presumption that everything will be managed by these two or three families. The peasant has lost all initiative, and in scorn of this loss Lord Salisbury offered him a circus instead of a council. It is difficult enough in any case to bring him back to a true and wise initiative. Yet it can be done. There are parishes where peasants and small tradesmen can be brought to vote one of their own number into the chair in the presence of the parson and the squire. At first, where it comes, it will be done with strain and rudeness, but later, when the institution works as a thing of course, it will be done naturally and without strain or rudeness. I am not meaning that a peasant or a small tradesman should always

be in the chair, and a landowner or titled person never, but that the right of the small person to be there when his interests are real, or his personality influential, needs establishing, and among males meeting for business can be established. But put a woman or two among them and the whole mutual relation is altered. The peasant and the small tradesman will stand or sit tongue-tied in their presence. She herself will rise with easy nerve, and will perhaps speak on and on; and if, as will more often happen, her remarks are towards the Tory side, the case of the uninfluential will never be presented. And I wish the reader to remark that this silence and deference will be conceded to her, not as property-owner, if she be one, but as woman. To the property-owner as such a certain plainness of speech and standing up for themselves will come to the uninfluential, at first with rudeness and, as a habit of firm discussion sets in, without it. But the presence of a woman or two may make parish councils inoperative on the side of the peasant for ever. A perception of this probably increases the willingness of Tories to see them there, and not only there, but in other public places. And if in this small place the lady happens to be a titled one, and it happens very frequently, then her influence in silencing discussion, in quietly managing that things shall be decided her way, will be out of all proportion to the position which she would have held there as a man of whatever station. And here one may fitly recall how Dr. Johnson with wise sarcasm observed that the influence of woman over man was so supereminent that the law had wisely deprived her of all legal rights which were possible.

The real public mischief is that things will not get themselves thrashed out in her presence, but this can better be considered where we speak of her presence on some wider field. And of this mischief the root mischief is that to very many the things will appear to have been thrashed out when they are not, and especially to herself and to her sex. This is not a mere negative evil, it is a positive one, introducing the poison of a false consciousness as to facts into the body politic.

If the mischief of their presence can be seen more acutely on the small important stage of a parish council, it can be seen working evil over a wider area and as affecting more general interests on a municipal council. And here comes in the all-important question of humour. Women are not without humour, and in the few instances in which it has been controlled and chiselled enough to give a finish to literary power it has been of a rare and delicate kind. But in the general intercourse of life, humour, or humour so-called, between man and woman has been exercised under unfair conditions (if we are to look at the humour alone), and the unfairness of the conditions will be recognised by women who have added any large qualities of mind to their womanly ones. The matter is a part of

what I said at first about the retaliation feared being different in kind. In general society a woman may practically say what she likes to a man, and from time to time rudeness from her passes for wit by a tacit consent. And the man takes it, or answers in other tones, for the reasons that I originally gave, that he fears a different retaliation, and that his objects in society are other than verbal success. Habits introduced with the blood are not thrown off by entering a council hall, and there they will be mischievous. The women who wish to enter council halls are the last to wish to throw them off. Nor is there any serious wish on the part of males that women of any type should do so.

But such considerations have a very serious bearing upon the possible entering of Parliament by women. It is not to be denied that there is some serious danger of their ultimately doing so. This would be the natural result of their voting at all, and of concessions already made, whatever protestations may be expedient from time to time. It has come within the region of possible danger through the tendency of either side to coquet with the female vote when the polling of the constituencies threatens to be well balanced. This coquetry is, perhaps, a little more pronounced among Tory members through a not ill-founded belief in the Toryism of the bulk of women. And it leaves more to be explained from them, because such an admission of women is contrary to the general set of their principles. Whereas the employment of women (and so naturally the voting of women) has always been akin to the general re-examination of the framework of society which seems essential to Radicalism. And before glancing at the probable results, as affecting honest discussion, of admitting women to Parliament let us look at what is taking place around us, their joining men in public dinners where speeches are delivered, and where they themselves deliver them. If there be an enjoyable element in the dining parties of clubs and societies in what does it consist? In easy freedom, in the possibility of natural badinage, in the cutting short of a bore even, if need be. That a certain sequence of speeches will be delivered more or less in decorous silence where the sexes are mixed is not to be denied. They will probably be listened to, whether liked or not. But will the easy freedom of enjoyment remain? These remarks, and many more besides them, are certainly not specially made by those who are averse to female society as such, they are even made by those specially alive to the charm of mixed social intercourse, as opposed to meetings where the real ventilation of public topics is the reason of the gathering, though its form be convivial. The introduction of the matter would be impertinent but for the light it may throw on some part, at least, of the results following from a Parliament which shall be open to both sexes, and into which even a few women shall have entered.

The time when veterans like Mr. Gladstone were entering it is

with reason believed to have been a great time of Parliament. The reminiscences of the very old may still be gathered by those who are admitted to them, and they may be found abundantly in memoirs. And the general impression left of this time is, that it was a time of great freedom of expression. Humour, often boisterous humour, was allowed to play freely over the solemn subjects of debate, and in this way reality of treatment was attained. The matters really were discussed, and the vital points were not shirked; and those who were not pertinent or interesting were left under no self-delusions. When it is sometimes pretended that women would raise the tone of debates by preventing freedom, there is an utter confusion of thought. There is no reason to suppose that there would arise a less venomous way of looking at things by women taking places in Parliament. The restraining men. from saying what they have to say, in the way in which they would naturally say it amongst themselves, would be not a good but a real evil, tending to prevent the fatuity of solemn pretences from being exposed, and turning debate from an engine for getting at the realities of the case, into a sequence of decorous declamations, not really contradicted on the points in which contradiction and exposure are necessary. In this matter the mere fluency of woman is not so much a qualification as a drawback. That she is capable of making speeches of a certain length no one doubts, nor speeches of a set coherent cogency. The vital point is that the mere presence of her sex must necessarily disturb the freedom of style and the possibility of rudeness where necessary, which is indispensable to the real treatment of public questions.

It is much to the point to remark that on many less observed platforms there is little doubt that she is hindering that reality of treatment now. Even in a matter which seems to give more than any other a promise of her beneficial agency, her appointment as Guardian of the Poor, I believe that her presence in debate among other male guardians, considered as a hampering presence, stopping the free play of natural remark and contradiction, and securing to her own share of assertion and discussion a far larger immunity from reflection by reason of her sex than her influence and position could give if she were male, is more calculated to do harm by the hampering of truth than her special aptitudes for finding out certain facts of public import could do good. Unreality, and the thin dropping of uncontradicted assertion, a lack of contradiction which to a large extent must always come to her by reason of her sex, must, I think, outbalance the advantage of her sitting at the board. Yet these are but illustrative matters, and it is in view of a danger of wider and more vital operation on broader fields that the remarks are offered. At the risk of repetition I say in fewer words, that the vital object of debate is that the realities which underlie a matter, and which often come out best by collision, by contradiction, and by irritating interrup

tion, should be revealed there and then in the council chamber. That whatever claims may be made by New Women, the radical relations of man to woman have been settled by nature long ago; that these are incompatible with an uncompromising sifting of truth in common public debate; and that this public debate, whether in the large field of Parliament, or in the lesser fields of parish councils, hospital boards, or boards of guardians, and especially in boards which relate to public education, is of more importance to a nation than any other thing. If there be any truth in this point of view, it would seem to follow from it that the public functions of women would be limited to the collecting of evidence, which men must afterwards debate. This seems at first sight arrogant on the part of males. And there is no doubt that it will be received with indignation by those who are most serious in the claims which they make for public position. But it has a really humble side. The sarcasm of Johnson is worth attending to. So supereminent is the influence of woman over man that we must protect ourselves. By rightly constituted men, women will never be subjected to the immediate sifting or heckling in public debates which we must needs give to one another; and those who respect woman much and love their country more, must in selfprotection do their best to keep her out of them.

CHARLES SELBY OAKLEY.