I supposed woman the legislatrix—­what reason have we to say she would enact a wrong?  The story of the mother of Papirius is not against her; for in that case there was only a choice of evils.  It is from Aulus Gellius, as having been told and written by M. Cato in the oration which he made to the soldiers against Galba.  The mother of young Papirius, who had accompanied his father into the senate-house, as was usual formerly for sons to do who had taken the toga praetexta, enquired of her son what the senate had been doing; the youth replied, that he had been enjoined silence.  This answer made her the more importunate and he adopted this humorous fallacy—­that it had been discussed in the senate which would be most beneficial to the state, for one man to have two wives, or for one woman to have two husbands?  Hearing this, she left the house in no small trepidation, and went to tell other matrons what she had heard.  The next day a troop of matrons went to the senate-house, and implored, with tears in their eyes, that one woman might be suffered to have two husbands, rather than one man have two wives.  The senate honoured the young Papirius with a special law in his favour; they should rather have conferred honour upon his mother and the other matrons for their disinterested virtue, who were content to submit themselves to so great an evil, I may say wrong, as to have imposed upon them two masters instead of one.  Not that you, Eusebius, ever entertained an idea that women are wronged by not being admitted to a share of legislation.  I will not suppose you to be that liberal fool.  But you are aware that such a scheme has been, and is still entertained.  I believe there is a Miss Somebody now going about our towns, lecturing on the subject, and she is probably worthy to be one of the company of the “Ecclesiagusae.”  This idea is not new.  The other day I hit upon a letter in the Gentleman’s Magazine for the year 1740 on the subject, by which you will see there was some amusement about it a century ago:—­

  “TO CALEB D’ANVERS, Esq.

“Sir,—­I am a mournful relict of five husbands, and the happy mother of twenty-seven children, the tender pledges of our chaste embraces.  Had old Rome, instead of England, been the place of my nativity and abode, what honours might I not have expected to my person, and immunities to my fortune?  But I need not tell you that virtue of this sort meets with no encouragement in our northern climate. Children, instead of freeing us from taxes increase the weight of them, and matrimony is become the jest of every coxcomb.  Nor could I allow, till very lately, that an old bachelor, as you profess yourself to be, had any just pretence to be called a patriot.  Don’t think that I mean to offer myself to you; for I assure you that I have refused very advantageous proposals since the decease of my last poor spouse, who hath been dead near five months.  I have no design