In any broad view of this matter, we are bound to look not on any individual case, and the possible remedies for such cases, but on the position in the world occupied by women in general—­on the general happiness and welfare of the aggregate feminine world, and perhaps also a little on the general happiness and welfare of the aggregate male world.  When ladies and gentlemen advocate the right of women to employment, they are taking very different ground from that on which stand those less extensive philanthropists who exert themselves for the benefit of distressed needlewomen, for instance, or for the alleviation of the more bitter misery of governesses.  The two questions are in fact absolutely antagonistic to each other.  The rights-of-women advocate is doing his best to create that position for women from the possible misfortunes of which the friend of the needlewomen is struggling to relieve them.  The one is endeavoring to throw work from off the shoulders of men on to the shoulders of women, and the other is striving to lessen the burden which women are already bearing.  Of course it is good to relieve distress in individual cases.  That Song of the Shirt, which I regard as poetry of the immortal kind, has done an amount of good infinitely wider than poor Hood ever ventured to hope.  Of all such efforts I would speak not only with respect, but with loving admiration.  But of those whose efforts are made to spread work more widely among women—­to call upon them to make for us our watches, to print our books, to sit at our desks as clerks and to add up our accounts—­much as I may respect the individual operators in such a movement, I can express no admiration for their judgment.

I have seen women with ropes round their necks drawing a harrow over plowed ground.  No one will, I suppose, say that they approve of that.  But it would not have shocked me to see men drawing a harrow.  I should have thought it slow, unprofitable work; but my feelings would not have been hurt.  There must, therefore, be some limit; but if we men teach ourselves to believe that work is good for women, where is the limit to be drawn, and who shall draw it?  It is true that there is now no actually defined limit.  There is much work that is commonly open to both sexes.  Personal domestic attendance is so, and the attendance in shops.  The use of the needle is shared between men and women; and few, I take it, know where the seamstress ends and where the tailor begins.  In many trades a woman can be, and very often is, the owner and manager of the business.  Painting is as much open to women as to men, as also is literature.  There can be no defined limit; but nevertheless there is at present a quasi limit, which the rights-of-women advocates wish to move, and so to move that women shall do more work and not less.  A woman now could not well be a cab-driver in London; but are these advocates sure that no woman will be a cab-driver when success