has attended their efforts?  And would they like to see a woman driving a cab?  For my part, I confess I do not like to see a woman acting as road-keeper on a French railway.  I have seen a woman acting as hostler at a public stage in Ireland.  I knew the circumstances—­how her husband had become ill and incapable, and how she had been allowed to earn the wages; but nevertheless the sight was to me disagreeable, and seemed, as far as it went, to degrade the sex.  Chivalry has been very active in raising women from the hard and hardening tasks of the world; and through this action they have become soft, tender, and virtuous.  It seems to me that they of whom I am now speaking are desirous of undoing what chivalry has done.

The argument used is of course plain enough.  It is said that women are left destitute in the world—­destitute unless they can be self-dependent, and that to women should be given the same open access to wages that men possess, in order that they may be as self-dependent as men.  Why should a young woman, for whom no father is able to provide, not enjoy those means of provision which are open to a young man so circumstanced?  But I think the answer is very simple.  The young man, under the happiest circumstances which may befall him, is bound to earn his bread.  The young woman is only so bound when happy circumstances do not befall her.  Should we endeavor to make the recurrence of unhappy circumstances more general or less so?  What does any tradesman, any professional man, any mechanic wish for his children?  Is it not this, that his sons shall go forth and earn their bread, and that his daughters shall remain with him till they are married?  Is not that the mother’s wish?  Is it not notorious that such is the wish of us all as to our daughters?  In advocating the rights of women it is of other men’s girls that we think, never of our own.

But, nevertheless, what shall we do for those women who must earn their bread by their own work?  Whatever we do, do not let us willfully increase their number.  By opening trades to women, by making them printers, watchmakers, accountants, or what not, we shall not simply relieve those who must now earn their bread by some such work or else starve.  It will not be within our power to stop ourselves exactly at a certain point; to arrange that those women who under existing circumstances may now be in want shall be thus placed beyond want, but that no others shall be affected.  Men, I fear, will be too willing to relieve themselves of some portion of their present burden, should the world’s altered ways enable them to do so.  At present a lawyer’s clerk may earn perhaps his two guineas a week, and he with his wife live on that in fair comfort.  But if his wife, as well as he, has been brought up as a lawyer’s clerk, he will look to her also for some amount of wages.  I doubt whether the two guineas would be much increased, but I do not doubt at all that the woman’s position would be injured.