“You are a sailor, and sailors are always chivalrous.  If you could see how things really are, you would change your opinion.  What are the poor things to do?  There are so many of them and so few things to which they can turn their hands.  Governesses?  But there are hardly any situations.  Music and drawing?  There is not one in fifty who has any special talent in that direction.  Medicine?  It is still surrounded with difficulties for women, and it takes many years and a small fortune to qualify.  Nursing?  It is hard work ill paid, and none but the strongest can stand it.  What would you have them do then, Admiral?  Sit down and starve?”

“Tut, tut!  It is not so bad as that.”

“The pressure is terrible.  Advertise for a lady companion at ten shillings a week, which is less than a cook’s wage, and see how many answers you get.  There is no hope, no outlook, for these struggling thousands.  Life is a dull, sordid struggle, leading down to a cheerless old age.  Yet when we try to bring some little ray of hope, some chance, however distant, of something better, we are told by chivalrous gentlemen that it is against their principles to help.”

The Admiral winced, but shook his head in dissent.

“There is banking, the law, veterinary surgery, government offices, the civil service, all these at least should be thrown freely open to women, if they have brains enough to compete successfully for them.  Then if woman were unsuccessful it would be her own fault, and the majority of the population of this country could no longer complain that they live under a different law to the minority, and that they are held down in poverty and serfdom, with every road to independence sealed to them.”

“What would you propose to do, ma’am?”

“To set the more obvious injustices right, and so to pave the way for a reform.  Now look at that man digging in the field.  I know him.  He can neither read nor write, he is steeped in whisky, and he has as much intelligence as the potatoes that he is digging.  Yet the man has a vote, can possibly turn the scale of an election, and may help to decide the policy of this empire.  Now, to take the nearest example, here am I, a woman who have had some education, who have traveled, and who have seen and studied the institutions of many countries.  I hold considerable property, and I pay more in imperial taxes than that man spends in whisky, which is saying a great deal, and yet I have no more direct influence upon the disposal of the money which I pay than that fly which creeps along the wall.  Is that right?  Is it fair?”

The Admiral moved uneasily in his chair.  “Yours is an exceptional case,” said he.

“But no woman has a voice.  Consider that the women are a majority in the nation.  Yet if there was a question of legislation upon which all women were agreed upon one side and all the men upon the other, it would appear that the matter was settled unanimously when more than half the population were opposed to it.  Is that right?”