Something which she said to the editor with reference to Buckle’s extravagant estimate of Mill, brought a smile to the Englishman’s lip, and bowing slightly, he said: 

“Pardon me, Miss Earl, if I interrupt you a moment to express my surprise at hearing Mill denounced by an American.  His books on Representative Government and Liberty are so essentially democratic that I expected only gratitude and eulogy from his readers on this side of the Atlantic.”

Despite her efforts to control it, embarrassment unstrung her nerves, and threw a quiver into her voice, as she answered: 

“I do not presume, sir, to ‘denounce’ a man whom Buckle ranks above all other living writers and statesmen, but, in anticipating the inevitable result of the adoption of some of Mill’s proposed social reforms, I could not avoid recalling that wise dictum of Frederick the Great concerning philosophers—­a saying which Buckle quotes so triumphantly against Plato, Aristotle, Descartes—­even Bacon, Newton, and a long list of names illustrious in the annals of English literature.  Frederick declared:  ’If I wanted to ruin one of my provinces I would make over its government to the philosopher.’  With due deference to Buckle’s superior learning and astuteness, I confess my study of Mill’s philosophy assures me that, if society should be turned over to the government of his theory of Liberty and Suffrage, it would go to ruin more rapidly than Frederick’s province.  Under his teachings the women of England might soon marshal their amazonian legions, and storm not only Parnassus but the ballot-box, the bench, and the forum.  That this should occur in a country where a woman nominally rules, and certainly reigns, is not so surprising, but I dread the contagion of such an example upon America.”

“His influence is powerful, from the fact that he never takes up his pen without using it to break some social shackles; and its strokes are tremendous as those of the hammer of Thor.  But surely, Miss Earl, you Americans can not with either good taste, grace, or consistency, upbraid England on the score of woman’s rights’ movements?”

“At least, sir, our statesmen are not yet attacked by this most loathsome of political leprosies.  Only a few crazy fanatics have fallen victims to it, and if lunatic asylums were not frequently cheated of their dues, these would not be left at large, but shut up together in high-walled enclosures, where, like Sydney Smith’s ‘gramnivorous metaphysicians,’ or Reaumur’s spiders, they could only injure one another and destroy their own webs.  America has no Bentham, Bailey, Hare or Mill, to lend countenance or strength to the ridiculous clamor raised by a few unamiable and wretched wives, and as many embittered, disappointed, old maids of New England.  The noble apology which Edmund Burke once offered for his countrymen always recurs to my mind when I hear these ‘women’s conventions’ alluded to:  ’Because half-a-dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field