It would be partly true and partly false to regard the objects of those who practically founded Newnham College as identical with those of the leading champions of the political and legal rights of women. Of course, as might naturally be expected, many of those who, through breadth of sympathy and hatred of injustice, gave the greater part of their lives and energies to the removal of female disabilities, public and private, were very ready to respond to the demand for higher education for girls and women. One need only think (looking at the leaders of thought in the middle of last century) of John Stuart Mill (a benefactor to the Cambridge Lectures Association and to similar enterprises) with the philosophic school which he represented and led. The advocates of political liberty and those of higher education for women used to a large extent the same arguments, and the securing of one end favoured the prospects of the other. Those who held that women were on the eve of obtaining greater rights and responsibilities were bound to show sympathy with the cause of education; they could quote the words of Samson Agonistes: "What were strength without a double share of wisdom? Vast, unwieldy, burdensome." And on the other hand every movement made in the direction of sound education for women told in favour of opening spheres of usefulness and conceding rights as to property and personal liberty which uneducated women might possibly have abused. Among the earlier friends of Newnham, probably by far the larger number were warmly attached to the franchise movement, especially when it came within the range of practical politics. At the same time, advocates of higher education were unlikely to be possessed--as were a few excellent and high-minded women--by the idea of the suffrage as a panacea for all women's grievances or a necessary condition of any step towards social betterment. Necessity and common sense prescribed caution to the pioneers who were directing their efforts to obtain some measure of university education for women able to profit thereby.