His utterance on the Women’s Franchise has coloured the minds of willing disciples until to-day. In Add. MS. 25, 271, Hakewell on impositions, says, “To make a man judge in his own cause and especiallie ye mightie over ye weake, and that in pointe of profitt to him that judgeth, were to leave a way open to oppression and bondage.” So women proved. There is no doubt that Puritanism on the one hand, and the frivolity of the fashions of the Restoration on the other, tended to make women content with their narrowed political privileges, and restricted educational opportunities. Only among the Society of Friends, commonly called Quakers, did women retain their natural place. Though there were some brilliant exceptions, the majority of women, by the procrustean methods of treatment in vogue were reduced to the state of incompetency that society came to believe was natural to them. “It was unwomanly for women to think and act for themselves.” “Women had no concern in public affairs.” “Men knew much better than women did what was good for them,” were proverbs. By losing one privilege they lost others. New laws were made prejudicial to their interests, and old laws retranslated in a new and narrow spirit. Precedent gained power to override statute; the notions of justice between the sexes became warped and distorted. The laws of inheritance were altered, the rights of women in their property further ignored. Sophistical Labour Creeds were introduced to support masculine property privilege. Work was ignoble for _ladies_, except when done without remuneration; domestic work was not cognisable in coin of the realm, therefore women were said to be _supported_ by their male relatives, though they might labour ten times as much as they. It was natural to educate them little, so that they should not know; it was natural to take privileges from those who knew not what they lost. =Protesting Women.=—But the Suppression of the Sex did not go on without various Protests on the part of women during the 200 years of this Backdraw in the tide of Civilisation. We cannot spare time for every detail; but three illustrative women must be noted—the first born in the 16th Century, protesting against the infringement of the Inheritance Laws in relation to women; the second born in the 17th Century, against the withdrawal of their educational advantages; the third born in the 18th Century, against their social, civil and political degradation.