15). “From this examination it results that the pretext set up to exclude women from political rights, namely, the inclination of men to use power over them beneficently; would, if admitted, sweep away the grand argument itself for the political rights of men.” “We shall investigate the philosophical pretext of the ‘article’ for the degradation of one half of the adult portion of the human race in the following order:—(1) Does the identity of interest between men and women, in point of fact, exist? (2) If it do exist, is it a sufficient cause, or any reason at all, why either of the parties, with interests thus identified, should therefore be deprived of political rights? (3) Is there in the nature of things any security for equality of enjoyments proportional to exertion and capabilities, but by means of equal civil rights? or any security for equal civil but by means of equal political rights? In regard to the first, there are three great classes of women. First, all women without fathers or husbands; second, adult daughters in their father’s establishment; third, wives. The first class have no men to identify their interests with; they are therefore the class, sometimes scornfully called, _the unprotected_. Adult daughters can acquire legal rights as against their fathers, but on marriage they forfeit their freedom, and are again thrown back into the class of children or idiots.” “Involving of interests must mean that one enjoys as much as the other, is this true as between husband and wife?” “The very assumption of despotic power by the husbands over wives is in itself a demonstration, that in the opinion of husbands, a contrariety, and not an involving of interests, exists between them and their wives. Domestic despotism corrupts man’s moral frame.” “If it is more difficult for women to labour, why should men further increase the difficulty by protecting themselves? In justice to the stronger excluding party, as well as to the weaker, all such powers of excluding ought to be withheld” (p. 149). Many must have read, but few assimilated Mr. Thompson’s able and generous arguments. Meanwhile, in regard to the Representation of the People’s Acts, the parliamentary franchises had been revised and cobbled, but in none was any but the general term used. The Act 7 and 8 William III. describes electors as “freeholders,” or “persons”; 18 George II., c. xviii., 19 George II., c. xxviii., use the same general terms. That of 3 George III. limits the franchise “to persons who had taken up their freedom for 12 months.”