Victor Hugo has said, “Man was the problem of the eighteenth century, Woman is the problem of the nineteenth.” To understand and solve that problem, a totally different set of reasonings must be applied than have hitherto been used by the majority of men. The so-called “Physical Force Argument” is, after all, but the ghost of a Dead Argument raised to scare the timid in the night. It can be valid only in Savage times, when Might makes Right. It is inoperative in Civilisations, where Justice even _pretends_ to decide the rights of men. Even under the “physical force argument,” some women might be free. Many women are stronger than many men; and many women have been known to signalise that strength, not only in disguise as soldiers, or as navvies, but openly fearless and free.[ix.] The courage of Nicholaa de la Haye and Black Agnes of Dunbar; of the Countess of Derby and the Marchioness of Hamilton during the Civil War has been emulated by many others. Some men assert scornfully that women are not fit for privilege or power. To assert a thing is not to prove it. If women are not fit for the Franchise, perhaps it may be made fit for them. It is perfectly certain that they are fitted to enjoy justice and to benefit by freedom. Some sentimentalists say that women are too pliable and delicate to be exposed to the roughnesses of political life. It would destroy their charm. To such objectors I would answer, Look out into the flat meadows where sluggish streamlets wind, and see in the inartistic clumps of pollard-willows an illustration of the manner in which “woman’s nature” has been treated by such men. Though their roots and leaves are the same, though their upward aspirations are permanent, and their vital energies restorative, yet through top-pruning at the will of others, for the use of others, the growth and the ideals of the trees have been marred for ever. Nothing can ever restore to a Pollard-Willow its natural place in the picture-gallery of trees. But its distortion has only been individual, its offspring through freedom may develope into a perfect tree, really sweet and graceful, and not artificially so. Other sentimentalists say that women are angels, and their purity must not be contaminated by contact with the great outer world of vile realities. They mistake fragile butterflies for God’s angels. These are spirits strong in His strength, whose inward purity gives them power to pass unscathed through external impurity, whose sympathy gives them knowledge and whose presence purifies and refines the moral atmosphere. The more a woman is like an angel, the more is she needed to counsel and to work with men.