‘The honour,’ said the Mayor (Mr. Norman) in his preliminary address to the Council, ‘is given with discrimination, and somewhat rarely. We in Cheltenham, during the thirty years of our corporate life, have only conferred it in two instances.... I am charged to-day with the proposing of a resolution which will add a third to that number. The resolution is in these terms:— “That, in recognition of the great work she has done for the education of women in England, and especially of the unique position to which under her direction the Cheltenham Ladies’ College has attained among the educational institutions of the country, Miss Dorothea Beale be, in pursuance and exercise of the provisions of the Honorary Freedom of Boroughs’ Act, 1885, admitted to the honorary freedom of this borough.” ‘When I first approached Miss Beale on this subject, I did not know whether any lady had before been admitted a freeman of the borough. But from the wording of the Act of Parliament I was quite sure that the term “freeman” in the section quoted was used in a generic sense, and that ladies were as eligible as men to the honour which we propose to confer upon Miss Beale. I was therefore prepared to create a precedent, if necessary. But since then I have learned that at least in one case, that of Baroness Burdett Coutts, this honour has been conferred upon a lady.’ In her reply Miss Beale said:— ‘ ... In some places those who should work together stand opposed; elsewhere we have heard of fights between town and gown; at some seats of learning women have been denied titles that they have earned. In Cheltenham we have a happy conciliation of opposites.... You Municipal authorities recognise that; you care not only for pure water and open spaces and cleanliness, but for the Free Library and Science Schools and Art Galleries and healthy recreations; and we school authorities cannot but make the body healthier by mental discipline, by the sunshine of truth, by inspiring the young with high aspirations, and so lifting them out of the rudeness which is the outward sign of selfishness. I look upon to-day’s ceremony as a sign of our faith for the individual and for the community, health in its largest sense, _mens sana in corpore sano_, is to be realised only by the harmonious working of the inward and outward law. To invite a woman to be a Freeman of a Town is, I venture to believe, an expression of the thought that not the individual but the family, with its twofold life, is the true unit and type of the state, that social and civil and national prosperity depend on the communion of labour, and that the ideal commonwealth is realised only in proportion as the dream of one of our poets is fulfilled, and men and women “Walk this world Yoked in all exercise of noble ends.”