"The emigration of two or three hundred thousand of our women would be a great boon to us," said Lord Shaftesbury the other day; "it would even be the greatest blessing that could happen to England." The wish is not a gallant one, but it is sensible and practical. It is even calculated that, if this wish could be realised, the number of women that would remain, would still surpass by 500,000 the number of her Britannic Majesty's male subjects. Now, supposing that one day or the other every man enters the holy estate of matrimony, the above figures prove that, in this realm, about 800,000 ladies are condemned to a condition of single blessedness. Miss Miller, Miss Cobbe, and other leaders of the Sisterhood of St. Catharine would quickly remedy this sad state of things, if they were allowed to vote, and one day to change the _Parlement_ into _Bavardement_. Miss Cobbe, the destroying angel of Man's rights, exclaimed at a meeting held in London, on the 13th of June, 1884, that "she regretted that she could not fight and pull down park railings to accomplish her object." This is promising, is it not? At the same meeting, Miss Miller announced her intention of paying no more taxes.[5] "I will force the tax collector," she said, "to break into my house and sell my goods by auction, when I shall have a gathering of friends to protest against the injustice done to women, with the full intention of making my resistance more forcible and myself more disagreeable and troublesome to the authorities every year." [5] To the great amusement of the peaceful inhabitants of London, this lady has just carried out her threats. You will, however, be glad to hear that her friends managed to restore to her the distrained goods, so that the little performance did not tell much on the lady's purse. This is energy worthy of a better cause. It is needless to add that such ladies are mostly unclaimed blessings, and that none of them set up as professional beauties. When a woman is beautiful, she is generally content with playing a woman's part; when she is a mother, this sublime _rôle_ is sufficient for her. These tedious persons embrace the thankless career of advocates of woman's rights, because they have never found anything better to embrace. And these excellent ladies must not put it into their heads that they have created the part, for it existed in the days of Aristophanes: Praxagora was neither more nor less ridiculous than the present champions of Women's rights. It would be the reverse of generous for a man to reproach a woman with being an old maid. When a man does not marry, it is for want of an inclination; when a woman does not marry, it is for want of an invitation. However that may be, the old maid is a social failure, and, in England, almost a social evil. At all events, she is a social nuisance, when she sets up as an institution, a system, and claims the right of being placed at the helm _ex-officio_.