But we are told that the worst evils from which women suffer cannot be cured by legislation. Government can certainly give them the equal heritage, protection, and bequest of property; it can give them a Christian marriage law, instead of visiting matrimony with the same punishment as high treason—namely, confiscation; it can throw open to them the existing universities, or endow others to give them the high education that men value; it can restore to them the schools and institutions destined by their founders for girls as well as boys, but which are now used for boys only; it can distribute the public funds equally for the good of both sexes; it can make restrictions on the productiveness of female labour illegal. Concerning the evils which legislation cannot cure, women are making no public complaint. The objections to female suffrage are various. In an article in the _Times_, it is said: “There exists, as it were, a tacit concordat guaranteeing to the weaker sex the protection and deference of the stronger, upon one condition only: that condition is the political dependence of women.” Now, we admit that women have no physical power to enforce the suffrage; and if the state is to be measured by might, they will occupy the bottom of the scale. But the rights of women do not depend upon their physical strength, but flow from the prevailing sense of justice; and justice means that the interests of women be consulted with as much impartiality as the interests of men. Another objection to the enfranchisement of women is, that politics would withdraw them from their proper duties. This apprehension is not well founded. It is quite possible to unite an interest in politics with attention to a family. In our free churches women vote equally with men, and this privilege has largely contributed to the success of the voluntary system. Moreover, women, if they have the same qualifications as men, have votes at municipal elections. We are almost ashamed to refer to the stock arguments upon this subject. They are about as weighty as those recently employed against the enfranchisement of the working classes. Women, in general, may know less of politics than men; but educated women are surely not far behind many of the new voters in political knowledge. We all know hundreds of women who are far more competent to exercise the franchise than thousands already on the register. Those who oppose the concession of the suffrage to women, are astonishingly inconsistent. In one sentence they speak of the difference of sex as something which ought to exclude them from any share in the political workings of the world—something affecting all their thoughts and impulses and actions, and making it right to keep votes from them simply on the ground that they are women. In another sentence we are told that this accident of sex affects the female nature and career so lightly, that if they were permitted to go to the polling booth they would become unsexed.