There is also another way in which our poor are deprived of a great deal of help they would otherwise receive. Many of our churches and chapels are simply begging houses, in which their frequenters are persuaded to part with every penny they can be induced to spare. And this, if the donors are satisfied, is perfectly right in its way. But is it right that while countless poor souls, old and young, are rotting, body and soul, in our own land, it should be the boast of our Missionary Societies that they give hundreds of thousands of pounds every year to strangers who do not need the gospel preached practically to them half so much as the miserable denizens of the back slums of our own parishes? The zeal of the advocates of Foreign missions is commendable, but I respectfully submit that it is misdirected, and if some of them had half an idea of what only too often ultimately becomes of their money, they would be very chary about subscribing in future. But when even those whose office and mission it is to seek and succour their poor and needy neighbours, find their time and attention taken up with more distant and less pressing duties, how is it likely that our legislators, occupied so intensely as they are in trying to prove each other unfit for office, will ever find time to take the cause of the social improvement of the people into consideration? It is hopeless to think of it at present, for a true and tender interest will never be felt in the units of the nation until our Constitution becomes less that of rulers and ruled, and more like that of mother and children. To this devoutly-to-be-hoped-for consummation there is another obstacle. The truly maternal instinct has no equivalent in the breast of man, and so long as none but men are the people’s representatives, even so long will that people be deprived of a thousand rights which a just, earnest, womanly co-government would give them. It is monstrous to speak of women as being even incapable of voting wisely, when they have already proved themselves capable of governing much more judiciously than men, many of whom seem to recognise no other legitimate result of taking office than squabbling and banqueting. Certainly in many cases these are about the only matters to which some of our corporate bodies devote their attention, and surely, surely feminine nincompoopery could go no further than this! There is a town in Kansas, called Oskaloosa, of which the Mayor and other members of the Corporation are all women. Their first term of office has been so triumphantly progressive that they have been enthusiastically re-elected, and within twelve months the place has made such wonderful strides in the trifling matters of social morality, sanitation, and prosperity, that it is the wonder of surrounding towns.