They have voted for ten years; and a four-years' residence among them was sufficient to convince me, that no greater derangement to society would occur if the full right were conferred. In connection with English government and English colonies, I ought to speak of the government of Pitcairn's Island. It was the mutinous crew of his majesty's ship "Bounty" that settled Pitcairn's Island. Adams, the boatswain, was the father of the little community, and drew up the simple code of laws by which the islanders are still governed. On Christmas Day, a magistrate and councillor are elected for the ensuing year; men and women over sixteen being allowed to vote. The women assist in the cultivation of the ground, and take no inconsiderable share in the municipal debates. The fate of this experiment is not yet decided; so I have thought it worth while to preserve the statement. You will have already seen, that in England, as elsewhere, so long as the right of suffrage depended upon possession of property, upon hard pieces of eight, or broad acres of land, there was no dispute of woman's privilege. It is no new thing for woman to vote in England: it is a very _old_ thing. It is only a question whether she shall vote upon the ground of her humanity. FOOTNOTES: [35] A curious instance of the immoral result of holding marriage sacramental, and indissoluble under all circumstances, comes within my personal experience while I am correcting these pages for the press, Oct. 11, 1861. A young Catholic girl was divorced some years ago, immediately after marriage, on account of the bad conduct of her husband. She was received into the family of a brother-in-law, in every way highly respectable. For the last two years, she has been courted by an officer in the navy of the United States; but nowhere in New England could a Catholic priest be found willing to marry them. The church still holds her responsible to her first vows. The officer honestly desired to marry her; but the natural result of her ignorance and perplexity followed. Expecting to become a mother, and rejected by her family, she came to me for advice. As the officer is a Protestant, I recommended that they should be married by a minister of that faith. She again consulted her priest, and was told that it was less sinful for her to remain in her present relation to her lover than to receive a sacrament from unholy hands; the priest ignoring utterly the _legal_ protection and maintenance which she might thus receive. [36] The only excuse for considering this point, in an essay pleading especially for women, is that the law bears unequally on the two sexes; pressing hardest on woman, on account of her pecuniary dependence, and general subordination to man.