The College, the Market, and the Court: or, Woman's relation to education, labor and lawDall, Caroline Wells Healey
History
The College, the Market, and the Court: or, Woman's relation to education, labor and law
Dall, Caroline Wells Healey
Women -- Education; Women -- Employment; Women -- Legal status, laws, etc.
I append to the above petition a few of the fifteen hundred names, which
will serve to give it identity, and interest in this country. We miss,
among the names, many names of the beloved dead; and many would
doubtless be there that we know, could it be signed by any save
property-holders.
A very powerful influence was brought to sustain this petition in
Parliament; and among its advocates were James Martineau, Herbert
Spencer, Professor Huxley, and Goldwin Smith. Mr. Mill seems to have
presented a second petition, headed by Lady Goldschmid, and signed by
three thousand persons; and another was offered, at the same time, by
Mr. Russell Gurney. On April 11, 1867, the subject of female suffrage
was first discussed in the House of Commons without being greeted with a
laugh. A petition presented by Mr. Duncan Maclaren, from Edinburgh, was
signed by eight university professors, six doctors of law, eighteen
clergymen, eight barristers, ten physicians, ten officers, and two
thousand other persons. Two women are said to have been lately elected
parish overseers: Mrs. Slocomb for Brittadon, and Mrs. Craig for Bratton
Fleming. The step-daughter of John Stuart Mill, Miss Helen Taylor,
contributed to the January number of the "Westminster" an article which
worthily sustained the far more comprehensive statement of her mother in
1851. It would be difficult to imagine a paper, however, that would
appeal more forcibly to the English people. There is in England a
Woman-Suffrage Association, which proposes to circulate that article as
a tract. Mrs. P.A. Taylor and Frances Power Cobbe are among its most
active members. Mrs. Bodichon has recently brought out two pamphlets on
this subject. They contain one instance, which is not familiar, of the
inconvenience of withholding the franchise from English women. Owners of
estates seek to further their own interest through the voting power of
their tenantry, and frequently eject women from farms, to replace them
by men who have a freehold. On one Suffolk farm, seven women have been
ejected. Among the instances which Mrs. Bodichon adduces to show the
need of female votes are the neglect of female education; the refusal of
leases, or the ejection of old tenants; the want of proper public
spirit, which women might be expected to infuse into affairs; and the
condition of workhouses, and charitable appropriations in general. In
Austria, information furnished to one of Mrs. Bodichon's papers seems to
show that the women have the same electoral rights as men, only that in
a few cases they are compelled to vote by proxy. They vote as nobles, in
their corporate capacity as nuns, and as tax-payers or merchants; but I
need not say that there is much uncertainty in the Austrian
administration of such a law.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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