benevolent intentions of the enfranchised towards the unenfranchised, but upon the just representation of all. Self-government is life, and life cannot be lived at second hand. “Unfinished questions have no pity for the repose of nations.” It is only by means of the joint action of men and women that the great social questions of the present day can ever be satisfactorily settled, and when the iniquitous Contagious Diseases Acts—that huge retrograde step in legislation—are done away with, the country will only fall into new errors unless the voice of the women of the country, now raised from without, receive that permanent means of expressing itself shortly, easily, and effectually, which is given by the possession of the franchise, and by that alone. Let it not be forgotten that the women of England have had to come forth from the retirement of their own loved homes, to do and to suffer what they never would have been required to do and to suffer if they had possessed the franchise, and to wear their lives out in protesting against an iniquity which—if their unenfranchised voices be not powerful enough—will prove the ruin of their country. Those fastidious gentlemen who querulously cry out against the attitude lately assumed by patriotic and Christian women, and who shudder lest the faintest echoes of this agitation should reach the refined ears of their own wives and daughters, should remember that agitations involving questions of deep domestic interest will again and again be necessary, unless women are granted the power to influence Parliament without such agitation. It would be well that such persons should be fully alive to the fact also, that English women will be found ready again and again to agitate, to give men no repose, to turn the world upside down if need be, until impurity and injustice are expelled from our laws. The interests of women are palpably identical with morality; that the interests of men are equally so is not yet clearly perceived by all men. While contending for justice to their sex, women will therefore contend for morality. Let those who consider it an evil that feminine voices should be heard, even in the cause of morality, in such an agitation as the present, endeavour to prevent a recurrence of the evil by putting it in the power of women to act for the good of the country without raising their voice aloud. CHAPTER IX. I have now shown the grave character of the question which we are discussing. I have stated the principles of Magna Charta which form the basis of our Constitution, and I have pointed out how these principles are violated by the Acts which we oppose; I have traced the pernicious consequences arising from this violation, politically as well as morally; and I have briefly indicated the means by which we may repair the breach which has been made.