If you can establish this, if you can show us that any one elected a "member" under our law can be debarred on the score of sex from taking a seat on the Council, then I will instantly allow that our laws do provide for the election of women, and that the very ground of our argument is proved to be a quicksand. When you endorsed the statement that came so naturally from Millais, Calderon, and Leslie, I felt the matter was serious, for I saw at once that you could not do justice to our argument in the summing up because its very foundation was misapprehended by you. Although the question is now disposed of, I beg of you to look closely into the matter and assure yourself of it. I only wish I had known beforehand where your doubts were centered, for I would have done my best to remove them. I know you will find, beyond all doubt and controversy, that any one made a "member" by election can make good a claim to a seat on the Council, just as Mr. Tresham made good his claim; and it is because our laws provide for only one kind of members--a Council-sitting kind--that we felt the necessity of providing for the election of a non-Council-sitting kind. In making this distinction we follow the example of George the Third and the founders of the Academy (who presumably knew something of the understanding upon which the two ladies became connected with the Society), for their decision, when they _administered_ the law in the Tresham case, excluded women from a privilege which could not be denied to a "member" elected under the law. Of course their and our interpretation is open to dispute; but this much is beyond dispute, that if the law is interpreted as providing for women being "members," then it also places them (against the intention, as we see, of the founders) upon the Council; and as the great majority of the present Academicians have made up their minds that women shall not sit on Council, legislation would be necessary on either reading of the law. The schedule of privileges to be given on the one hypothesis, would on the other give place to a subtraction of privileges, and either schedule would be determined according to the varying shades of opinions of the members. There would remain only this difference in the result; one schedule would be based upon a law that is open to varying interpretations, whereas according to our method the schedule was based upon a positive resolution providing for the election of women, thus removing the question from all future discussion and doubt. H.T.W. From Sir FREDERIC LEIGHTON, P.R.A. _January 30, 1880._