(_Miss Nightingale to John Stuart Mill._) 35 SOUTH STREET, _August_ 11 [1867]. I can't tell you how much pleased I was nor how grateful I feel that you should take the trouble to write to me. And if I ill-naturedly answer your question by asking one, it is because I have scarcely any one who can give me (as my dear friend, Mr. Clough, long since dead, said) a "considered opinion." That women should have the suffrage, I think no one can be more deeply convinced than I. It is so important for a woman to be a "person," as you say. And I think I see this most strongly in married life. If the woman is not a "person," it does almost infinite harm even to her husband. And the harm is greatest when the man is a very clever man and the woman a very clever woman. But it will be years before you obtain the suffrage for women. And in the meantime there are evils which press much more hardly on women than the want of the suffrage. And will not this when obtained put women in opposition to those who withhold these rights from them, so as to retard still further the legislation which is necessary to put them in possession of their rights? I ask humbly, and I am afraid you will laugh at me. Could not the existing disabilities as to property and influence of women be swept away by the legislature as it stands at present? and equal responsibilities be given, as they ought to be, to both men and women? I do not like to take up your time with giving instances, redressible by legislation, in which my experience tells me that women, and especially poor and married women, are most hardly pressed upon now. No matron, serving on a large scale as I have done, and with the smallest care for her Nurses, can be unaware of these. Till a married woman can be in possession of her own property, there can be no love or justice. But there are many other evils, as I need not tell you. Is it possible that, if woman suffrage is agitated as a means of removing these evils, the effect may be to prolong their existence? Is it not the case that at present there is no opposition between the two elements of the nation, but that, if both had equal political power, there is a probability that the social reforms required might become matter of political partizanship, and so the weaker go to the wall? I can scarcely expect that you will have time to answer my humble questions.