And Mr. Courtney Kenny says, on the same point, that the English Law of Marriage in the twelfth century had “clothed the humblest husband with more than the authority of a feudal lord, and merged his wife’s legal existence altogether in his own.”—(“History of the Law of Married Women’s Property,” p. 8.) And he exemplifies the position of the “feme” as being accurately depicted in the words of Petruchio:— “I will be master of what is mine own, She is my goods, my chattels; she is my house, My household stuff, my field, my barn, My horse, my ox, my ass, my anything.” —(“The Taming of the Shrew,” Act III., scene 2.) The picture of the past masculine proprietorship and “bullyism” is scarcely overdrawn. Ere a distant day Englishmen will shudder in reflecting on the male creatures who were their progenitors. 5, 6.—“_The tardier fear that grants the clown a share In his own governance, denies it her._” By a leading article on Woman Suffrage, in the _Times_ of 29th April, 1892, a clear light is thrown on the causes which largely influenced the extension of the Parliamentary franchise to the poorer class of male citizens,—“a share of political power which they are not particularly well fitted to use,” says the _Times_;—and which denied the same right of franchise to women of whatever class. The intellect of the _Times_ enounces that— “Without desiring to disparage the sex in any way, we must venture to maintain that in both camps a large female contingent would be a mischievous element. The female Conservative politician would be an obstacle to all rational reform; the female Liberal politician would be the advocate of every crude and febrile innovation. No doubt we have put plausible arguments in the mouths of mere logic-choppers by treating the franchise as a right rather than as a privilege and a trust. Men can demand a share of _political power which they are not particularly well fitted to use_, because they possess _de facto_ a share of the physical force upon which all political arrangements ultimately repose. Women do not possess such physical force, and, therefore, can prefer no such claim.” Passing over, as unworthy of serious refutation, the wild assertions due to sex-bias in the first part of the above extract, it may be noted how instantly the lauded masculine weapon of logic is discarded and contemned as soon as it points in the direction of equal justice for woman. The “physical force” question is further dealt with in Note XLV., 6. But considering the words we have italicised, does not the whole of the _Times_ exposition as above justify the appellation of cowardly “fear”? (See also p. 78.) _Id._... Yet an even more unworthy thing than denial of the suffrage has taken place, in that English women have been really robbed of their earlier franchises. A lady Poor Law Guardian of the Tewkesbury Union has written:—