Differing from the general rule in such matters, in Virginia it was the better class which survived, the convict class being gradually submerged by the persistence of the higher grade of immigrants. It must not, however, be forgotten in recalling the origin of the Virginian feminine culture that even among the convicts there were many who were mere prisoners of state and were of birth and standing the equal of any free men whom they left behind them in England. Nor are origins of so much concern as results; it is only where the former are evidently and persistently causal that they need dwelling on in this work. Therefore, we will pass from Virginia in the act of formation to Virginia as settled by a people who were as individual in their way, though a most diverse one, as their brethren of New England; but before completing the journey from Massachusetts to Virginia let us pause for a moment at an intermediate colony, to commemorate the deed of another woman pioneer in America, Mistress Margaret Brent, of Maryland, the first American woman to demand equal rights with men in the councils of state, the prototype of every female reformer of later times. It is necessary to suppose the reader familiar with the government and affairs generally in that peculiar palatinate, the colony of Lord Baltimore in Maryland. On the 9th of June, 1647, Leonard Calvert, the Governor of Maryland and vice-gerent of Lord Baltimore, died at St. Mary's, then the capital of the colony. He was attended during his fatal illness by his kinswomen, Mistresses Margaret and Mary Brent, and the former was made administrator to his estate. From this resulted an unprecedented incident, when in January, 1648, the new governor having called a session of the Assembly, Mistress Margaret Brent appeared in the council chamber and demanded "to have a vote in the House for herself and another as his Lordship's [Lord Baltimore] attorney." Upon the refusal of the Assembly, shocked at such a revolutionary demand, to consider the matter, Mistress Brent "protested in form against all the proceedings of that Assembly, unless she might be present and vote as aforesaid." Her protest did her very little good, unless it be well to have one's name handed down as a baffled reformer, but she thus won for herself at least a right to have her name placed on the pages of any volume dealing with the progress of the women of America. As far as there is any record, Margaret Brent was absolutely the first woman who ever even dreamed of being accorded equal rights of citizenship in a commonwealth of modern times, though antiquity could show other examples. She was at all events the first American woman to demand the privilege of the ballot and of a share in the government of her country; and her demand was based on the same foundation as that of her sisters in later times, that of the rights conferred by the care of property and a stake in the welfare of the commonwealth. The women reformers of our