A large meeting was held in Manchester on Tuesday to
advo- cate the concession of the franchise to women. Mr. Bright's eldest daughter was to have spoken, but was prevented by illness, and the task of displaying female power in debate was left to Miss Becker and Mrs. Pochin, wife of the Mayor of Salford. Mrs. Pochin read a good but lengthy speech, in the course of which she characterized the author of the articles on women in the Saturday Review as a " guinea-a-liner," denied that women were indifferent to the franchise, and declared on the authority of Mr. Chisholm Anstey that the law as it stood did not forbid women to vote. She refuted the popular argument that women as a sex needed no special changes in the law, and affirmed that they wished for equal rights of inheritance, of property, and of bequest ; that they desired to see the Universities thrown open, or others founded, and the money left for education spent on girls as well as on boys ; that they repudiated the restrictions now im- posed upon female labour, —in the professions, we presume,—and that they desired " a Christian Marriage Law." We do not under- stand the last expression, but of the remaining demands most would be conceded by men on the first appearance of a really earnest wish for them, a wish that is not confined to a class, but general among the sex.
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