20 MAY 1876, Page 3

There was a grand muster of the friends of women's

suffrage at St. George's Hall this day week, under the presidency of the Recorder of London, Mr. Russell Gurney. Evidently the word had gone forth to be very prudent, and not only the Chairman, bnt even Miss Becker, indignantly repudiated ulterior views, and the latter professed that she should be content when once women are enfranchised under the same terms (no- minally) as men are now. Miss Cobbe, in a speech of some ability, though some bitterness, some of the argu- ments of which we have examined carefully elsewhere, main- tained that women are really oppressed, and not only op- pressed, but morally injured, by their inferior status,—that in the higher classes at least they are more or less turned into toys and creatures of luxury, whereas in the lower class, "tens," nay "hundreds of thousands" of women suffer grievous burdens from the inequality of the law as regards the sexes. If that be so, which we do not believe, all we can say is that the remedy proposed is almost as disproportionate as the mountebank's pill "which was very good against an earthquake." Miss Tod con- cluded her speech with an extract from "The Hunting of the Snark," and we cannot but fear that this is what these ladies are about, and that their Snark, too, will turn out a " Boojum."