A hundred years ago From the 'Spectator', 2 April 1870—Mrs
Faw- cett delivered last week at Brighton a very temperate and clever lecture in favour of ex- tending the political franchise to women,—a lecture of which any unprejudiced man would say at least thus much, that it showed no feminine disposition at all to ignore the argu- ments on the other side, and quite as much candour and logic as any lecturer of the other sex would have been likely to evince in appre- ciating their worth. Her lecture contains a far more complete and exhaustive treatment of the subject than could be expected from a number of stray speakers, even such as the Cavendish Square Rooms heard on Saturday; and yet Mrs Fawcett does not seem to us to have dealt with the strongest argument against her case at all, nor to have put some of the less strong ones in their strongest form. She admits indeed, very candidly the force of the argument from the exceedingly little wish existing among women for the suffrage, and remarks thereon with perfect fairness that, though this is no theoretic reason at all for not giving the suffrage to all, and letting those who do wish for it use it, still Englishmen are practical beings who will not, as a rule, right theoretic grievances, but will demand evidence that the grievance is something more than theoretic before they right it. There would be no disposition, for instance, to pass a bill giving married women full rights over their own property if there were no producible cases, or if there were only a very few and insignificant cases producible, of serious grievance resulting from the present state of the law. We have enough to do fighting with evils that have a very substantial existence. No one would wish the practical English Legis- lature to begin contending against potential, or hardly more than potential, evils.
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