5 FEBRUARY 1870, Page 3

The Solicitor-General made a good speech in Exeter last week,

in which he gave it as his impression (just as we have given it as ours), though disclaiming carefully any knowledge from behind the scenes, that the education measup promised us will do as little to interfere with, and as much to supplement the deficiencies of, the present system, as the Government can manage to make it. He congratulated his constituents that the Government were going to take up the University Tests' Abolition Bill, and to go a great deal further than he had proposed in the compromise he offered last year. On the question of married women's property, Sir John Coleridge spoke strongly, laying it down in general, that whatever power it is right to give women, it is right to give without relation to the mode in which they would probably at first use it,—that true Liberalism consists in having confidence in your principles apart from the immediate and temporary result of those principles. That is perfectly true, but it hardly applies to the question of women's suffrage until we have determined that the suffrage is to be given to all grown-up males,—the agricul- tural labourers, for instance,—en masse, without relation to their political capacity. But did not the Solicitor-General spoil all he had said on behalf of the women's rights, at least, for the enthusiasts, when he added that if women really were Tories, he did not mind, since they were the humanizers of society, and such "good souls "1 that "they may be anything they like for what I care." "Good souls !" who may be "anything they like" for what the Solicitor- General cares ! Why that is open contempt! The soul is only the immortal principle. The women would far rather be called

good minds 'and feared, than ' good souls 'and left out of account.