formerly possessed. If the single woman engaged in outside employment needs the protection of the vote, then for equally cogent reasons her married sister needs the vote. By conferring the vote upon married women their condition would be materially improved although still economically dependent upon their husbands.
It is undeniable that women need the protection given by the vote, but in how many branches of legislation is their advice not only the best to be had but absolutely essential in drafting beneficent measures? Education and all that pertains to child life is one of these. Who can say better than a mother what age a child should have attained before it is compelled to attend school? Who can read the child mind like a mother? And who can say better at what age a child is fit to enter a factory, and when a factory is fit to receive a child? I mention this merely as illustrating one particular sphere in which the woman has a special claim to be heard.
But the woman's claim to enfranchisement rests on no one particular qualification. She is a human being, subject to the laws of the State, and as such has a claim upon the State to be put upon terms of political equality with the male. In those countries where rights of citizenship have been conferred on women, there has been no great and sweeping change either in policy or legislation. Women, like men, only feel responsibility when it comes home to them, and hitherto that of citizenship has not done so. The first effect of the Reform Act of 1832 was the defeat of those Members of Parliament who were
