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contemporary politics; and if women are to be shut out from this field of ideas, lest perchance they should adopt opinions which should not be those of their future husbands, their education ought at once to be truncated by this large segment. Mr. Smith indeed suggests that women who are capable of discussing political questions "will find a sphere in the press." Does he then suppose that there would be less danger to the harmony of married life from women writing in the press—writing leaders, perhaps, for strong party papers—than from tendering a vote at the polls every four or five years? Besides, the suggestion falls utterly short of the requirements of the case. The number of women who are capable, or who desire, to find a sphere in the press are never likely to be more than a handful: the numbers who desire a liberal education, in the best and broadest sense of that word, and who are or may become quite fitted to form sound opinions on political questions, are already to be numbered by thousands, perhaps I might say by tens of thousands: what their numbers will become in another generation, I will not pretend to conjecture. Mr. Smith's suggestion, therefore, though graciously meant, is hardly to the purpose. Plainly nothing short of lopping off from the education of women some of the most important branches of human knowledge will meet the difficulty.
I must, before concluding, refer briefly (for my space is all but exhausted) to an aspect of the case touched on at the opening of these remarks—the probability of the admission of women to Parliament as a consequence of giving them the suffrage. As I have already pointed out, the latter concession by no means necessarily involves the former; so that it is quite open to those who are in favour of Woman Suffrage to decline, if they see fit to do so, to concede the latter privilege. For my own part, however, I desire to say frankly that I am in favour of removing, not only this, but all legal impediments whatever, to the freest choice by women of a career whether in political or in civil life. It is not that I look forward to women taking advantage, in any very large
