of heaven, and engines to force a way through the opposing waters. So if men and women are united in combining and working any great social machinery, it will then work well. These principles, my Lord, based on natural and immutable laws, were perhaps disputed yesterday, are faintly recognised to-day, but will become the common faith of to-morrow. Therefore with regard to this "woman question "so called as I have no misgivings, so I have no desire to precipitate the inevitable; no wish to hurry, and by hurrying perplex or defeat for a time that matured and practical result to which we all look forward. For myself, I have a deep-seated solemn conviction that the great social want of our time is a more perfect domestic union, and a more complete social communion of men and women; and that this want, more and more felt through the thinking brain and throbbing heart of the people, will, in God's good time, be fulfilled by natural means, and work to natural issues of good and happiness beyond our present imagining.

But these, it will be said, are visions of a yet distant future. Let us return, then, to the present. This hour and its conflict belong to us. Let us, like Jacob at Peniel, "hold the fleet angel fast," until, after the strife and the struggle, he leave us at dawn of day unvanquished and with a blessing.

THIS HOUR AND ITS CONFLICT; for, my Lord, however we may deprecate the idea, it cannot be denied that we

In one of our Girls' Colleges, under high patronage and managed by a joint committee of Ladies and Gentlemen, nearly the whole of the Ladies' Committee (sixteen out of twenty-four) resigned at once, because they differed with the Gentlemen's Committee on some point of importance. "See there!" it was said to me, "the result of your Communion of Labour'!" After the resignation of these ladies and the election of others, they were found to be in the right. The points at issue were conceded. So the result of this "Communion,” though disturbed, will be on the whole good. There will be in future less dogmatism on the part of the men, and less haste and susceptibility on the part of the women, and a better understanding between both.

are in the midst of a moral and social conflict, which is disturbing the deepest elements of our moral and social life, and compared to which all political and national conflicts are superficial and transient. One half of the human community, without any perceptibly organised movement, and only urged by an acute sense of individual sufferingindividual necessity-presses forward, striving, not vainly, for a more equal distribution of labour and its privileges. The other half resist. Men say to us, "You women will perhaps gain such and such advantages, but you will be the worse for it. You will awaken in men a spirit of antagonism instead of a spirit of protection." And then, anon, with a sort of cruel inconsistency, they say, "If women would have such or such advantages, they must obtain them for themselves. They must do for themselves what men certainly will not do for them. They must not look for help from men whose protection they have thrown off."

Now with regard to the "spirit of antagonism" with which we are threatened, does it allude to the jealousy caused by industrial competition? Antagonism to woman on the part of any individual man is allowed to be unmanly, and no man confesses to any such feeling; but it has always existed—it does still exist in every associated body of men who have to consult, decide, act, legislate, where women are concerned. It is not therefore an evil to be threatened or apprehended, but one to be shaken off. It has done its worst, this old-world, unchristian spirit of antagonism; but of the mischief which is past we are reaping the consequences in the mischief of the present.

My Lord, as a statesman, watchful of the signs of the times, you must be well aware that women have lately been employed in various occupations hitherto confined to men. All enlightened men rejoice in this as forming a counterpoise to many threatening evils; and yet the first attempt

of women to enter on a new sphere of industry is invariably met by any associated body of men, whose privileges or whose gains appear to be threatened, in a spirit of the most angry antagonism. The immediate feeling is not to welcome us as helpers and associates, but to put us down as rivals and interlopers; and this spirit is not confined to gangs and unions of vulgar uneducated artisans, or boards of jealous poor-law guardians: it is to be found in Royal Academies of art and Royal Colleges of physicians. Thus driven out of the natural communion of labour, we are solemnly warned against the loss of "protection" which must ensue if we dare to make a stand for ourselves. A woman so naturally clings to the protection of man, that until that protection be in some way withdrawn or unattainable, she never does "set up for herself" as the phrase. is. If, on the other hand, she is exposed to want, and has cultivated talents which enable her to earn a maintenance, why must she, therefore, be supposed to forego willingly that sense of moral support and solace which only the man can give to the woman, and which are far more to her than her daily bread? This is a strange mistake, a strange confounding of the most opposite things. Do men suppose that our love, honour, and obedience depend on the quantity of food they put into our mouths? How degrading to their manly dignity, how unworthy of all womanly feeling is such an idea! But in fact this spirit of industrial antagonism arises from the fear that an influx of female labour will swamp the labour-market and diminish their own gains. It would be superfluous to add one word to what has been said against this unmanly and short-sighted call for "protection" on the part of the stronger sex against the weaker, and I shall say nothing here about the industrial callings of the working women, because in a country where two millions of women must labour for their bread, a material and inevitable necessity must bring this question to its

natural solution. "Commerce and agriculture are the man's sphere; preparing the food and raiment, the woman's sphere:" such, at least, is said to be the natural division of labour; yet we do not find women conspiring against man-cooks, man-milliners, or man-midwives, for "taking the bread out of our mouths," as gangs of china-painters, watchmakers, and compositors have conspired against women.*

As to protection extended to the working women, they ought to need no other than that of equal laws. I have already alluded to those recent and humane enactments by which women are henceforth to be protected against the dreadful abuse of physical strength in the lower orders of society, and against a not less terrible abuse of particular social rights in the higher classes.† So far men have given us legal protection against themselves; but then there is another sort of protection which we are supposed to need and to be grateful to men for extending to us. It is assumed that every man must and does protect his own wife, sister, daughter, from other men, In certain cases, if it be in the power of the strong to destroy the weak, it is taken for granted that he will. can man, the "woman's natural protector," always protect even the dear one who sits by his hearth? Has he always respected the protection of his own roof so far as his dependants are concerned? Does he think of extending this protection to the wife, the daughter, the sister of his neighbour? Not in the least. It is not, therefore, in right of her, womanhood, but as a part of the property of a man

But

cosa sua that a woman is protected. I do not see,

See "The Industrial and Social Position of Women of the Middle and Lower Ranks:" written, I believe, by an accomplished barrister; and the first article in the Edinburgh Review for April 1859. This last is especially a sign of the times: four or five years ago, such an article would not have been accepted by the editor.

† Vide "The Communion of Labour,” p. 74.

therefore, that we have much reason to regard this threat of losing the man's protection.

Then, as to the second proposition, that "women must help themselves, for men will not help them;" this may well make us pause. In the first place, we cannot gain for ourselves what we require in the way of better laws (needed still), better means of education, and a better training for that larger sphere of social work to which women are called by appeals from the pulpit, the platform, the public press, and by the acknowledged necessities of the time. To make these appeals, to expatiate on these necessities, yet demur to give us the means of preparing ourselves for the work to which we are called-this is not just. "Go make brick, but we will not give you straw; go find it for yourselves! " But we cannot! We are so bound up in you men,-you have been so long our legislators, our pastors, and our masters, that we must receive it from your hands, or despair. Women may honestly and perseveringly strive and work, but unless they win the help and the sympathy of good men, and succeed in convincing the reason of intelligent men, vain are all their efforts. But men do help us. It has been proved by the recent changes in our laws that we do find able, generous defenders; and when we hear such men,-men who have placed themselves in the van of social improvement, distinguished by intellect, by high station, by long experience of life and its vicissitudes, when we hear such men speaking publicly words of hope, then, indeed, we may believe that the cause I have pleaded in the following Essays will no longer be called the "woman-question," but the "human-question," as concerning not merely one half of the community at this present time, but all humanity to all time. Neither the march of intellect, nor reform of Parliament if I may say so to Lord John Russell-nor new churches with extra services, and zealous bishops to pray for us and preach to us, not these, nor any other specifics,