Government, but was paid equally to owners of seats whose nominees had voted against the Union.

In the same way the holder of every office which was suppressed was lavishly pensioned, though probably not more lavishly than he would have been in England. Useful supporters received promotion in preference to opponents, a course not unprecedented in Britain. Irish Peerages were lavished with a profusion rivalled only by Lord North in the crisis of the struggle with America. These were the resources of Cornwallis. They were methods partly the necessary and usual concomitants of any reform, but, if carried to excess, to be justified on the same principle as the employment of spies or the payment of blackmail. They are things highly undesirable in themselves, but which may be forced upon an honorable man by the necessity of the situation, and are in any case infinitely more dishonorable to the receiver than the giver.

I have shown the motives of Pitt and Cornwallis. I have shown that they had reason for attributing to those motives the weight which they did. As to the As to the nature of the men with whom they had to deal, it is notorious. On the venality of the Irish Parliament Cornwallis and Fox, Wolfe Tone and Grattan, Mitchell and Froude are agreed. The only accusation against Pitt and Cornwallis comes to this, that in a time of supreme national necessity, and in the cause of good government, they were ready to employ the resources of the country in the payment of blackmail to a set of brigands, as a necessary condition for securing a measure which they, in common with their countrymen, regarded as the only means of preserving the empire.

It

It is true that the Union has not cured all the evils of Ireland, but the Union was never expected to be a panacea. was intended as the first step of a series of measures which should extend to Ireland all the blessings and all the prosperity of Great Britain. Those measures Pitt failed in accomplishing, but he did not fail in the two primary objects which the Union itself was to secure. He saved Irish Roman Catholics from their frenzied fellow-countrymen, and gave them the direct protection of the Imperial Parliament. By bringing the army of Ireland under the control of the British Parliament, he made Ireland, of which Cornwallis had despaired, militarily defensible, and gave the empire a strength without which it would probably have succumbed to the renewed attacks of Buonaparte.

After all, the historical argument is not a practical question. It may be right or it may be wrong that the great work of Pitt and Cornwallis should continue to stand. That is a question to be decided on a survey of the empire to-day, and not on researches into the events of a century ago. But what the historical argument can show is, that the statesmen of the Union are not men of whom their descendants need be ashamed. Their action in forming the Union was not guided by petty, or by corrupt, or by wicked motives. They were not actuated by slothfulness or selfishness. They were not afraid to maintain on their shoulders the burden of empire, when they saw that by a bold assumption of responsibility they could best fulfil their duties to their fellowsubjects and to mankind. -Blackwood's Magazine.

We have all read an admirable treatise from the hand of a gifted penwoman, slashing at all our hopes, and attempting to destroy the very fabric of the movement for the Higher Education of Women. And wherefore? Becausewe gather from her argument-it means loss of money, time, and, above all

things, strength. things, strength. A highly educated woman, we are told, is incapacitated for her natural functions. She is a woman destroyed, a man not made. All her finer and more valuable attributes are blurred. She is unsatisfying as a companion, worthless as a wife, incapable as a mother. A girl's physical strength

can never carry her bravely through the arduous struggle for honors, degrees, and professorships, and land her safely at the other side. Mental success must be obtained at the loss of physical powers. A girl is weaker, physically, mentally, morally, than a man; therefore she must take the lowest seat.

Of course the actual facts as to the relative numbers of boys and girls who fail from over-pressure in brain work have been already erroneously stated by a man, and ably proved to be so by a woman. That part of the argument is finished. Our attention is now obtrusively drawn to a lower field. We would fain have passed over the ignoble theme, but we are called upon to face the facts of the disastrous system of education which has till lately prevailed. We are told a woman's highest aim is to be a good animal. Undoubtedly to be a good animal is one of the requisites of successful living. But is it life altogether? Without infringing on man's royal prerogative, have women not a right to live-to live as beings answerable for their all? Our opponent says, and others have said before her, "There is one sphere for woman's thought and work and action.' But when we come to inquire what it is, it appears that the one sphere is that of wife, mother, and household drudge. Perhaps these Professors of the Lower System of Education know of some sphere for women's souls. If so, their discreet silence is to be cominended. We might have supposed that the domestic sphere did not include all the thought of which even a woman is capable. But no; there is a sharp line drawn; so far can they advance, but here they must stop. No further, say the new King Canutes. We ask Is this compatible with human nature? Is there any point at which humanity can stand still, intellectually, socially, mentally, morally? No; we progress or retrograde. Toward what shall we move? is the only question.

Now the progress of the Lower System of Education does not seem to tend toward improvement. The aim seems to be to teach women to suit themselves to others' requirements, because their well-being depends on others' approval. A woman's laudable ambition, say this school of philosophers, is first to become

a wife, forgetting that the desire to become a wife does not necessarily include the desire to become a good wife. The direct road to become a wife is not by the development of the intellect, but by the development of certain feminine qualities, bad and good. A girl is to cultivate her love of dress, her taste for frivolities, her desire to please. Her life must embody soft pleasure, that she may be the embodiment of it to a sterner companion. What does a feminine life imply in these people's mouths? Vanity, ease, luxury, dissipation to the prescribed amount; lack of method, disrespect of time, carelessness of everything. Little failings incidental to those of the weaker sex are to be condoned, and little weaknesses made greater; for by their weakness they shall rule. Haphazard, aimless, helpless, women's lives must be; for their help comes from without. They are not strong enough, poor things, to

fight life's battle. They must find some one to fight it for them. But does their taste for amusement and frivolities always stop when they have gained the husband? Is the desire for admiration, sometimes grown into a craving, always satisfied in the humdrum domestic career for which the Professors of the Lower System are so anxious that girls should be carefully prepared ? Have these women any serious thoughts and worthy studies to fall back upon when they are once settled"? They know nothing of all that. They were only taught to win men's admiration, to gratify their own desires. Why should marriage change them? There is no terminus in the education of human character; there are only stations.

We have read, too, the ardent philippics on energies strained and frames exhausted by mental work: but although an equal number of constitutions are ruined by physical exertion there is no war cry raised because of that. Where are the lamentations about over-danced girls, over-dressed girls, over-driven girls, over-dissipated girls? What of the weary dinners, the over-heated theatres, the glaring ball-rooms? What of mornings begun at mid-day, of afternoons harassed with the desire of getting through in one day a week's social duty, of days spent in racketing railway travelling for two days' giddy visit to a fash

ionable house? Is this the life that will make strong women to be the mothers of a giant race?

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Putting aside the facts that women desire some happiness of their own, and that they prefer to find it themselves without having arbitrary rules laid down for them; putting aside the question whether a present generation of one sex is to be entirely sacrificed for a future generation of the other, let us consider the dicta laid down for us by the advocates of the Lower System. Women are made and meant to be, not men, but mothers of men. A noble wife, a noble mother, etc." True, most true; but what are the means to the end? Should we set out with the object of making a good wife or a good mother before we have considered how to make a good woman ? How do we get good human character? Is it not by the cultivation of all higher attributes, and the suppression of all lower? Is it not by the development of all the faculties, the increased desire for all good? We are told, to be good wives and mothers, women must sink the race in the individual, and crave, not all good, but the good of husband and children. And yet at the same time women are not to exert themselves, but to push on others. to get it for them; to be, in fact, the spur for the willing horse. It is a capital sketch of the old-fashioned idea of a woman; but we decline to admire or indorse it. The individual good-decidedly; according to one of our best ethical schemes, if each man is happy, who shall be miserable? Neither men nor women are conducing to the general good when they shut up their own house to mind their neighbor's shop. This essential for good wifedom is also an essential for good womanhood. The individual first: nations and races are formed of men and women, not of droves of cattle. We want good characters. Will good characters ever be formed by helpless, dependent lives? Do great individuals spring from a cowed and conquered people? Let a ruler be appointed by a people, let a husband be chosen by a woman; but woe to the people who think they can live by the bounty of their king, and that their own independence, their own endeavor are nothing; and woe to the woman who

thinks of her husband likewise. Look at the inmates of the workhouse, the paupers who cringe and fawn. What effect has that dependence on character? Yet the noble wife is to spring from a training not very different. All her life long she has never tasted the bread of independence. She waits whiningly for others to provide all that she requires, and hangs her whole weight upon some one man, from necessity, not choice. Why does a man's opinion immediately suggest a broad, well-balanced view, while the term feminine" implies in most cases something weak and contemptible? Does it mean that man's vices are noble, and woman's virtues, faults? No, it means that a man has been trained and educated by the struggle of life. Each generation of men starts at a higher stage of development than the last; while women, so far as their minds and characters go, have been left uncultured, and in the general affairs of life they have made no progress worth speaking of.

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But in spite of this advance, we saynay, rather in consequence of it, men have by no means outgrown such failings as tyranny and a desire for domination. And in spite of the rosy views of men to be found in the article in question, we are afraid it is not quite oldfashioned to suppose that men still wish to make women dependent upon them and subject to their wishes. This is natural enough. The affairs of the world are carried on by self-reliance and love of power. These qualities are kept in check in the sphere that has developed them; but at home, through want of independence and self-reliance in woman, they have become things with even uglier names. On the other hand, we are told, women are puffed up with inordinate vanity, their little knowledge appears to them the height of wisdom, for their unreasonableness has no experience but a domestic one to temper it. They think they can rule and decide in every sphere because they are quite aware that in the one sphere they are far more experienced than men. But are these the faults of Higher Education? Who would select as his general adviser a man who knew only one sphere of life? How can women on such a system be ever the useful companions to men whom our adversaries so

much admire ? Women," say they, "do not desire emancipation. It is true. They have never been slaves. What they do desire is education; education that will enable them to find happiness within themselves; that will give them glad hours, bright dreams, and noble ambitions, under whatever roof they may call their home. They desire intellectual preparation for intellectual intercourse if needs be, stimulated by competition. But they do not intend because of this to give up all claim to the happy life ordained for them as companions to men. On the contrary, they wish to become better fitted for that life than they are at present. They wish to enable themselves to enter into all men's views and thoughts. They wish to live with them as rational beings, as classmates in the school of life, though one may perhaps be on the higher, the other on the lower, form. This is better than that men and women should be foes, forced to be allies in order that each may fight more successfully for his or her selfish interest. It is better for a woman to look on all good men as her friends-one dearest and best of all-than to look on all men as foes, to be battled with according to the rules of the lists, in order that one may be out-manoeuvred and captured by a strategy that it is a life's work to learn and to put into execution. And men and women can never work side by side unless the ground, whether for battle or for production, is the same; nor can they be either worthy allies or useful fellowlaborers, unless they have together prepared a plan of campaign, and together considered the work that needs doing and the means that are ready to hand.

Again, say our opponents, while women have been clamoring men have been advancing. They have no longer any petty feelings of jealousy. They only desire what is best for all, not what is best for men. We wish we could honestly think so. But it would be contrary to all experience of human nature that men should not feel themselves in jured by finding women in the field to increase the competition already felt to press very sorely. Yet in other matters men still have their eyes half shut. They still think it is well for a woman to marry for a subsistence, for a home,

are

for a champion, and not for love. So well that it appears to men to outweigh all the sacrifice. Men prefer to be foes out-manœuvred into matrimony rather than the best of friends. This may read well enough in romances, and please the ear in tinkling rhyme. But how is it in fact? Try this syllogism: Men loved because they are strong; all men are strong; therefore they may all be. loved. Or, again: Women are to be weak. Compared to men they are to be as moonlight unto sunlight" and as water unto wine.' But does real virtue, not that of the glass-house and conservatory sort, require no strength, and are our "noble wives and mothers" to fare no better in education or in life than the heroine of Locksley Hall?

· not

There is one question, asked in the article which has given rise to this protest, too amusing to be passed over. It is asked in reference to Lady Jane Grey, who wanders like a ghost, poor creature, through this controversy surely as a punishment for a too vaulting ambition. Lady Jane Grey is admitted to have been a happy, or at least unobjectionable, instance of a learned woman. But, adds the writer, do we admire her education or her character ? We are tempted to ask in reply, What is the idea of education in the minds of the adherents of the Lower System? Does not education form character? Would the character of Lady Jane Grey, or of anybody else, have been the same if the education had been different? Should we have admired her character as we do if she had been brought up a washerwoman, or as maid-of-honor to Queen Catherine de Medici? We are striving for education in order to the better formation of character. We want to stay the riotous growth of frivolous, worthless, and unhappy women. Of course, if women could be pitchforked into life. with all their finer attributes and qualities full grown, we should have nothing more to say. But we assert that the attributes and qualities so much desired cannot be obtained for a girl by priming her with accomplishments and just a sufficient smattering of knowledge to make her an agreeable but not too intelligent companion for men, and then turning her loose at the age of eighteen, or before it, to find the particular man

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whom in the wisdom of Providence, or more probably by the want of wisdom of her educators, she is destined to accept as a husband. Education is the development of faculties, the motive power, the basis of character. When we want a musician we do not put a fiddle in a boy's hand and tell him to work till he can play second in the orchestra, and at the same time take lessons in drawing; we put the instrument in his hand and tell him to do his best and study everything that will tend to make him a good musician. It is the same for a life-worker, a life-artist, as surely we wish a woman to be! We must give her education, which is her instrument, and tell her to do her best, to study, to develop her faculties, her talents, her powers. We cannot say, at any fixed point in her development: So far is good, beyond that is bad." The aim must be at the highest point, however far short the accomplishment may come. We care for the woman's character, not for what she does-say the cavillers. Yes, but the doing makes the character. And what is the remedy which the advocates of the Lower System, through Mrs. Lynn Linton, propose? They admit that there is a difficulty as to women's employment. How do they meet it? The scheme is simple; they condemn women to manual labor. They may be tinkers, tailors, portmanteaumakers, or anything of that kind. gather that they may cover toys with poisonous paint at 2s. a week, and yet our philosophers would not exclude them from the highest society. Nothing is degrading to women so long as it is not intellectual. Our noble wives and mothers" are not strong enough for quiet study or intellectual excitement in a well-aired lecture-room; but they may stand for twelve hours at a stretch behind a counter in a draughty and illventilated shop. They may strain eyes and injure weary backs over sewing. There is no danger, apparently, of destroying fair young faces, of blunting fine feelings, of decreasing vital force, by such a profession as that of the theaWomen may be the hangers-on of fashion, and may minister, without danger to themselves, to its shifting whims in every department. And all this with the hope, distinctly held out to them by

tre.

We

the article before us, that perhaps if they make themselves very pleasant, "the countesses and dames for whom they devise their dainty costumes may even - not treat them as intelligent companions; but-agree to meet them on equal terms at balls and dinners.' Women may do all this, and verily they would have their reward. But there is one thing a woman may not do. She may not be independent. may not be independent. She may depend upon a husband, or upon a fashion in flowers or jackets, but she must not be mistress of her own destiny; above all, she must not think.

We are told that the true way to help women is to receive working women into society; and the writer marvels why men shopkeepers are received, but not milliners or lady shopkeepers. The idea betrays the essential narrowness of the Lower School, and the remedy is somewhat of a specific. Still, the reason why men have risen from the earth is not far to seek. Apart from the innate vulgarity which worships wealth, and would associate with its tailor, or even its dustman, on that ground, irrespective of any mental qualifications, the reason why men who have risen are received into intelligent society has always been that they have something to contribute. Their birth may be nothing, their education may be self-acquired; but they have got something in the struggle of life which is valuable to others. They become friends of men of genius or talent because they have fitted themselves to be so. It was not by dependence on others that these men rose; they may not have been educated, but at least they were allowed to educate themselves. This is the liberty which we claim for

women.

But this is a much larger question than a question of any than a question of any "society," London or provincial, learned or frivolous. We not only ask that women may be allowed to get their own living in spite of the fine feelings of fathers and brothers. Not only do we go so far as to think a lady might be perfectly happy even if she had given up society. There is a wider question than this. We admire our sister who carries on the milliner's shop as much as our brother who rises from the ranks. But we object to the idea that women's work