course of which he said: "I earnestly hope that the day is not far
distant when women also will bear their share in voting for members in
the political world and in the determining the policy of the country."
And Alfred Russell Wallace, celebrated as a naturalist and follower of
Darwin, expressed himself upon the same question this wise: "When men
and women shall have freedom to follow their best impulses, when both
shall receive the best possible education, when no false restraints
shall be imposed upon any human being by the reason of the accident of
sex, and when public opinion shall be regulated by the wisest and best
and shall be systematically impressed upon youth, then shall we find
that a system of human selection will arise that is bound to have a
reformed humanity for its result. So long as woman is compelled to
regard marriage as a means by which to escape poverty and avoid neglect,
she is and remains at a disadvantage with man. Hence, the first step in
the emancipation of woman is the removal of all restraints that prevent
her from competing with man on all the fields of industry and in all
pursuits. But we must go further, and allow woman the exercise of her
_political rights_. Many of the restraints, under which woman has
suffered until now, would have been spared to her, had she had direct
representation in Parliament."

In most sections of England, married women have the same political
rights as men in the elections for the School Boards and Guardians of
the Poor, and in many places are themselves qualified for election. At
the county elections, _unmarried_ women have the right to vote under the
same restrictions as men, but are not themselves qualified for election.
Likewise did all independent tax-paying women obtain the right to vote
by the Reform Act of 1869, but are not qualified for election. _Married
women_ are in virtue of a court decision, rendered in 1872, excluded
from the suffrage, because _in English law woman loses her independence
by marriage_--a decided encouragement for women to keep away from the
legal formality of legitimate marriage. Seeing that also in other
respects unmarried or divorced women in England and Scotland are clothed
with rights denied to married women, the temptation is not slight for
women to renounce legitimate unions. It is not exactly the part of
wisdom for the male representatives of bourgeois society to degrade
bourgeois marriage into a sort of slave status for w