political privileges are incompatible with home duties." In 1841 a
strong article appeared in the _Westminster Review_, written by
Mrs. Margaret Mylne, a Scotch lady still living. Mrs. Stuart Mill's
admirably comprehensive article appeared in the same review in
1851.[536] In 1846, also, Col. T. Perronet Thompson, the well-known
anti-corn-law advocate, wrote:

Whenever the popular party can agree upon and bring forward any
plan which shall include the equal voting of women, they will not
only obtain an alliance of which most men know the importance,
but they will relieve the theory of universal suffrage from the
stigma its enemies never fail to draw upon it, of making its
first step a wholesale disqualification of half the universe
concerned.

Among other writers and speakers on the subject, we must also
enumerate Anne Knight, an earnest warm-hearted Quaker lady. She
sometimes lectured upon it, and many of her letters written to Mrs.
Elizabeth Pease Nichol of Edinburgh, Lord Brougham, and others, are
still preserved, in which she eagerly advocates the admission of
women to the suffrage. She assisted in founding the Sheffield
Female Political Association. On February 26, 1851, this
association held a meeting at the Democratic Temperance Hotel,
Sheffield, and unanimously adopted an address, which was the first
manifesto dealing with the suffrage ever formulated by a meeting of
women in England:

ADDRESS OF THE SHEFFIELD POLITICAL ASSOCIATION TO THE WOMEN OF
ENGLAND--_Beloved Sisters_: We, the women of the democracy of
Sheffield, beg the indulgence of addressing you at this important
juncture. We have been observers for a number of years of the
various plans and systems of organization which have been laid
down for the better government and guidance of democracy, and we
are brought to the conclusion that women might with the strictest
propriety be included in the proclamation of the people's
charter; for we are the majority of the nation, and it is our
birth-right, equally with our brother, to vote for the man who is
to sway our political destiny, to impose the taxes which we are
compelled to pay, to make the laws which we with others must
observe; and heartily should we rejoice to see the women of
England uniting for the purpose of demanding this great right of
humanity, feeling assured that were women thus c