capital in the land, and it is only too probable that no day
passes without the occurrence of some such calamity to some
unhappy widow, who, but for the electoral disability, might have
retained the home and the occupation by which she could have
brought up her family in comfort and independence.

Besides this definite manner in which the electoral disability
injures women farmers, it has a more or less directly injurious
influence on all self-dependent women who maintain themselves and
their families by other than domestic labor. A disability, the
basis of which is the presumed mental or moral incapacity of the
subject of it to form a rational judgment on matters within the
ordinary ken of human intelligence, carries with it a stigma of
inferiority calculated to cause impediment to the entrance on or
successful prosecution of any pursuit demanding recognized
ability and energy. This presumed incapacity is probably the
origin of the general neglect of the education of women, which is
only now beginning to be acknowledged, and the absence of
political power in the neglected class renders it difficult if
not impossible to obtain an adequate share for girls in the
application of educational funds and endowments. So long as women
are specifically excluded from control over their parliamentary
representatives, so long will their interests be postponed to
claims of those who have votes to give; and while parliament
shall continue to declare that the voices of women are unfit to
be taken into account in choosing members of the legislature, the
masses of men will continue to act as if their wishes, opinions
and interests were undeserving of serious consideration.

It is now nearly two years since you, in your place in the House
of Commons, said that the number of absolutely self-dependent
women is increasing from year to year, and that the progressive
increase in the number of such women is a very serious fact,
because those women are assuming the burdens that belong to men;
and you stated your belief that when they are called upon to
assume those burdens, and to undertake the responsibility of
providing for their own subsistence, they approach the task under
greater difficulties than attach to their more powerful
competitors. Your memorialist