ile soap is left out in
the cold, and even cotton languishes. If the Chancellor of the Exchequer
put up titles to auction, while abolishing the legislative function of
the Lords, there would be millions in it. But as we English are not
logical, our mending would probably resolve itself into fatuous
tinkering. We might get rid of the sons, but leave the fathers. We might
flood the Lords with life peers, but leave the veto. Such tactics are
too Britannic. "Stone dead hath no fellow!"

XXV.

_A POINT OF CRITICISM._

A few pages back, I ventured to remark that in Utopia or the Millennium
the women of the community would probably be supported in common by the
labour of the men, and so be secured complete independence of choice and
action. When these essays first appeared in a daily newspaper, a Leader
among Women wrote to me in reply, "What a paradise you open up to us!
Alas for the reality! The question is--could women ever be really
independent if men supplied the means of existence? They would always
feel they had the right to control us. The difference of the position of
a woman in marriage when she has got a little fortune of her own is
something miraculous. Men adore money, and the possession of it inspires
them with an involuntary respect for the happy possessor."

Now I got a great many letters in answer to these Post-Prandials as they
originally came out--some of them, strange to say, not wholly
complimentary. As a rule, I am too busy a man to answer letters: and I
take this opportunity of apologising to correspondents who write to tell
me I am a knave or a fool, for not having acknowledged direct their
courteous communications. But this friendly criticism seems to call for
a reply, because it involves a question of principle which I have often
noted in all discussions of Utopias and Millennia.

For my generous critic seems to take it for granted that women are not
now dependent on the labour of men for their support--that some, or even
most of them, are in a position of freedom. The plain truth of it
is--almost all women depend for everything upon one man, who is or may
be an absolute despot. A very small number of women have "money of their
own," as we quaintly phrase it--that is to say, are supported by the
labour of many among us, either in the form of rent or in the form of
interest on capital bequeathed to them. A woman with five thousand a
year from Consols, for example, is in the strictest sense