eader, that the Colour Bill placed us under a
great danger of confounding a Priest with a young Woman.

How attractive this prospect must have been to the Frail Sex may
readily be imagined. They anticipated with delight the confusion that
would ensue. At home they might hear political and ecclesiastical
secrets intended not for them but for their husbands and brothers, and
might even issue commands in the name of a priestly Circle; out of
doors the striking combination of red and green, without addition of
any other colours, would be sure to lead the common people into endless
mistakes, and the Women would gain whatever the Circles lost, in the
deference of the passers by. As for the scandal that would befall the
Circular Class if the frivolous and unseemly conduct of the Women were
imputed to them, and as to the consequent subversion of the
Constitution, the Female Sex could not be expected to give a thought to
these considerations. Even in the households of the Circles, the Women
were all in favour of the Universal Colour Bill.

The second object aimed at by the Bill was the gradual demoralization
of the Circles themselves. In the general intellectual decay they
still preserved their pristine clearness and strength of understanding.
From their earliest childhood, familiarized in their Circular
households with the total absence of Colour, the Nobles alone preserved
the Sacred Art of Sight Recognition, with all the advantages that
result from that admirable training of the intellect. Hence, up to the
date of the introduction of the Universal Colour Bill, the Circles had
not only held their own, but even increased their lead of the other
classes by abstinence from the popular fashion.

Now therefore the artful Irregular whom I described above as the real
author of this diabolical Bill, determined at one blow to lower the
status of the Hierarchy by forcing them to submit to the pollution of
Colour, and at the same time to destroy their domestic opportunities of
training in the Art of Sight Recognition, so as to enfeeble their
intellects by depriving them of their pure and colourless homes. Once
subjected to the chromatic taint, every parental and every childish
Circle would demoralize each other. Only in discerning between the
Father and the Mother would the Circular infant find problems for the
exercise of its understanding--problems too often likely to be
corrupted by maternal impostures with the result of sha