after ably reviewing the history of the Jews, concludes that so far forth as concerneth the Old Testament, we may conclude that whosoever had the sovereignty of the commonwealth amongst the Jews, the same had also the supreme authority in matter of God's external worship.

"XLI. Of the Office of our Blessed Saviour. We find in Holy Scripture three parts of the office of the Messiah; the first of a Redeemer or Saviour; the second of a pastor, counsellor, or teacher, that is, of a prophet sent from God to convert such as God hath elected to Salvation; the third of a king, an eternal king. And to these three parts are correspondent three times. For our redemption He wrought at His first coming, by the sacrifice wherein He offered up himself for our sins upon the cross; our conversion He wrought partly then in His own person, and partly worketh now by His ministers, and will continue to work till His coming again. And after His coming again, shall begin that His glorious reign over His elect, which is to last eternally.

"XLII. Of Power Ecclesiastical. For the understanding of power ecclesiastical, what and in whom it is, we are to distinguish the time from the ascension of our Saviour into two parts; one before the conversion of kings, and men endued with sovereign civil power; the other after their conversion. For it was long after the ascension before any king or civil Sovereign embraced and publicly allowed the teaching of the Christian religion. Seeing then in every Christian commonwealth the civil sovereign is the supreme pastor, to whose charge the whole flock of his subjects is committed, and consequently that it is by his authority that all other pastors are made, and have power to teach, and perform all other pastoral offices; it followeth also, that it is from the civil sovereign that all other pastors derive their right of teaching, preaching, and other functions pertaining to that office, and that they are but his ministers; in the same manner as the magistrates of towns, judges in courts of justice, and commanders of armies, are all but ministers of him that is the magistrate of the whole commonwealth, judge of all causes, and commander of the whole militia, which is always the civil sovereign; and the reason hereof is not because they that teach, but because they that are to learn, are his subjects. The pastoral authority of sovereigns only is jure divino; that of other pastors is jure civili. The king, and every other sovereign, executeth his office of supreme pastor by immediate authority from God, that is to say, in God's right, or jure divino. 'Christian kings have power to execute all manner of pastoral functions. The civil sovereign, if a Christian, is head of the Church in his own dominions." Cardinal Bellarmine's book, De Summo Pontifice, is then considered with controversial acuteness, and much pertinence of remark, regarding the work of this 'champion of the Papacy against all other Christian princes and states."

"XLIII. Of what is necessary for a man's reception into the kingdom of heaven. All that is necessary to salvation is contained in two virtues, faith in Christ and obedience to laws. The obedience required at our hands by God, that accepteth in all our actions the will for the deed, is a serious endeavour to obey Him; and is called also by all such names as signify that endeavour. I pretend not to advance any position of my own, but only to show what are the consequences that seem to me deducible from the principles of Christian politics (which are the Holy Scriptures) in confirmation of the power of civil sovereigns and the duty of their subjects."

Social Economy.

OUGHT THE SUBJECTION OF WOMEN TO BE· DISCONTINUED?

AFFIRMATIVE ARTICLE.-II.

"THE enfranchisement of women is one of the most pressing of human requirements. It is essential to the progress of society that the old unjust forms of oppression to which women have been exposed should be abolished, removed, and quite obliterated from the catalogue of existing customs or possibly recurring modes of life. It is not good for any one-least of all for any class-to suffer injustice patiently, and let it continue to harden and petrify into an irresistible impediment to present improvement and future progress; nor is it good for any one, or any class, to perpetrate injustice until it gains such a mastery over life and habit that things unjust seem to be desirable and just. The most reprehensible of injustices is that which the strong perpetrate on the weak, and the most villainous of all the advantages which can be taken are those which are taken over the unprotected and the defenceless. In equal fight, with equal might, there is courage, and out of it may spring glory; but to arm the entire laws, customs, forms of life, and usages of society against woman, and then oppress her into weakness and subjection, is cowardly, mischievous, and unlike what ought to be manly, what is honest, what should be considered as fair-play and equity.

A just equality must now be substituted for the government of the strongest. It has become almost a maxim of our times that the weak, just on account of their weakness, have a just demand on the care of the legislator. We have laws against cruelty to animals which are more stringent and more stringently enforced, than those against cruelty to woman. If, now, the burdens of sex be so heavy on women, it seems but fair that the burdens of society ought to be lighter: and that as man is in reality deeply interested in the proper state and status of woman, he should release her from subjection, and not over-dominate the sex already over-weighted. Justice, charity, good feeling, and religious sentiment, ought all to concur in the enfranchisement of women.

Why should woman be regarded as among the waste products of nature, and be kept, even against her own will, as a non-producing consumer? Is it reasonable to retain her in involuntary pauperism-an unwilling burden on the wealth of the country, and an unwilling, workless creature in a world of work? Why

ould

she be compelled to dependence, and have enforced upon her, as a condition of comfort, marriage relations? Why should her capacities for usefulness be confiscated and made non-availing-either in her own behalf or for behoof of others ? Is it not monstrous that we should proscribe industry to one half of society, and prescribe it to the other! What good right can society have to enforce upon women the tying up of their talent in a napkin and burying it in the earth; why should it compel uselessness and unprofitability on women, and give them only the choice of marriage or mischief? On what ground of reason or religion can it be maintained that woman should lose all power over herself-in soul, body, or estate -because she is a woman? If reason can show a cause, or religion a cause, let them proclaim it; but reason professes to be the safeguard of freedom, and religion proclaims liberty to the captive, pronounces for every one personal responsibility and dutifulness.

Jeremy Bentham has said that "if a man, who calls for the right of suffrage to be given to any one human being, calls for its being refused to any other human being, it lies upon him to give a particular reason for such refusal." This principle might be greatly extended; it might fairly be said that if men claim independence for themselves, and revolt against subjection on the ground that they are human beings, it is incumbent on them to deny that women are human beings, or to release them from subjection,— unless there be good reason that, although human beings, they alone should be subject, and tyranny should be triumphant over them.

T. M. F. takes, of course, the man's, not the manly, view of this question. He labours under the old fancy that ridicule is the test of truth. I think he will find that more truth than error has been laughed out of the world. "All that is sacred and precious in home and in marriage" are fine words; but fine words butter no parsnips, and do not very materially advance the settlement of grave questions, which T. M. F. admits this is; but he gives it the gravity of the jester. Women have no desire to upset the decision of nature. That is fixed, and they must confess themselves to be women with women's duties, but also, as they maintain, with women's rights. They believe that God did not perpetrate the injustice of giving them the burden of the world's renewal to bear, without providing an equivalent of happiness, and endowing them with rights equal to men's in their own sphere. They do not believe that "the female must be subject to the male." They believe that there is ample room for the full development and exercise of all human powers and abilities in the universe of God; and if they admit with the poet that,—

"Man's inhumanity to man

Makes countless thousands mourn,”

they believe that history will corroborate the assertion, and daily experience will ratify the accusation, that man's inhumanity to women has been far more productive of woe and sorrow.

It is all very well for T. M. F. to talk of "not only the propriety but the necessity of the subjection of women being the dictate and behest of nature" (p. 29). But this is begging the whole question. The affirmation made by women is that nature is falsely accused of this favouritism, and is unjustly maligned. They affirm that the sexes are equal in degree though there be difference in the acci dents of their capacity. They assert that in their own sphere they are as able and as willing to work, and to maintain themselves by the results of their work, as men are; and they especially object to men so monopolizing all the remunerative employments as to starve the majority of women into surrender to men and their purposes. They aver that the selfishness of men, not "the imperative necessi, ties of nature," is the cause of the subjection in which they are held.

T. M. F. attempts to be the Job's comforter by assuring women that they have a longer life in their present state of subjection than they would or could have under the self-determined life which the enfranchisement of woman would put in her power; but this does not follow. The longer life of woman really depends on her greater temperance, freedom from self-indulgence, and general care, than from her immunity from toil or care, trouble or labour, Besides, even were it true it is irrelevant; for length is no test or measure of worth of life. "Better half a year of Europe than a cyle of Cathay" says the Laureate, and there can be no hesitation in affirming that the activity, energy, and interest of life are natural elements in the estimate of its value. It is what sensation, thought, efficacy, result, and advantage have been taken or given in exchange for life that marks it and makes it worth. As a certain one also of your own poets hath said, "We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths; in faith, and not in figures on a dial." So that we cannot accept the miserable quiescence of do-nothingism as an equivalent for the satisfactory life of a true human being. The political economy of T. M. F. is-he will flatter himself by saying" of course"-quite incomprehensible to me. I understand that work is the exertion of thought, labour, and perseverance in the effecting of some purpose by which the exchangeability of an article is promoted, and that price depends on the exchangeable value given to the article by the thought, labour, ingenuity, and exertions of those who could alter, change, and adapt commodities. Now, if woman can do this, she will earn wages, and she will be able either to remain a wage earner, or cease to be so if a woman's career is opened up to her suitably and providentially.

It ought no more to be a necessity of a woman's life to look on marriage as an investment, or on wifehood as a business, than it ought to be that of a man. That should be a spontaneous not an enforced undertaking of a duly considered responsibility. If marriage was not made a woman's chief if not only means of securing ca livelihood, there would be greater care in marriage, and more domestic harmony and peace; there would be less trickery on the

one side, and less tyranny on the other. Marriage should be a contract of equality, not a mere matter of barter of independent being for mere temporal support. Were the subjection of woman to be discontinued, men would be more chary of breaches of morals and propriety, women would be less liable to the sneers and jeers of T. M. F.; for the former would know that he was risking_the wreck of his good name, and the latter would be less tempted to look on husbands as valuables to be angled for. Indeed, it seems to me that the purity of society depends on the enfranchisement of women; and hence I look upon it as a universal question, In what way may the principles of justice be best promoted in the relations of man and woman in social life?

In a recent issue of the Athenæum (July 9th), it is stated that 'Lawyers admit that the marriage laws of the United Kingdom are eminently unsatisfactory, legislators deplore the defects of the system, the public wonders at the injustices, inconsistencies, and absurdities which are brought to light by successive causes célèbres." And it is as an exchange for the privileges, as they are called, bestowed on woman by the law of marriage, that she is made subject to man. To make this a fair transaction, not to speak of making it a manly one, there ought surely to be three things included in one provided by the law. (1) The law itself ought to be fair, and fairly carried out. The contract contained in the matter ought to be implemented by the contracting parties, and enforced unsparingly by the law, so that woman, by her subjection, may receive her equivalent. (2) If society enforces subjection on all women because of the laws of marriage, it ought to make marriage possible to all, or give compensation for the yielding of her rights to society, which has not, in the case of the unmarried, fulfilled the implications of the contract; or (3) Legislation should recognise the equality and independence of all persons as persons, and then fix the contract of marriage so as to bring or take into subjection those who enter into that contract.

Then what have the advocates of the subjection of women to say in defence of "the iniquitous provision of the law of England which denies to a married woman the right to keep her own earnings?" Of course it is one of the fictions-subterfuges rather of that law that women do not work, and therefore have no earnings; and it is another fiction of that law that the husband works, and that by his earnings his wife is supported. But it is well known that these things are fictions—that many husbands do not work, nay, that they sometimes actually compel their wives to doings at which humanity shudders to gain for them ease, indulgence, pocket-money, and sensual gratifications; and that many wives do work, and by their earnings frequently supply the wants of their family, until a spendthrift and unprincipled husband, enforcing the subjection of woman, takes her earnings to spend on himself. And such doings as these are to be continued because, forsooth, it is advantageous to society that the subjection of woman should be continued!