upon the House to reject the Bill by an overwhelming majority. He defended the Bishops from the charge of doing nothing either to sustain the law or to keep the Church in harmony, and he expressed a hope that the action of the Bishops would render any new legislation unnecessary. He contended at the same time that there must be an established court of law somewhere in the background, inasmuch as no spiritual institution could possibly flourish on continuous litigation. He said he was fully convinced "that if time should show that the existing organization of the Church cannot secure that obedience which exists in the body of every communion, whatever its character, and if the remedy is such as to destroy the practical episcopal character of the Church, that will be the beginning of the end of the Church of England." Mr. Balfour, however, emphatically declared his conviction that no such results were to be anticipated; that the existing system of law as administered by the present episcopate would be found sufficing for all its purposes, and that if the Church was to remain the Church of the great body of Englishmen it must continue to be in essence and in form the institution which had been purified and remodelled by the Reformation. The division was then taken, and the Bill was rejected by 310 to 156 votes.

Perhaps with this division the story of the struggle may be brought to a close so far as this History is concerned. There were, of course, many other demonstrations of public feeling made on all sides of the question before the close of the reign. There were deputations to the Prime Minister, there were deputations to Archbishops, there were public meetings held in various parts of the country. There was Mr. Kensit's personally conducted crusade against Ritualistic practices in the Church, there was many a controversy in the columns of the news

papers, and new organizations were called into existence. But the controversy cannot be said to have made any advance towards a practical settlement during the reign of Queen Victoria. The anti-Ritualists were all agreed among themselves that the ceremonials of the Church of England were undergoing a "Romanizing process," as it was called, and a large proportion of them were seriously of opinion that this process was the work of a treacherous internal conspiracy against the supremacy of the State Church and the principles of the Protestant Reformation. A large number of Nonconformists in their various denominations shared these views. But among the anti-Ritualists who belonged to the State Church there was no substantial agreement as to the course which ought to be taken to get rid of the danger. Some believed in the efficacy of the civil law to put an end to the whole trouble, but even among this large body there was much difference of opinion as to the tribunal and as to the method of enforcing the law. These were of opinion that the veto on prosecution ought to be taken from the Bishops; those on the other hand were for having recourse to the new forms of legislation. Even among the latter, however, there was no general agreement as to what course the new legislation could most advantageously take, while there were inside the Established Church and outside many anti - Ritualists who shrank from encouraging any further interference of the legal tribunals with the action of the episcopal authorities and the Church itself. The Ritualists within the Church, it need hardly be said, maintained all through that they were carrying out to their truest expression the doctrines of the Church of England and the principles of the Reformation. There was also growing up among members of the Protestant Church, as well as among Protestants of Nonconformist denominations, the belief that the in

fluence of the Church of England could never work its way to the hearts and the minds of the people so long as it was subservient to legislation and maintained by the funds of the State. The whole problem remained unsolved to the close of the reign, and remains still a problem for solution.

CHAPTER VIII

"HERE'S A WOMAN WOULD SPEAK"

THE agitation for what are conventionally described as woman's rights had some marked successes and emerged into a clearer atmosphere during the closing years of Queen Victoria's reign. In previous volumes we have described the movement, partly political and partly social, for the enlargement of woman's sphere of activity as it showed itself during the first fifty years or thereabouts of the reign. It may truly be said that the struggle for woman's rights-that is, for woman's right to take an equal share with man in the business of life has been going on for as long a period as history or legend enables us to trace in the development of human life. From the days of the Amazons-whether those days be merely legendary or not-and through all succeeding ages, we have some illustration of woman's effort to put herself on a thorough equality with man. Many of the legends telling us of these efforts are evidently stories with a satirical meaning, and were intended not to bear witness to the rightful claims of the movement, but to show the absurd and intolerable consequences which, according to the tellers of the stories, would come upon any region where this monstrous regiment of women was permitted to exist. The controversy concerning the rights of woman when it passed altogether out of the age of legend came to be known merely as the assertion by women, and by men on behalf of women, of woman's 177

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right to complete political and social emancipation. In other words, her right to be placed on an equality with man so far as the making of a living and the exercise of citizenship were concerned.

As regards equality with man in the ways of making a living, the advocates of woman's rights always accepted, in our days, certain limitations to the extension of this principle. Even in the United States, where the advocates of woman's rights were most fervid, it never was urged that women should become soldiers or sailors, nor was there any complaint made as to the exclusiveness maintained by certain classes of employers in never giving a chance to women to show themselves the equals of men as bricklayers or stone-masons. In the British Empire and in the United States the advocates of woman's rights have occupied themselves, for the most part, in the effort to have the legal and the medical professions thrown open to wives and sisters as well as to husbands and brothers; to remove from woman the disqualification which now prevents her from giving a vote at the elections of members to the legislative body, and for a long time shut her out from the right to serve on any local governing body.

The question as to the right of women to become members of Parliament, or the desirability of giving them such a right, can hardly be said to have come up yet for practical and immediate discussion in these countries. There are, indeed, many able advocates of woman's rights who contend that women, if duly elected, ought to be allowed to enter the House of Commons as members of the representative chamber, and who contend also that an alteration of existing laws, in order to bring about that great change, is one of the certainties of the immediate future. Such we know was the opinion of so great a thinker as John Stuart Mill, and it would be somewhat