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rally disqualified for them. There can be little doubt that Spartan experience suggested to Plato, among many other of his doctrines, that of the social and political equality of the two sexes.
But, it will be said, the rule of men over women differs from all these others in not being a rnle of force : it is accepted voluntarily; women make no complaint, and are consenting parties to it. In the first place, a great number of women do not accept it. Ever since there have been women able to make their sentiments known by their Avritings (the only mode of publicity which society permits to them), an increasing number of them have recorded protests against their present social condition : and recently many thousands of them, headed by the most eminent women known to the public, have petitioned Parliament for their admission to the Parliamentary Suffrage. The claim of Avomen to be educated as solidly, and in the same branches of knoAvledge, as men, is urged with groAving intensity, and Avitli a great prospect of success; Avhilc the demand for their admission into professions and occupations hitherto closed against them, becomes eA r ery year more urgent. Though there arc not in this country, as there arc in the United States, periodical Conventions and an organized party to agitate for the Rights of Women, there is a numerous and active SocietA r organized and managed by Aromen, for the more