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 of either sex to induce them to marry, and when social execration renders such pressure impossible. Concurrently with this, or as a result of it, a third step will be some abatement of our present entire neglect of any demand for good character in a bridegroom who would be outraged if he thought that the least aspersion could be suggested concerning his bride. In other words, the greatest improvements in the status of the world with regard to matrimony will be effected when we recognise the claim of woman to be made the equal of man in knowledge, in diseretion and in social rights. No legislative reform as yet ever suggested could have anything like as much effect in removing the evils under which we groan, in respect to matrimony, as this natural and inevitable development.

Naturally the improvement in the position of women in the new age will not arrive at a bound, nor will their rights in relation to marriage be unaccompanied by other rights at present withheld, and perhaps not always unreasonably withheld. On the contrary, the recognition of one set of rights will facilitate and accelerate the recognition of the other. It is generally agreed that the tendency of the sexes is to become less divergent, intellectually and morally, for reasons connected with what Spencer calls "the less early arrest of individual