Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 3.djvu/928

Rh incompatible with home duties." In 1841 a strong article appeared in the Westminster Review, written by Mrs. Margaret Mylne, a Scotch lady still living. Mrs. Stuart Mill's admirably comprehensive article appeared in the same review in 1851. In 1846, also, Col. T. Perronet Thompson, the well-known anti-cornlaw advocate, wrote:

Whenever the popular party can agree upon and bring forward any plan which shall include the equal voting of women, they will not only obtain an alliance of which most men know the importance, but they will relieve the theory of universal suffrage from the stigma its enemies never fail to draw upon it, of making its first step a wholesale disqualification of half the universe concerned.

Among other writers and speakers on the subject, we must also enumerate Anne Knight, an earnest warm-hearted Quaker lady. She sometimes lectured upon it, and many of her letters written to Mrs. Elizabeth Pease Nichol of Edinburgh, Lord Brougham, and others, are still preserved, in which she eagerly advocates the admission of women, to the suffrage. She assisted in founding the Sheffield Female Political Association. On February 26, 1851, this association held a meeting at the Democratic Temperance Hotel, Sheffield, and unanimously adopted an address, which was the first manifesto dealing with the suffrage ever formulated by a meeting of women in England:

—Beloved Sisters: We, the women of the democracy of Sheffield, beg the indulgence of addressing you at this important juncture. We have been observers for a number of years of the various plans and systems of organization which have been laid down for the better government and guidance of democracy, and we are brought to the conclusion that women might with the strictest propriety be included in the proclamation of the people's charter; for we are the majority of the nation, and it is our birth-right, equally with our brother, to vote for the man who is to sway our political destiny, to impose the taxes which we are compelled to pay, to make the laws which we with others must observe; and heartily should we rejoice to see the women of England uniting for the purpose of demanding this great right of humanity, feeling assured that were women thus comprehended, they would be the greatest auxiliaries of right against might. For what would not the patient, energetic mind of woman accomplish, when once resolved? The brave and heroic deeds which history records are our testimony that no danger is too great, no struggle too arduous for her to encounter; thus confirming