Page:Letters to a friend on votes for women.djvu/38

 women is merely the final step in that extension of their liberties and rights which in England, above all other countries, has been the glory of the nineteenth century, and remains by far the most certain sign of human progress. This emancipation of women, as it is called, has been full of blessing to the world. There has been no pause, as regards women, in this movement towards freedom. Mill, if now alive, would rejoice with justifiable pride at the change which has come over the spirit of the English world. Few now are the employments unconnected with political power or the rights of the State which are forbidden to a woman.

There exist in the United Kingdom sixteen Universities; most, if not all of them, contain colleges or residential halls for women. In fourteen of these Universities degrees are given to women. Two alone—namely, Oxford and Cambridge—deny to a woman the technical right to a degree; but in Oxford and Cambridge colleges for women flourish, and Oxford and Cambridge, in fact, give to a woman the actual honour of the degree of which they still deny her the title. Everyone knows