never could be in the United States the equivalents of a Lady Palmerston, or a Lady Blessington, or a Lady Jersey, or a Lady Salisbury.

You would find, in spite of all you had heard to the contrary, that there is only one American woman whose fortune (she amassed it herself) can at all compare with many of the vast fortunes of women in Europe. *

You would find that even the sports and all such pastimes of these women are copied from an aristocracy (no American ever having originated such pleasures, liberties, or benefits for women) until the late rather close intercourse between these and English women, American women were generally very under-sized and delicate-thus even the larger physical growth of Americans to-day has depended upon a Monarchy.

You would find that even in woman's supposedly most natural sphere, the social one, women in a republic are at a very great disadvantage compared with their sex in an aristocracy— no woman in a democracy has ever been sufficient*Mrs. Hetty Green.

ly a social leader to establish general fashions, either political, moral, mental or physical. The reason why all women in a republic are socially insignificant (even a President's wife having no prestige or influence outside of her little coterie of personal friends) is because no one is made pre-eminent by such a government.

It would occur to you that if a woman be at the head of an aristocracy she can address a proposal to a man of marriage, without the propriety thereof being questioned, but the woman who claimed this as her prerogative in a Republic would arouse masculine ire generally thereby.

You would remember that at balls and on all such occasions that all Royal ladies take the initiative again and ask men to dance with them, escort them about and such like things-but no woman in a Republic would dare claim such as her rightful prerogative.

You could go on indefinitely making these contrasts in favour of your sex in an aristocracy, but you would cease, as by now you would clearly see that woman has about as much future

or chance in a Republic as a snowball has under a scorching sun. You would realize that ambitious womanhood and a republic cannot exist together the two are hopelessly incompatible. You would realize that there is nothing woman can achieve in a republic which she cannot achieve in far less time and with far less exertion, trial, self-denial or humiliation in a monarchy, and there are many things which your sex can achieve in a monarchy that through no effort, self-denial, or time can it achieve in a republic. And you would realize that as individuals in every government must retrograde if they cannot go forward, as human society must go backward if it cannot advance, and as a republic places all our sex in the same mold, where it keeps them from the cradle to the grave, that woman is the reef upon which every republican ship of state will founder.

Then you would find that nearly six million women in the Republic work for their daily bread outside their households, thousands working in "sweatshops" at starvation wages, averaging only a dollar and a half to two dollars per

week. According to that good friend of all women, "The New York Journal," seven thousand women go insane annually in New York alone for want of sufficient food and clothing.

Slavery far worse than that of the negro before the war, serfdom far worse than that which ever existed in mediæval Europe, binds down these helpless creatures. Do you wonder that there are in America as vast armies of outcast women as in any country on earth-that hundreds of thousands of these victims, ground down by competition to the point of starvation, in misery and degradation, yield to temptations which give them food, clothing, shelter?

"If you have tears to shed prepare to shed them now." You would find that all you had heard about American men working only that the women of their families could have "heaps" of money to spend is like all the other myths, for you would ascertain that while the women in New York spend $40,000,000 for such necessaries as dresses, the men spend on alcoholic drinks and tobacco alone, almost $100,000,000; upon their palatial clubs (to which no woman

belongs) sports, and such mentionable luxuries about $60,000,000 more; and that (in a whisper) all this is a mere bagatelle to what they spend on the "unmentionable."* (Laughter. A voice: "Poor, virtuous paragons!" Another voice: "You have buried our last illusion.") Amen!

I feel sure you now agree with me that democracy has added nothing to woman's power, influence, opportunity that our sex has not gained thereby financially, politically, legally, socially, nor been blessed therein by association with a more sober, more chaste, more unselfish manhood than elsewhere-and that all women therein have lost forever the distinctions, honours, favours, glories, powers, opportunities, which belong to some of the sex in an aristocracy, to enough at least to make it quite respectable to be publicly classed with women. (Laughter.)

I feel sure our young friend will never again ask me, "Why do so many American women seek to live in aristocracies ?" You cannot find an

*The same ratio holds throughout the country.