We all know that the Nineteenth Century was ushered in with a craze for republicanism; and that this feeling increased in force and momentum until the revolutions of 1848, when thrones trembled and fell, and universal democracy threatened to sweep the world. We find the twentieth century coming in with a general love among superior people everywhere for monarchies, and this change is due more to a woman -to Victoria-than to all other causes combined. It makes me shudder to think how far behind, not only the female sex, but the entire Christian world would be now if Great Britain had been prejudiced enough to have excluded a woman from her throne. And if Her Majesty's female subjects knew the dangers lurking for them in so-called liberal institutions, they would never cease their efforts until she is crowned Victoria I, Empress of a United British Empire, for in no other possible way could they so absolutely insure to themselves and their female descendants rights, opportunities, recognitions, distinctions, as by the augmenting of their royal head over an Imperial Federation.

Compared with male the number of female rulers has been very limited, but their percentage of pre-eminence has been vastly greater. I could continue much longer and tell you of Queen-Regents and others ruling in their own right, of Joan of Arc, the only human creature who at 17 years of age ever commanded the entire military forces of a nation, and of many others if necessary.

In the face of evidence like this, think of republics, those governments which are run exclusively by men, and which are, were, and ever will be failures, having the temerity to assert that women are unfit for political power or even recognition! "It is enough to enrage the very gods !"

How proud we should be that republics cannot defraud us of the right to claim that rulers of our sex have a bigger account to their credit than those of the other sex!

Four of the proudest thrones on the globe are to-day honoured by being filled by women and considerably more than half of the human race is ruled over by them. Queen

Victoria rules 400,000,000 souls; the Empress of China over 400,000,000; Queen Wilhelmina over 30,000,000, and the Queen Regent of Spain over 20,000,000. Our sex, with crowns on their brows, may enter Parliaments; may govern empires. In every state or class which is upon an aristocratic basis they are indulged to the fullest. As we know, many women have political power and rank conferred on them in monarchies, and when that happens, their rank and power are equal to those of men. But in republics no woman is deemed worthy of publicity, honour or renown-all are rebuffed or disowned. Democracy has had to follow the army of progress led by aristocracy, but it has done so far in the rear, protesting, denouncing, ridiculing and execrating. Had a republic been the first and only form of government, woman's position would have remained for ever the same as that she occupied in the Dark Ages, for a republic is incapable of any feeling for her except that of prejudice, and ever glories in seeing her prostrate, "covered with the dust of obedience."

It is an axiom of the philosophers that the po

sition assigned to woman by a nation is a true index of its civilization. Then where do republics register upon civilization's thermometer? (A voice: "Below zero!"-Laughter and applause.)

WOMAN'S LEGAL STATUS

Every effort to introduce more advanced legislation for our sex has been bitterly opposed by republics. They have occasionally been persuaded to amend and patch some grotesque law, but they have done so in a spirit of vindictiveness that almost drove to madness the proud women who have had to appeal to them.

Let us contrast this with aristocracies where many legal and political privileges have been granted to our sex by those in power (and generally without women asking them), simply as a matter of right and in accordance with the advance of civilization. Let us take Russia for example. (Hisses and moans.) Russia, God bless her, was the first government in Christian Europe to grant wives the right to individually

hold and control property, the first government to grant to large numbers of women any political recognition. Throughout the length and breadth of that vast empire, wives are mistresses of their own fortunes and all woman-householders can vote either direct or by proxy in municipal matters. These are privileges they have had for centuries, and were enjoyed by them at a time when every wife in every republic was simply a legal and political serf. There are no other women who are so free socially* as those in the land of the Great White Czar; and the Russian government is doing more, as a government, to advance the interests of our sex than the combined republics of the world. (Voices: "Are these facts? Can they be proved?") Yes, for

*Young girls in America formerly went about unchaperoned and that was the only ground for the common impression abroad that American women were freer than others of their sex; but to-day no young women are more rigidly chaperoned than those in America. Exclusive of Turkey, no married women in Europe demand and possess so little genuine liberty as married women in America, where Society's laws are absolutely man's laws-as political and financial dependents cannot create laws of any kind either for themselves or others.