Woman

The movement for what has been called the emancipation of women, which has been so marked a feature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, has made a deeper impression on the English-speaking countries than on any other. The outcry against the unjust oppression of women by manmade laws has grown ever stronger and stronger, though it must be confessed that every successive improvement in the position of women has also been brought about by manmade laws. The various disabilities imposed by law or custom on women have gradually been removed by legislation, until, at present, in English-speaking countries scarcely anything is needed to woman's perfect equality to man before the law, except the right of suffrage in its widest extent and the admission of women to all national and municipal magistracies, which later will be the inevitable outcome of the removal of all restriction on suffrage. That the gradual amelioration of the legal status of women during the course of ages has removed many crying injustices can not be doubted. Whether, however, all the changes made in their favour will prove unmixed benefits to themselves and to the race, and especially whether the removal of all restriction on suffrage and the admission of women to legislative, judicial, and executive positions of public trust, will be a desirable change in the body politic is doubted by many of all shades of religious belief or no belief, and probably by the majority of Catholics in official and unofficial positions. +