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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



queen whose excellence consists in never doing any act of government 

 excejDt under the guidance of her ministers. The queens regnant or 

 consort, before our monarchy became constitutional, who may be said 

 to have wielded power, are the Empress-Queen Matilda, Eleanor, the 

 wife of Henry II., Isabella, the wife cf Edward IL, Margaret of Anjou, 

 Mary, Elizabeth, and Henrietta Maria. Xot much can be made of this 

 list, when it is considered that both Margaret of Anjou and Henrietta 

 Maria were, by their temper, principal causes of civil wars, and that 

 the statesmanship of Elizabeth has totally collapsed between Mr. 

 Fronde's first volume and his last, while her feminine relations with 

 Leicester and other favorites have contracted a much more ominous 

 complexion in a political as well as in a moral point of view. On the 

 other hand, it is probable that Eleanor, the wife of Edward I., and cer- 

 tain that Caroline, the wife of George II., rendered, in a womanly way, 

 high services to the state. Mr. Mill says, from his experience at the 

 India office, that the queens in India are better than the kings. But 

 the reason is obvious. British protection has suspended the operation 

 of the rude checks on the vices of Indian despots, and a woman brought 

 up in the zenana^ though she cannot possibly be a good ruler, may well 

 be better than a hog or a tiger. 



IN'either the cases of queens, however, nor those of female regents 

 of the Netherlands, to which Mr. Mill gives so strange a turn (as 

 though Charles Y. and Philip II. had preferred females on account of 

 their ability to male members of the house), are in point. They all be- 

 long to the hereditary system, under which these ladies were called to 

 power by birth or appointment, and surrounded by counselors from 

 whose policy it is scarcely possible to distinguish that of the sovereign. 

 Under the elective system, women would have to make their own way 

 to seats in Parliament and to office by the same means as male politi- 

 cians, by canvassing, stumping, wrestling with competitors in debate ; 

 and the female character would be exposed to influences entirely differ- 

 ent from those which operated on Isabella of Castile. 



Without pressing the argument against " premiers in the family 

 way " too far, it may safely be said that the women who would best 

 represent their sex, and whose opinions would be worth most, would 

 be generally excluded from public life by conjugal and maternal duty. 

 Success with popular constituencies would probably fall to the lot, not 

 of the grave matrons and spinsters whom Mr. Mill evidently has in 

 view, but of dashing adventuresses, whose methods of captivating their 

 constituents would often be by no means identical with legislative wis- 

 dom, or calculated to increase our veneration for their sex. 



Mr. Mill is the real father of the whole movement ; the arguments 

 of its other champions are mere reproductions of his. Whatever biased 

 his mind, therefore, ought to be carefully noted ; and again it must be 

 said that he was possessed by an illusion — an illusion beautiful and 

 touching, but still an illusion — as to the political genius of his wife. 



