Yet behind these unchanging institutions, a pressure has been for
centuries becoming concentrated, which, now that it has begun to act, is
threatening to overthrow them all. It has not yet operated very visibly
in the Old World, where (even in England) the majority of women have
not yet mastered the alphabet, and can not sign their own names in the
marriage-register. But in this country, the vast changes of the last
twelve years are already a matter of history. No trumpet has been
sounded, no earthquake felt, while State after State has ushered into
legal existence one half of the population within its borders. Every
Free State in the American Union, except perhaps Illinois and New
Jersey, has conceded to married women, in some form, the separate
control of property. Maine, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and
Pennsylvania have gone farther, and given them the control of their own
earnings,--given it wholly and directly, that is,--while New York
and other States have given it partially or indirectly. Legislative
committees in Ohio and Wisconsin have recommended, in printed reports,
the extension of the right of suffrage to women; Kentucky (like Canada)
has actually extended it, in certain educational matters, and a
Massachusetts legislative committee has suggested the same thing; while
the Kansas Constitutional Convention came within a dozen votes of
extending it without reserve, and expunging the word _male_ from the
Constitution. Surely, here and now, might poor M. Maréchal exclaim. The
bitter fruits of the original seed appear, and the sad question recurs,
whether women ought ever to have tasted of the alphabet.

Mr. Everett, perhaps without due caution, advocated, last summer, the
affirmative of this question. With his accustomed eloquence, he urged on
the attention of Suleiman Bey the fact of the equal participation of the
sexes in the public-school system of Boston, while omitting to explain
to him that the equality is of very recent standing. No doubt, the