moment particularly desirable that woman should show up to best
advantage before the eyes of man.

We may now for a moment put aside the question of woman's public
morality and consider a question which is inextricably mixed up with
the question of the admission of woman to the suffrage. This is the
mental attitude and the programme of the female legislative reformer.


IV

MENTAL OUTLOOK AND PROGRAMME OF THE FEMALE LEGISLATIVE REFORMER

The suffragist woman, when she is the kind of woman who piques herself
upon her ethical impulses, will, even when she is intellectually very
poorly equipped, and there is no imprint of altruism upon her life,
assure you that nothing except the moral influence of woman, exerted
through the legislation, which her practical mind would be capable of
initiating, will ever avail to abate existing social evils, and to
effect the moral redemption of the world.

It will not be amiss first to try to introduce a little clearness and
order into our ideas upon those formidably difficult problems which
the female legislative reformer desires to attack, and then to
consider how a rational reforming mind would go to work in the matter
of proposing legislation for these.

_First_ would come those evils which result from individuals seeking
advantage to themselves by the direct infliction of injury upon
others. Violations of the criminal law and the various forms of