letter was begun the Lancet, in another number, has unblushingly contradicted its first sweeping denunciations by giving utterance to quite opposite opinions, which opinions also appeared in the Queen of a later date, "that before long years have elapsed the employment of women at public offices will have to be abandoned!" So we need not feel that the decisions of that important medical authority are like the laws of the Medes and Persians and alter not, or be quite despondent when it informs us that "women are so beset by a propensity to talk" that the simple duties of selling stamps, issuing money orders, and taking messages cannot be properly accomplished, and that the evil is serious and wide-spread. In addition to this mild view of women's delinquencies, we are told that from the original faulty construction of the female mind (of course males are made in separate moulds and of different materials), there exists in them "an inherent disability for work of any kind which requires concentration of thought and mental isolation." Shades of Mary Somerville and Caroline Herschell hear this medical Jove and tremble!

The weighing of suns and solar systems are as the small dust in the balance compared to compounding pills and measuring draughts. However, let us take courage from the thought that doctors proverbially differ, while in conclusion we may add (and a few facts are worth a bundle of unproved assertions) that women every day are proving to ocular and practical demonstration their perfect fitness to discharge all the duties mentioned by the Lancet, to the satisfaction of their employers and the safety, so far, of the general public, who no doubt have left it to the pure disinterested efforts of that paper to discover all the tragic consequences which, in the dim and distant future, it prophesies are to result from (we quote its own elegant language) the employment of females."

AN OBSERVER.

"ELIGIBILITY OF WOMEN AS GUARDIANS IN

IRELAND."

MADAM,-The tendency of the age is to place a greater (and not misplaced) confidence in women by permitting them to fill certain offices and positions of trust intimately connected with the management of women and children. Although women, duly qualified, can be appointed Guardians of the Poor in England, the section of the Act of Parliament (passed in 1838) disqualifying women from taking their part, as Guardians, in the public management of the poor in Ireland is still in force.* The anomaly exists that an Irishwoman is eligible as a Guardian of the Poor in England, but not in her own country. The Council of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science accordingly has recently adopted a report to the effect that, as the larger number of paupers are women and children, and the greater portion of the duties of a Poor Law Guardian consists of matters of a purely domestic nature, the superintendence of nursing arrangements, the education and management of young

* 1 and 2 Vic. c. 56, sect, 19.

children, girls as well as boys, the government of workhouses, houses of industry, and foundling hospitals and of the poor therein, it would tend to the efficiency and economy of the Poor Law system in Ireland if women of full age, and duly qualified, were enabled as Guardians (see 1 and 2 Vict. c. 56, sect. 19), to take their part in the public management of the poor, and that a more effective administration of the Poor Law would be attained by Boards composed of persons of both sexes. This would have the additional advantage of assimilating in this respect the Poor Law of Ireland to that of England. The Council has also resolved to support, by petition or otherwise, any measure that may be introduced into Parliament having for its object legislation in the above direction. I am, Madam,

Yours faithfully,

MERYON WHITE, M.A.

"And be it enacted, that the Commissioners shall determine, and from time to time may, as they may see fit, alter the number of the Guardians to be elected in each Union, and the number to be elected for every Electoral Division, having due regard to the circumstances of each such Division (so nevertheless that every person qualified to vote in the Union shall be entitled to vote in the Election of one Guardian at the least), and may also fix the value of the Qualification by which male persons of full age shall be eligible as such Guardians, such qualification to consist in being entitled to vote at Elections of Guardians in such Union, but not so as to require a qualification exceeding the net annual value of Thirty Pounds. Provided always, that no person, being in Holy Orders, or being a regular Minister of any Religious Denomination, shall be eligible as a Guardian."

RECORD OF EVENTS.

INTERMEDIATE EDUCATION, IRELAND.

A MEMORIAL, very carefully drawn up, has been signed by all the Schoolmistresses (with the exception of two) in Ulster, and will be forwarded to Mr. Gladstone. It is as follows:

TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE W. E. GLADSTONE, M.P., First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer. SIR,—We, the Ladies Superintendent of the Belfast Ladies' Institute, and the members of the Ulster Schoolmistresses' Association, beg leave, very briefly, to draw your attention to some matters of

importance connected with the system of Examinations of the Intermediate Education Board for Ireland.

It will be remembered that when the Intermediate Education Bill was brought into the House of Lords by Lord Cairns, in June, 1878, there was no mention made of girls in it. But the friends of education in Ireland, being convinced that the growth of an educated, thoughtful, and influential middle class depended, if possible, even more upon the mental and moral advancement of girls than of boys, had been on the watch, that if such an unfortunate omission were made, they would endeavour to have it rectified. Accordingly, vigorous steps were taken, with the details of which we need not trouble you, for on 5th July, 1878, Lord Cairns stated to a representative deputation of Irish ladies and gentlemen that the Government felt the importance of the question so much that they would consider how best they might meet the strong feeling evinced in regard to it in Ireland. We remember, with much satisfaction and gratitude, that when the Bill came to be read a second time in the House of Commons, your voice was the first raised on behalf of the girls, and you gave the strong advice to the Government to admit them at once to the benefits of the scheme, without delay and without alteration.

As the House of Commons, which admitted the girls, also granted the money needful for the scheme, we had not been under any anxiety as to the practical share which the girls and their teachers should receive in the rewards and results fees. This confidence has been justified by the considerate and wise action of the Intermediate Education Commissioners. They have hitherto given, and we trust always will in the future give, precisely the same examinations for girls as for boys,-leaving the same subjects open to them, upholding the same standard, and allotting the same marks to success in each subject, in either case. They have also allocated the same proportionate number of exhibitions and rewards, according to numbers, while boys compete only with boys, and girls with girls.

The success of this scheme has been beyond all expectation. The total number of the candidates in 1881 was nearly 7,000, of whom nearly 2,000 were girls. The fund in the hands of the Commissioners is, therefore, not sufficient to keep up the rewards and results fees on the scale originally marked out; and in consequence the smaller schools-those which are carrying not only help for the present, but hope for the future, into the more remote and less favourably situated districts of the country-are suffering great disappointment, and even in some cases are in danger of extinction. In these circumstances, representations have been already made, and will continue to be made, by many of the masters of schools for an additional grant of money for the purposes of the scheme. We desire to state our strong belief that upon no other object can public money be more usefully spent. We desire to see this great experiment in education, already so successful, carried out without anxiety or fear of change to the teachers, upon whom the heaviest burden lies; and we, therefore, very respectfully and earnestly ask you to consider the advisability of an additional grant. But we beg that, not only shall the existing fund be employed, according to their numbers, for both boys

and girls without distinction, but that any additional grant shall be thrown into the common fund, to be employed for both without distinction. We remain, Sir,

Miss TOD has also pointed out in a letter to the Northern Whig, that although when the Bill was first introduced, there was no disposition to admit girls, yet that "when questions were put to Lord Cairns in the House of Lords on behalf of girls by Lords Waveney, Spencer, and Granville, he said that the Bill was not intended to include them; and on one occasion, the 2nd July, 1878, that if they were included, the financial arrangements of the scheme would have to be enlarged. When a very representative and influential deputation of ladies and gentlemen waited upon Lord Cairns on the 5th July, neither he nor the Chief Secretary, Mr. Lowther, who was present, said one word about the finances, nor raised the slightest difficulty on that ground. It was quite evident to the deputation that his Lordship's attention had been strongly called to the wrong done by the original narrowness of the Bill, and that he was glad of the opportunity of promising to endeavour to have it redressed. That promise was strictly fulfilled; for, when the proper time for amendments came—that is, when the Bill was in committee in the House of Commons-Mr. Lowther announced that the Government had obtained legal advice, to the effect that the Bill as it stood did include girls, by virtue of the law which makes all general Acts apply to women as well as men, unless specially excluded. But, partly for sake of clearness, and partly to mark their positive intention, they accepted the amendment which borrowed a clause from the English Endowed Schools Act, that provision shall be made, as far as conveniently may be, for extending to girls the benefits' of the scheme. As the English Endowed Schools Commissioners felt bound, by that clause, to admit girls to all advantages in the schemes they prepared, excepting in the cases where private founders settled their own money restrictively on boys, the precedent was complete. It was with this acknowledgment of the rightful inclusion of girls in full view that the Government asked the House of Commons for the money which they alone could

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grant." Let, therefore, an increase of the grant be asked on its own merits, because in three years the candidates have increased from 4,000 to 7,000, the boys being still immensely more numerous than the girls. There is no need to bring in the harmful divisions of sex in asking for increased help in educating the whole of the young people of Ireland.

:

DUBLIN.-A meeting of the friends of female education was held on March 3rd by permission of the Council of Alexandra College, in the Jellicoe Hall of the College, to consider the serious effect which the financial changes made by the Board of Intermediate Education are likely to have upon women. The Rev. the Provost of Trinity presided. After speeches from the Rev. Professor Mahaffy, Rev. Dr. Carmichael, the Dean of the Chapel Royal, and other gentlemen, it was resolved to address a memorial to Government, and place a copy of the same in the hands of members of Parliament, praying that such a further capital sum be placed at the disposal of Commissioners of Intermediate Education as will enable them to carry out efficiently the purposes which were contemplated when the Act was passed, the following to be the form of the memorial:The memorial of the undersigned respectfully showeth, that we who have taken a practical interest in the question of female education in Ireland, being deeply convinced of the importance of a sound education, not only to women themselves, but to all those whose early years are almost exclusively committed to woman's training, have hailed with the utmost satisfaction the provisions of the Intermediate Education Act, and had anticipated from the working of that Act the greatest advantages to the cause in which we are concerned. But we have learned with much regret that the Commissioners now find themselves compelled by lack of sufficient funds to make such curtailments of the benefits of the Act as will seriously interfere with its utility. We think it hard that that class of the community for which no edutional endowments had been hitherto provided should be thus unexpectedly deprived of the aids and encouragements they had anticipated under this Act, and we earnestly deprecate any such changes in the standard of