第158章

I hope, then, that a few of my influential readers will be vigilant, and challenge a full discussion by the whole mind of Parliament, so that no temporary, pettifogging half-measure may slip into a thin house--like a weasel into an empty barn--and so obstruct for many years legislation upon durable principle. The thing lies in a nutshell. The Legislature has been entrapped. It never intended to outlaw women in the matter. The persons who have outlawed them are all subjects, and the engines of outlawry have been "certificates of attendance on lectures," and "public examinations." By closing the lecture room and the examination hall to all women--learned or unlearned--a clique has outlawed a population, under the letter, not the spirit, of a badly written statute. But it is for the three estates of the British realm to leave off scribbling statutes, and learn to write them, and to bridle the egotism of cliques, and respect the nation. The present form of government exists on that understanding, and so must all forms of government in England. And it is so easy. It only wants a little singleness of mind and common sense.

Years ago certificates of attendance on various lectures were reasonably demanded. They were a slight presumptive evidence of proficiency, and had a supplementary value, because the public examinations were so loose and inadequate; but once establish a stiff, searching, sufficient, incorruptible, public examination, and then to have passed that examination is not presumptive, but demonstrative, proof of proficiency, and swallows up all minor and merely presumptive proofs.

There is nothing much stupider than anachronism. What avail certificates of lectures in our day? either the knowledge obtained at the lectures enables the pupil to pass the great examination, or it does not. If it does, the certificate is superfluous; if it does not, the certificate is illusory.

What the British legislator, if for once he would rise to be a lawgiver, should do, and that quickly, is to throw open the medical schools to all persons for matriculation. To throw open all hospitals and infirmaries to matriculated students, without respect of sex, as they are already open, by shameless partiality and transparent greed, to unmatriculated women, provided they confine their ambition to the most repulsive and unfeminine part of medicine, the nursing of both sexes, and laying out of corpses.