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Fox), risked his 3,600l. to save it from evil chance. To him joined five other private gentlemen (Mr Jackson, Mr Allen, Mr Corston, Mr Sturge, and Mr Foster), who subscribed and obtained subscriptions "from others, and formed themselves into a committee to manage Mr. Lancaster's affairs. When that brilliant meeting of the 11th of May 1811, was held, it was rather to applaud what had been achieved, than to rouse to action: to congratulate on foregone victories; and to obtain fresh subsidies for the successful general who had carried on the battle against ignorance with an army of volunteers. Before those Royal Princes the Duke of Kent and Duke of Sussex,—or the Chancellor of the Prince Regent,— or the Duke of Bedford, Marquis of Lansdowne, Lord Keith, Francis Horner, and Henry Brougham,—proposed resolutions at the Freemason's Tavern as "Friends of the Royal Lancasterian System for the Education of thfe Poor,"—Mr Lancaster had laboured in. his vocation for thirteen years. When his school was first opened in the Borough road, probably his very name was unknown to most of these great personages, and many a name, less notable and less remembered, had given substantial aid to the cause, before they became its patrons.
And now let me ask,—is there any reason why attention should not be called to the defective state of Laws for Women in England, as attention has been called to other subjects;—namely, by individual effort? Is there any reason why (attention being so called to the subject) Women alone, of the more helpless classes,—the classes set apart as not having free control of their own destinies,—should be denied the protection which in other cases supplies and balances such absence of free control? Are we to believe that the gentlemen of Great Britain are so jealous of their privilege of irresponsible power in this one respect, that they would rather know redress impossible in cases which they themselves admit to be instances of the grossest cruelty and baseness, than frame laws of control* for themselves, such as they are willing to frame for others?
