rve in various local capacities, as elected school board and later borough officials and mayors as well as in appointed posts such as Poor Law Guardians and in the civil service. They could not, however, vote or run for Parliament.
By the 1890s, most of the arguments, pro and con, on the merits of women's suffrage had been repeated ad nauseam. Very little new was said thereafter. The basic argument for the enfranchisement of women was simple justice, that it was wrong that they be treated as chattel, what Mill described as "the personal body-servant of a despot." The opposition was largely emotional, "a set of attitudes which dictated that women's natural sphere was the home, that their full development came only with motherhood and that 'a womanly woman' would not be interested in or want the vote." Queen Victoria spoke for many in July 1868 when she let it be known that "The Queen is most anxious to enlist everyone who can speak or write or join in checking this mad, wicked folly of 'Woman's Rights' with all its attendant horrors."
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