It is due to my father to say that he denied having intended to affirm that women _should_ be excluded, any more than men under the age of forty, concerning whom he maintained in the very next paragraph an exactly similar thesis.

He was, as he truly said, not discussing whether the suffrage had better be restricted, but only (assuming that it is to be restricted) what is the utmost limit of restriction which does not necessarily involve a sacrifice of the securities for good government.
But I thought then, as I have always thought since that the opinion which he acknowledged, no less than that which he disclaimed, is as great an error as any of those against which the _Essay_ was directed; that the interest of women is included in that of men exactly as much as the interest of subjects is included in that of kings, and no more; and that every reason which exists for giving the suffrage to anybody, demands that it should not be withheld from women.

This was also the general opinion of the younger proselytes; and it is pleasant to be able to say that Mr.Bentham, on this important point, was wholly on our side.
But though none of us, probably, agreed in every respect with my father, his opinions, as I said before, were the principal element which gave its colour and character to the little group of young men who were the first propagators of what was afterwards called "Philosophic Radicalism." Their mode of thinking was not characterized by Benthamism in any sense which has relation to Bentham as a chief or guide, but rather by a combination of Bentham's point of view with that of the modern political economy, and with the Hartleian metaphysics.

Malthus's population principle was quite as much a banner, and point of union among us, as any opinion specially belonging to Bentham.

This great doctrine, originally brought forward as an argument against the indefinite improvability of human affairs, we took up with ardent zeal in the contrary sense, as indicating the sole means of realizing that improvability by securing full employment at high wages to the whole labouring population through a voluntary restriction of the increase of their numbers.