in the Government majority. The number is no less than 104. If these 104 members had voted according to their previous wont and their avowed convictions, they would have been deducted from the 271 who voted against the clause-leaving 167 opponents-and, added to the 135 supporters, would have raised the vote in favour of the clause to 239. We may therefore assume that had the question been an open one, and the 406 members who took part in the division been free to vote according to their convictions, the clause would have been carried by a majority of seventy-two." 1

Many petitions were now addressed to the House of Lords in view of the Bill coming before them, and several references were made to the question during the discussion by the Peers. Lord Carnarvon, in particular, on opening the adjourned debate, used these emphatic words: "Where you enfranchise two million of persons, some of them confessedly illiterate and ignorant, many of them with a very small stake in the country, I cannot conceive upon what principle it is that you exclude a small class of persons who, by intelligence and every quality of fitness, are entitled to exercise the vote."

The postponement of the final stages of the measure to an Autumn Session gave opportunity for further agitation; and at the Trade Union Congress, which met that year in Aberdeen, a resolution, "That this Congress is strongly of opinion that the franchise should be extended to women ratepayers," was carried with but three dissentients. The resolution owed

1 Women's Suffrage Journal, July 1884.

much to the forcible speech of Miss J. G. Wilkinson (Secretary to the Upholstresses' Union, London). With sorrow one writes the name of that vaiiant spirit-in its frail tenement ever struggling for more light, more means to help her fellow-women. Instances of working men who have forged their way, through hard study, high up the ladder of achievement, are frequent in English story, but the instances in which women have done so are comparatively rare. Jeannette Gaury Wilkinson was one of these. All too late the suffrage movement learned to know her value; with hard study and hard work she had wrought beyond her strength, and passed away in August 1886, within three years of the time when she came down to lecture for the

Bristol Society. Sound in judgment as she was vigorous in speech, she would, in these days of Labour Commissions and Labour Bills, have been a powerful help to the cause of working women. Her friends subscribed to place a marble slab on her grave in Forest Hill Cemetery. Truly of her it might be said, "She loved her fellow-women."

Another earnest speaker, one of whom it was truly said her oratory went straight to the hearts of her audience, had passed away not long before. Helena Pauline Downing died on March 8th, 1885, after a long and lingering illness. She was the niece of Mr. M'Carthy Downing, M.P., who represented the County of Cork from 1868 to 1879. Her addresses were full of force and fire, mingled with pathos and humour; and this little bright-eyed Irishwoman never failed to win the sympathy of her hearers.

In the autumn of 1884 the British Association visited Canada, and Miss Becker, for the first and only time during the years of her suffrage work, took a prolonged holiday, attending the Association and visiting relatives in the Dominion, while Caroline Biggs edited the Women's Suffrage Journal for September and October. The visit of the Association fell at an interesting time for the suffrage workers who followed it to Canada, for the Prime Minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, had introduced provisions for Women's Suffrage into an electoral Bill which was at that very time before the Dominion Parliament. The opportunity was taken to send an address of thanks to Sir John Macdonald, which was signed by eleven lady members of the British Association-Clara, Lady Rayleigh, Miss Becker, Mrs. Ashworth Hallett, Miss Sharman Crawford, Mrs. Cooke-Taylor, Mrs. Rebecca Moore, Miss Wilhelmina Hall (F.R. Met. Soc., P.L.G., Eastbourne), Mrs. Morrison Campbell Miller, Miss Helen Brown (St. Cuthbert's School, Edinburgh), Phoebe Blyth (Parochial Board, Edinburgh), Miss Maria S. Rye.

PART IV.

FROM THE NEW REFORM ACT TO THE CLOSE OF MISS BECKER'S LIFE.

CHAPTER IX.

AFTER THE THIRD REFORM ACT.

THE curtain had fallen on the second act of the drama. The Court of Common Pleas had brought the first act to an end when it closed the door to the old franchises. Now the Act which created large, new classes of voters had ended the second act by shutting the door to the new franchise against

women.

They had used every legitimate and constitutional means that was open to them, yet they were left in the "residuum." Not one of the statesmen responsible for the new extension had taken heed of the fact so truly expressed in the letter quoted at page 163, that every extension of political freedom amongst men, leaves women in a more unequal position than before.

§ 34. Changed Conditions.

For a short moment there seemed a gleam of brightness. The session of 1886 opened with a new Parliament in which the number of known friends had mounted up to 314, and known opponents fallen to 104 -and the first steps in the new House seemed to augur well, for on February 18th, thanks to Mr. Courtney's vigilance, the opportunity of the early closing of the debate on the address was seized to press on the Women's Suffrage Bill. Mr. Beresford Hope's motion to adjourn the House was thrown out by five; then Sir Henry James's motion to adjourn the Bill was thrown out by fifty-seven, with the understanding that the vote was tantamount to a vote for the Bill, after which it passed second reading without a division.

Yet it was a barren victory; the Bill was blocked in its further stages, and in the summer another General Election was sprung on the country. At that election the number of friends returned was the highest yet known, being an absolute majority of the whole House. This proved that the new electorate were not hostile -but neither were they keen; from 1886 to 1892 no occasion for a debate was secured. The suffrage workers had to reconcile themselves to days of dull, patient plodding,-the bright hopefulness of the earlier times was gone out of the movement. Burning questions of Imperial unity were forcing themselves to the front, compelling attention. Almost, it might seem to the despondent, that all had to be begun over again -but not quite: what had been done could not be