tactics are the counsels of the National Society. At the time this narrative has now reached, a certain coterie, with whose previous and subsequent vagaries there is no need to deal here, simply blocked the way for any progress. It was in this wise-Mr. W. S. B. M'Laren had obtained an excellent day for a resolution, but Mr. Macdona had set down a Bill which stood in a perfectly hopeless position on May 1st. Yielding to the pressure of the coterie aforesaid, he declined to withdraw his Bill and so to leave the way open for Mr. M'Laren's motion; consequently the one opportunity that occurred in the life of that Parliament was lost. Verily, it was a melancholy thing to see the eager hope on the faces of the little group of ladies who, on May 1st, gathered round Mr. Macdona in the lobby of the House, as he guided them to the Ladies' Gallery; they passed along with the look of those going to assured victorybut Mr. Macdona's Bill was preceded by a Corrupt Practices Bill, backed by Mr. Bolton and Sir Henry James, and one could only grieve to think how the hours would pass on and on and they would find their Bill left out in the cold.

It is cheering to turn back from these barren records to the news of the first great gain in the Colonies, when, after an endeavour carried on through seventeen years, the women of New Zealand were enfranchised by the Electoral Reform Act, to which His Excellency Lord Glasgow gave assent on 19th September 1893. A general election followed in a few weeks, so that the New Zealand women-British and Maori alike-were able to make immediate use of their newly acquired right.

The women of South Australia very quickly received equal rights by the passing of the Constitution Amendment Act in December 1894. But further details in regard to progress in these and the other parts of "Britain Beyond the Seas" will be best told in a supplementary chapter.

Although the Parliament of 1892-95 contributed nothing to the direct advance of the main question, it passed one Act which has an incidental bearing thereon. The Local Government Act of 1894, added to the Local Government and Local Electors Acts of 1888 for England and of 1889 for Scotland, completed the new scheme for local county government in Great Britain.

These Acts admit women on equal terms to the local government registers, but they differ as regards the married women's vote, and also as regards eligibility to office.

The latter point forms no part of the Women's Suffrage question. The right to vote is the symbol of that freedom from which no human being should be hopelessly debarred in a free country. Eligibility for office is a question of individual adaptability for the performance of special duties. Nevertheless, the ready imaginations of opponents have always been quick to treat these two distinct orders of circumstances as if they stood in the relation of cause and effect. It is not in virtue of their being on the local government register that women are now eligible for numerous administrative offices. They are eligible because, in the political division of labour, the law has left electors perfectly free to determine who shall be the proper

persons to act for them on Boards of Guardians, District and Parish Councils and School Boards, but has restricted electors in their area of choice for County Councils and Town Councils.

The Women's Suffrage movement is a movement to enable women to be choosers quite irrespective of the subsidiary question whether the electorate should be free to choose from a restricted or an unrestricted area, and the bearing which the Local Government Act of 1894 has upon the movement is this, that Mr. W. S. B. M'Laren brought forward a clause which was incorporated into the Act:

"§ 43. For the purposes of this Act a woman shall not be disqualified by marriage for being on any local government register of electors, or for being an elector of any local authority, provided that husband and wife shall not both be qualified in respect of the same property."

This defines the qualifications for placing some married women on the local government register, and thereby affords a precedent for defining their position in regard to the Parliamentary register, when the Parliamentary Franchise (Extension to Women) Bill" becomes law.

§ 45. Onward Steps.

The barren Parliament of 1892-95 was followed by one of more happy augury. The election of July 1895 sent back an increased proportion of old friends to Parliament, and a diminished proportion of old opponents. Although the Societies had reason to deplore that,

in consequence of the death of Lord Selborne, their leader, Viscount Wolmer, had entered the House of Lords, they had the good fortune of still having a leader possessed of much Parliamentary experience, as well as commanding the confidence of the House, in Mr. George Wyndham (M.P. for Dover).

The following letter, which Mr. Wyndham addressed early in 1896 to the Central Committee, indicates the policy with which the movement entered on this eighth Parliament:

"We must face the probability that this reform of the franchise-although reasonable in itself, and capable of being carried out by itself in a short measure-is still not likely to be carried out, except as a part of, or in connection with, a larger measure for removing the more flagrant anomalies of our electoral system.

"But the admission of this probability by no means absolves us from the necessity of immediate action. On the contrary, since we have a new Parliament with, we may suppose, a long life before it, in the course of which some Reform Bill dealing at least with registration, and possibly with wider issues, is certain to be introduced, it is our duty to secure an early decision from the newlyelected House on the principle of removing the disqualification which debars women from the political rights they would otherwise enjoy. Such a decision, if favourable, would materially improve our prospects, by giving us a moral vantage ground from which to move amendments to any Reform Bill subsequently introduced."

In addition to increased strength in Parliament, fresh strength had been brought into the organization of the Societies by the formation, at the close of 1895, of a joint committee of delegates of the chief societies with a view to united Parliamentary action. This was officered by new and vigorous Secretaries in Miss

Edith Palliser, who had taken up the labouring oar at Great College Street early in 1895, and Miss Esther Roper, B.A., who had entered on the Secretaryship of the Manchester Committee in 1893. The ballot had placed the Bill in the efficient hands of Mr. Faithfull Begg, and stood first on the orders of the day for May 20th. All seemed to point to a discussion and division on the Bill, and it was resolved to make application to the Speaker (Mr. Gully) to renew the permission granted by his predecessor that the Appeal, that had already waited two sessions, be shown in the Library of the House of Commons. Mr. Speaker, however, withheld his consent, and the Committee were in much perplexity, when it was suggested to them, on high authority, that an application for the use of Westminster Hall might be successful. An application was accordingly made to the Office of Works and leave granted. The ladies of the Appeal Committee received passes from the Commissioner of Works, by virtue of which they were able to enter the Hall, and arrange the documents for inspection, attending throughout the afternoon and evening of the 19th to show the M.P.'s, who came for that purpose, the signatures from their respective constituencies. The number of signatures had by this time amounted to 257,796, nearly every constituency in Great Britain being represented, and many in Ireland.

The volumes into which the signatures had been classified, constituency by constituency, occupied the long tables extending from the entrance end of the Hall, past the statue of Queen Mary up to that of James I., so that by a curious, unconscious irony this