important to get women's names on the register before the revising barrister comes to inspect it. His refusal of a woman's name may bring the question under judicial examination.

"With a view to forming such a society, if possible, Mr. Commissioner Hill, who is now at 3 Mall, Clifton, permits his daughter to invite so many as his drawingroom will hold, to meet there on 24th January 1868, at 3 p.m., for a friendly consultation on this public question, although from the narrowness of space the meeting cannot be public."

Mrs. Beddoe has often told her recollections how, at that meeting, Mr. Commissioner Hill, in asking those present to join the society, said he was "asking them to help a great cause that was unlike all other great causes, in that it would require their support for a very short time. The claim was so clear and reasonable, it had but to be brought before Parliament to be granted."

That happy anticipation of easy achievement, delusive as we now know it to have been, was very general in those days, and started the movement in a spirit of cheerful hope, that tended not a little to its strength, and that rings on yet in the utterances of its younger workers, though with the elder hope has perhaps become more of the patient, less of the cheerful sort.

The first annual report of the Scottish Society concludes by pressing on the future women electors to prepare themselves "for the duties hereafter to devolve on them, that by religiously weighing the solemnities of life and its responsibilities, and by earnest, faithful study of

the great questions that affect humanity, they may be qualified afterwards to exercise the franchise, wisely and conscientiously, so that the accession of women to the electoral ranks may prove truly a great benefit to the whole community in our country."

In a letter of about the same period Miss Becker wrote: "I must make a vigorous effort to beg for money in Manchester, to go on. I do believe that if we are thoroughly bent on our point, and play our cards well, we may see women voting at the next election, and I am quite sure that if they do not vote then it will be the last general election from which they will be excluded."

§ 15. New Light.

At this time a new aspect was thrown on the state of affairs by the historical researches of Mr. Chisholm Anstey-whom Professor Newman characterised as the champion of the suffrage cause in law, even as Mr. Mill was in Parliament. In a pamphlet, On some Supposed Constitutional Restraints on the Parliamentary Franchise, written before the passing of the Reform Act, and again in his Notes upon the Representation of the People Act of 1867, Mr. Chisholm Anstey had put forward a large mass of curious evidence, hitherto buried in old documents and reports, showing that women had ancient legal rights to the franchise.

1 The passages in these two works relating to women, may be consulted in the pages of the Women's Suffrage Journal, where they were quoted in full in the numbers for August and September 1877.

VIMU

The idea that to admit women to the suffrage was an innovation, began to give place to the view that there was neither statute nor judicial decision declaring them incapable of voting for Members of Parliament, but that they were really entitled to all the benefits of the recent Act for amending the representation of the people. The Manchester Committee resolved to take its stand on the existing law, and being satisfied that under it women ratepayers were actually entitled to vote, they determined to take steps to have them placed on the register; in this policy they were aided by the effective co-operation of the London, Bristol and Birmingham Societies.

An incident had occurred which gave them great practical assistance the fact of a woman actually voting at the bye-election which took place in Manchester on 26th November 1867.

The incident is thus related in the Englishwoman's Review for January 1868:

"Lord Byron remarked on the suddenness of his rise into celebrity I awoke one morning and found myself famous.' Much the same may now be said of a very different person, Mrs. Lily Maxwell of Manchester. On the 25th of November there was nothing to distinguish her from the many other independent women who keep shops in that town. On the 26th she recorded her vote for Mr. Jacob Bright, and at once assumed a humble place in the annals of our time. We are told that Mrs. Lily Maxwell is an intelligent person of respectable appearance, and that she keeps a small shop for the sale of crockery ware. Her act is likely to produce con