I have the honour to present to this House a petition from 243,852 women of all classes praying the House to reject any measure having for its object, or one of its objects, the grant of the Parliamentary suffrage to women.

Petition presented.

moved: "That the Bill be now read a second time." He said:—

In rising to move the second reading of the Bill, which I have now the honour to introduce, I do so with a full knowledge of the magnitude of the subject which I have undertaken. I am not under the delusion that a private Member can settle this great question, or, for the matter of that, a question of much less importance; but I feel that in this great reform a private Member can do something to help it forward by bringing in a Bill, in order that the House may have the opportunity of debating the question in view of the promises given by the Government with regard to legislation.

Hon. Members who sit on this side of the House will agree with me that legislation upon the franchise has been long overdue. It is now 25 years since a franchise Bill has been put upon the Statute Book, and I think that it is quite clear we have come to the point when this question should be again taken up, and that by a progressive Parliament. In this Bill we have attempted—I mean those who have backed the Bill—to cope with the practical difficulties in the way of reform; but anybody who has looked at the history of reform Bills for past years will realise that one of the greatest difficulties which face the question is that it is very nearly impossible to deal with it without at the same time dealing with women's suffrage. That was borne out by the experience of a deputation which waited upon the Prime Minister last year. It consisted of Members favourable to that cause, when a promise was made that a reform dealing with the franchise would be introduced before this Government went out of office, and that it would be open to any Member to move an Amendment on the question of women's suffrage. Hitherto this question of Women's Suffrage has been pressed forward both in this House and out of it on non-party lines. I personally do not believe any great reform of this kind can be passed on nonparty lines. It is only when such a reform is taken up by one of the great parties that it will ever find its way to the Statute Book. We have been urged to deal with this great reform upon the lines of the removal of sex disqualification. So long as the question was an abstract one that formula might find support from both sides of the House, but the moment you attempt to put the formula into a practical Bill and bring it before the House of Commons you begin to realise that it is impossible to rope in the supporters of the removal of a sex disqualification either from a democratic or a property point of view.

I know that there are certain reformers who regard this question from an abstract point of view—the mere abstract removal of an injustice which rests upon one section of the community. It is not merely necessary to look at the abstract injustice, but also necessary to see that in the grant of the vote there is no unfair preference given to any section of those who are to be, enfranchised. We are told not to get away from the plain issue of the sex disqualification. You must look at this question from the point of view of the franchise as it now exists, and if you enfranchise new classes without making any alteration in the franchise you would not enfranchise the same classes amongst the women as amongst the men. I take the married working women. It is perfectly clear to anybody who has studied the complicated franchise laws of this country that the mere removal of sex disqualification would not enable any working married woman, unless her husband owned a house of £20 value, to get on the register; and she would have to wait for her vote until she became a widow.

I wish to come to close quarters with this question. If you merely remove the sex disqualification, you would give a pre ferential advantage to certain women. Further it is almost impossible in dealing with this question—it is impossible for us Liberals—to look at this question from only one point of view. Anybody who looks into the matter will see that although it would certainly remove a great evil it would at the same time accentuate and make more difficult the great evils which exist. There is not the slightest doubt that a simple Bill to remove sex disqualification would aggravate the difficulties we have to face in the plural vote. It would confer new facilities for creating faggot votes. We, on this side of the House, are ready to abolish plural voting, and are agreed that the question must be dealt with.

So I come to this conclusion. Personally I have always voted and shall continue to vote for any Bill which removes the sex disqualification. But when an opportunity is given to introduce a Bill—to take up a more practical position—it is my duty to introduce the Bill in a shape which will be satisfactory, and which will carry out the democratic principle. In dealing with this franchise reform it is difficult—I will say almost impossible—to deal with the reform of the franchise without at the same time dealing with the question of women suffrage. It is difficult, and I must say with a democratic Parliament, almost impossible to deal with the question of women enfranchisement without at the same time making some alteration in the existing franchise law in connection with the addition of the new element proposed to be placed upon the register. Each reform taken separately finds the forces behind other measures placed in antagonism to it. The people who devote themselves entirely to one reform will inevitably be thrown into antagonism to the other reform; they consider that the passing of the one will hamper or make more difficult the passing of the other reform. Surely in these circumstances it is better to face the situation as a whole and to handle the two reforms in one, and to get rid of the difficulty that faces each separate reform. I believe that by dealing with this reform as a co-ordinated whole instead of as in two antagonistic camps we will get nearer to a settlement. I know it is said you can only get reform bit by bit, but in the short time that I have been in this Parliament I have seen the passage of several reforms made all the more easy, because there has been a more extended view taken of the question than hitherto. Now turning from the general argument I want to say a few words upon the Bill which is before us to-day. I must first state that in this Bill except for the plural voting clause there is no abolition of any old franchise. It proposes to create residential franchise in order to supplant and to do away with the hardship which everyone who has a knowledge of the register knows to exist in connection with the occupation vote—hardships that would be accentuated and made more apparent when women were added to the electoral roll. The second clause is one which deals with plural voting. I certainly need not recommend that clause to hon. Members on this side of the House because we have discussed that great question, and by a large majority, certainly as far as this House is concerned, we have settled that it is a question which is ripe for reform. Such a clause becomes necessary with the extension of the franchise, because every single one of the evils which we contend against as to plural voting would be accentuated by the extension of the franchise that I propose. Then we come to the question of the removal of the sex disqualification. That question has been discussed at considerable length at various times in this House over a very long period. I think that we who support that reform may with justice contend that we have proved that there is demand for it. I think that anyone who has studied the present social condition of this country must realise that conditions have so altered that it is essential that this reform should be granted. Every set of women—factory women, textile women workers— every trades union of women, have urged this reform, and at the present moment, owing to our economic condition there are millions of women in this country depending upon themselves and their wages for the upkeep of themselves and their families. And it is an admitted truth that as far as economic justice is concerned, that the vote is of the greatest assistance in that matter. Men workers have asked for the vote, and they have used the vote for righting economic wrongs, and I think from the present position of women they are entitled to have a say in their economic position by voting for Members of Parliament. Anybody who has taken the trouble to follow the congresses and conventions and meetings of these societies cannot have the slightest doubt that there is an insistent demand from a very large section of the women of this country for this reform. I have no doubt I shall have pointed out as an objection to this Bill that a large petition has been presented to-day by an hon. Member at the beginning of the sitting, but I do most confidently say that the fact that a petition has been presented is no reason for refusing the franchise to the women who demand it. At best, the position of a woman who is an anti-suffragist is a negative position, the position of the women who demand this vote is an active position; women demand this active right in order to assist in carrying out that which they think is right. I notice there are other objections with which this Bill will be met. I shall be told too many people are enfranchised. That, no doubt, is a fear that may be present to the minds of hon. Members opposite; it is not a fear that will be entertained on this side of the House, because certainly the time has come when a democratic party must face the logical position with regard to democratic franchise in this country. We have the example set us by the Colonies and Continental countries, and it is clear that under a democratic system we must give the right to vote to men and women, so that they may have their say on all the problems of life, and help in carrying out these great measures. Then I shall be told that this Bill is impossible because of the enormous number of women it would enfranchise. I confess at once those who support this measure must meet these issues as a whole, but I do not believe that will diminish the support of this Bill; I believe that those who accept on this side of the House the view that the principle is just will not be affected because of the numerical numbers that will be enfranchised. We are told that it will put the Government of the country in the hands of women. As far as I have seen women in politics they have not shown that desire to band together as women to the exclusion of every other political view, which this would suggest. Personally, I cannot imagine members of the Primrose League and of the Women's Liberal Federation—and shall we say members of the Independent Labour party?—banding themselves together for the creation of a women's government, when on every single question the idea of any one of them would be different to that of the other. The truth of the matter is that women as voters in this country, when they get a vote, will vote according to their needs, their interests, their convictions, or their class prejudice, and they will range themselves, as they have already ranged themselves, in the different political camps, and this is so at the present moment.

I have raised this question not with any hope of passing the measure into law. I do not think anybody who has been even for so short a period as I have in this House, could be under any illusions that a private Member has any chance of carrying this measure, or a much less measure, into law. But also I am under no illusions that had I brought in the old Bill which has been discussed, there would have been any more chance of its being placed on the Statute Book than the one which I now bring forward. Therefore we must frankly face the political situation. The political situation as I see it, with regard to this great question is this: No private Member has any chance of putting through a women's suffrage Bill of however limited a scope. We must also frankly confess that we are unable to force this Government to take up this question as their own; at least we have hitherto been unable, although the Prime Minister told us that two-thirds of the Cabinet are in favour of this measure; apparently there is a recalcitrant third which they have been unable to coerce. That is the position with regard to the Cabinet. We know that the House is clearly pledged to this reform, because last year when a measure embodying the principle of women's suffrage was brought forward that Bill was read a second time by 271 to 92 votes. So that the political situation is this: We have a House of Commons which in principle is pledged to this great reform, and if we are to hope for a solution of this great reform it can only be by Amendments to the Government Reform Bill.

The Prime Minister has told us that we who care for this question shall have full liberty to deal with it by means of the Reform Bill. The House itself has already pledged itself to women's suffrage by the vote of last year, so that I believe that is the line of action which will most easily in the present Parliament give us the reform, and it is in view of that situation that I have to-day introduced this Bill, in order that the House will have an opportunity of clearing for itself the air and seeing where it stands on this great question. The Prime Minister has told us that we are to have a reform Bill, which will take a long step in advance. I hope the discussion to-day will do something to elucidate what the step will be, and I base my hope for the reform which I have brought forward on the words which the Prime Minister used last year, in a speech which he made on reform. He said "you cannot achieve social reform worthy of the name so long as your political machinery is obsolete and stamped with the marks of inequality and injustice." That is my plea for bringing forward the Bill at the present moment. I beg to move.

, in seconding the Motion for the second reading, said:— My hon. Friend who has brought forward this Bill is, as the House is aware, blamed in. a great many quarters for having mixed up the question of women's suffrage with that of adult suffrage applicable to both sexes, but I think that he has made his position abundantly clear in the forcible, well-reasoned remarks with which he has introduced this measure. We who have for many years promoted the cause of women's franchise, have had most carefully to consider the Parliamentary position in which the question has been placed by the answer given by the Prime Minister last year, to a very influential and numerous deputation of Members of this House, who waited upon him to ascertain the views of the Government. We feel that this House and this Parliament and other Parliaments have frequently adopted by large majorities— majorities of the representatives of all parties and sections of the House—the principle of giving the Parliamentary vote to women just as they have already given the municipal vote to them. We feel that it would be useless again to. invite the House to discuss the Bill of my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington, which was voted on and carried by a large majority last year, while we were faced with specific declarations made on behalf of the Government—declarations which we were bound to take note of and endeavour as far as we could to keep before the House in any Bill we introduced. Therefore I think my hon. Friend was amply justified in bringing in a Bill, especially after the words of the Prime Minister on democratic franchise, applicable to both men and women.

We are not treading on new ground. We have a most important precedent for the Bill that we have introduced, and when I remind the House that two of our great, self-governing Colonies, the Australian Commonwealth, and the Colony of New Zealand, have adopted franchise legislation precisely on the lines of my hon. Friend's Bill, I say that we are amply justified in asking the House of Commons to read a second time a measure which will place the women suffragettes of our own country in the same position as that held by their sisters at the Antipodes. That is ample justification for the principle upon which this measure is based. What better model could we have than the legislation of our Colonies on a great constitutional question such as this? It works well there, and I have not heard, and I do not know that anybody has heard that there are any objections to women's suffrage on a democratic basis in the Colonies. It has had no terrors for men out there, why should it have terrors for us at home? Why should British women not have those privileges which they can acquire for themselves by leaving our shores and establishing themselves elsewhere? Women are taxed not only to protect their own shores, but to protect the Empire. They are the first in time of war to give their husbands and sons to fight for their native land, and they are asked now by an influential party in this country to tax themselves in order to benefit our Colonial relations. Yet bearing all these responsibilities, and willingly assuming them, they are to-day deprived of the right to give effect to their views in the House of Commons. It seems to me that from that point of view the opponents of this measure ought to explain their position. The onus lies upon them to show why the right which is given to so many English-speaking women, not merely in English Colonies, but elsewhere, should be withheld from the women of this country. I know that my hon. Friend near me will say that we shall weaken the Imperial idea among Oriental races if we admit that our country is governed by women. I would remind the hon. Member for Montgomery that in Indian States princesses rule as well as men, and there was one instance in the Indian Mutiny of a, Begum of an important State actually in action against the forces of the British Crown. There is no foundation, in view of the magnificent government of the Empire by Queen Victoria in days gone by, under whose rule our Indian Empire was created and consolidated, for saying the admission of women to the franchise would affect our prestige in India.

It has been said there are no grievances under which women suffer and that they can safely leave their affairs in the hands of men. All the reforms which have been carried in Parliament for the benefit of women and children have been initiated, not by men inside the House, but by the agitation of women outside, who undoubtedly brought pressure to bear upon the House of Commons. That fact alone shows that men if left to themselves are not disposed spontaneously to take up what are called women's questions. They naturally are influenced by the wants and wishes of the electors amongst whom women do not find a place. If you look back over the last 60 years you will find that men have deprived women of privileges they used to enjoy. The Dower Act was passed to deprive women of their succession to real property, without the slightest compensation being given to them in lieu of the privilege which was taken away. The Divorce Act was passed, imposing, as many men think, a grave inequality between the sexes. No attempt has ever been made to remedy that injus- tice which is so keenly felt by millions of persons. The restrictions on women's labour which have been imposed from time to time are, I believe, a burden rather than a benefit to the greater number of working women. They have never been consulted in the matter, and I believe in the largest number of cases these restrictions were imposed in the interest of men's trade unions, which were well represented in the House, and which did not wish to see their work taken from them by women who perhaps were starving, and at the same time were able and willing to undertake a portion of the work. There are other questions now waiting for reform. The question of married women's succession to property, the question whether a wife cannot have a certain secured share in her husband's succession, the question of education, are all matters in which women are just as interested as men are. Unless they have a voice in the election of Members they are not likely to have their views as carefully and justly considered as men are. Take questions of taxation, education, sanitation, religious questions, the maintenance of the Army and Navy, pauperism, and all those matters arising out of what is called social legislation. They are all women's questions as much as men's. Women are in no way second to men in anything that pertains to the highest qualities of citizenship. Municipal work has gained by the admission of women, and so has educational work and the administration of the poor law. Why, then, should we deprive women of a share in Imperial legislation? I am aware that we have had evidence that there are women who do not want the vote—everybody knows that—and that objection deserves some consideration by the House. But after struggles and arguments of many months these anti-suffrage society people have only managed to secure 243,000 signatures out of a population of, I suppose, at least 20,000,000 women. An hon. Member says: "More than you have." I admit that. I do not suppose a single petition in favour of the Bill has been presented to-day because the time for petitions has long gone by. The House does not care for petitions. It cares for arguments and for votes. In the old day petitions were a very frequent phenomenon here and I remember seeing large rolls of paper carried up to the House in support of various objects and there have been petitions presented innumerable in favour of women's suffrage during the last 25 years. A few years ago a petition was presented many times the size of that we have seen to-day, signed by the most influential women who were known as public workers in this country, and supported by a vast number of others. If petitions were to decide questions of this kind there would be no difficulty in getting at least a million signatures of women in support of the Bill. We have to look at the intensity of the agitation outside. There is one society alone, the most active of all these agitating societies, which has secured an income of no less than £20,000 a year raised amongst women for the purpose of forcing on this agitation, and forcing it on in a way most unpalatable to Members of this House. The question has reached a position which is quite beyond that of ridicule, and which demands a solution, and this Bill is intended to help the Government to come to a decision as to the manner in which they are to deal with the question. I believe these women have had very great influence in recent by-elections. It is difficult to say what will turn a vote or what will not, but I believe the fact of intelligent, eloquent and attractive women—because the suffragettes have very admirable qualities besides that of fanaticism—going down at by-elections and consistently and ruthlessly opposing every Government candidate has had a very great effect on public opinion.

Let us come to the actual figures involved by this Bill. There are those who are afraid of having Parliament composed of men elected by a majority of women, and I think there is great force in that objection, and if this Bill were to go into Committee I should support certain restrictive Amendments which would obviate that very undesirable result. There are, I suppose, 7,000,000 men voters to-day, and I believe the best authorities on the franchise estimate that if we had adult suffrage for men alone the 7,000,000 would be raised to about 10,000,000, and we might fairly assume that the woman electorate would be at least as much. I believe it would be more—perhaps a million more.

The admission of three million more men to the franchise does not necessarily mean that they will belong to what has been called the residuum. I believe that there are quite as many men of education and good social position left out of the franchise to-day as there are among the uneducated. As a rule, a workman marries young, starts a home, and gets a vote; but, owing to our registration laws he often loses his vote, or does not get it as soon as he should. This remark applies with even greater force to the young educated Englishman who goes abroad, joins the army or navy, or travels, occupies lodgings which do not qualify him for a vote, or resides at home. I believe that of the three millions we propose to enfranchise a very large number would belong to the educated classes, and, at any rate, there would not be any great accession of political strength to what used to be called in the old Tory days the residuum. The three months qualification under this Bill sweeps away at once all loafers, nomads and undesirable persons of both sexes.

Then you have the married woman. In my opinion she is the best of all. She is. the one who has made the greatest sacrifices for the State, the one on whom we all rely to stop at home and bring up a family and perform all those duties without which the State must come to an end. When you contrast her with the bachelor living on a comfortable income without desiring to share it with anyone, there is no reasonable ground for saying that the franchise should not be given to the married woman. I agree with my hon. Friend in saying that the married woman will generally vote with her husband, that she will vote according to class, according to religious views, or according to family traditions. And if the husband and wife took opposite views in politics, nothing would be easier than to pair. With regard to age, I would, myself like to see the age limit for a vote raised to 25. I do not believe that a boy or girl of only 21 is really competent to have a vote. I think that their attention up to then has been probably directed to other subjects. It is when they come to the serious work of life that they begin to reflect on the serious questions which a voter ought to understand. I believe now that comparatively few men under 25 do get the vote, so that it will not make much difference to the men's franchise.

And now a word in reference to domestic servants. I believe that there are no fewer than one and a half million female domestic servants, against 80,000 male domestic servants. I should be quite prepared to exclude the franchise from persons in a position of dependence in a house where they receive part of their emoluments in the form of lodging. [An Hon. Member: "Why?"] Because I do not consider that they are in a position of independence in a house. A man or woman who can be dismissed at a month's notice, and by this dismissal lose the qualification for the vote, cannot be said to be in the same position economically as the existing voter. That is a matter for the House to decide. I would point out that if some limitation of this kind were incorporated in this Bill it would at once dispose of the contention that the Bill would give the franchise to a majority of women over men. It would at once reduce the numbers enormously and leave a considerable majority to the men. Some people may say that that is an anti-democratic view. I should like to ask the House to consider that there is no reason why in any particular moment we should enfranchise every man or woman, no matter what their individual or social relations may be. You have got to move to a certain extent step by step.

This is an enormous step in advance. If you put the drag on to the slight extent that I have suggested I do not believe that anybody could reasonably complain that we were giving a grudging franchise to the most deserving class in the community of the people. I believe that this extension would not favour one party more than another. As we have seen in recent years, general elections are decided irrespective of classes. Public opinion takes all classes alike on great questions, and we have great reversals, irrespective of the extension of the franchise. I believe that in this case you would find that the admission to the franchise would not arect materially the balance of parties. But I believe that in influencing the trend of legislation it would secure a more generous appreciation in this House of the deeds of women, especially of those women who have to earn their own living. Nearly half the adult women of this country are wage earners. That fact alone imposes a duty on this House of recognising their position as money-earning and self-supporting citizens. That is the great justification for bringing in the married woman's vote and for lowering the standard of the joint occupation. I believe that with some of those qualifications which I have shadowed forth we should get by the proposed changes a good admirable solid addition to the electors of the country, that we should not suffer in the smallest degree and that the legislation of this House would be of more enduring benefit to both sexes. I have much pleasure in seconding the Motion.

The House is engaged in considering one of the most far-reaching and most important Bills which has ever been submitted to this House. The speeches delivered by the Mover and the Seconder have been concerned almost wholly and exclusively with only one of the great problems with which the Bill deals. The hon. Member who moved the second reading spoke with great force and enthusiasm, and while his enthusiasm may go a long way to disarm criticism, it leaves wholly untouched and unaffected the strong objection which we take to his proposals. The hon. Member will need all the enthusiasm of which his nature is capable before he is able to carry this Bill into law. It is a short Bill, and, when I read it at first, it seemed to me to be a simple measure. But in its sweet simplicity, it raises problems of the most immense importance. This modest little measure deals with three cognate but quite distinct propositions. First of all, it endeavours to effect a gigantic extension of our present Parliamentary franchise; in the second place, it endeavours to abolish plural voting; and, in the third place, it seeks to accomplish women's enfranchisement. Each of these grave and important problems are included, and the advocates of each will note with great gratification that each is honoured by receiving a whole clause to itself. As I listened to the hon. Gentleman who moved the second reading touching so lightly upon one or two of the problems involved, I could not help being reminded of a butterfly which in the course of its brief but, let us hope, happy existence flits inconsequently from flower to flower gathering treasure from each in turn. I think the hon. Member has sought his inspiration from three wholly different sources, and he has endeavoured to include in his Bill the governing principles of two wholly different Bills which the House has considered in recent times.

It is only recently that the question of plural voting formed the subject of a most important Bill—indeed, it was a most complicated Bill—introduced upon the responsibility of the Government itself. We spent a considerable amount of time in this House discussing that Bill. The question of women's enfranchisement has also formed the subject matter of two separate Bills, which have been considered at length within the past three years, and these were Bills prepared by colleagues of the hon. Gentlemen opposite. These important questions, which have formed the subject matter of large and important Bills, the hon. Member is content to include in a single clause in the Bill which he has introduced. Of course, this Bill will not pass, and it is not intended to pass. Its very authors do not mean it to pass, and I am fortified by an expression which I will quote from a speech delivered two years ago by the right hon. Baronet who seconded the second reading of this Bill. I do not suppose the right hon. Gentleman has made any very serious alteration in the opinions which he holds within the last few years, and I do not doubt when I read the passage he will recognise it. The right hon. Baronet, speaking on 8th March, 1907, said:—

You cannot expect facilities to be given to a private Member.

The right hon. Gentleman said we could not pass it two years ago, and that we could not bring it in on a Friday afternoon. I wonder what his views on the subject will be two years hence. I am fortified by other authorities, perhaps more prominent than the right hon. Gentleman himself, in the view I take that this Bill can under no conceivable circumstances be passed into law. I reminded the House just now that the second clause in the Bill deals with the abolition of plural voting, and yet there is not a single word in this Bill setting up the machinery by which plural voting is to be brought about. I remember a speech delivered by the First Commissioner of Works, who was in charge of the Plural Voting Bill brought forward and pressed through the House by the Government a little over two years ago. The right hon. Gentleman made a speech in which he dilated upon the absolute necessity of having a system of complicated machinery established by any Bill which had the prevention of plural voting for its object. He said:—

"It has been said that the Government would have done better by abolishing the property qualification. I should not have hesitated myself to take such a course, but even if we had done so all the provisions of this Bill would still have been necessary in order to deal with the duplicate occupation Vote and we should have had to set up a complicated machinery to settle what was a man's real residence."

It is perfectly idle to suggest that this Bill is going to pass into law unless you are prepared to set up machinery for dealing with these questions, to which the First Commissioner of Works referred at that time. The hon. Member who moved the second reading of this Bill said he regarded this more as an abstract debate rather than a serious one.

No, no.

Then we are really to deal with this Bill seriously. In that case I think it will be worth while to examine with a little more care some of the provisions which the Bill contains. I think that a little examination is necessary. We have learned from past experience that Bills brought in by private Members on a Friday afternoon, however large and important the subject-matter may be, are sometimes unexpectedly taken up by the Government and passed into law. It will be interesting to know what view the Government take in regard to this Bill. No doubt—I do not know whether the right hon. Gentleman opposite is going to give expression to the views which the Government hold. We shall, I am sure, all a wait what he has to say with great interest. The Government will probably bless it. They generally do bless the proposals which are put forward among their supporters on Friday, however crude and ill-defined those proposals may be. They sometimes carry their benevolence even further. If the pressure from below the Gangway is strong enough they sometimes take up these private Members' Bills. I do not suppose they will do that on the present occasion. I think, while they may be willing to baptise the baby, they will not confirm the child. They will take very good care that their benevolence is confined to the stages of infancy, and they will not allow this Bill to reach maturity. In view of the possibility—to put it at the highest—of their benevolence developing into tutelage, let us look for a few minutes at the proposals which the Bill contains. The hon. Member said that even those responsible for this Bill had been tempted to deal with these great problems in a practical manner. What will be the effect if this Bill passes into law? Broadly speaking, its effect will be to add something like 15,000,000 voters to the number at present on the lists. A moderate proposal for a Friday after noon! If this Bill passes we shall be adding something like 3,000,000 voters per hour. The hon. Gentleman, speaking with great courage and frankness, said he did not fear to add this enormous number to the total upon our registers. Though he himself may not fear, and may be willing to trust the good sense of all these ladies and gentlemen who will be added, I do not think he has thought out for a single moment the practical difficulties which lie before him.

We are engaged in the course of this five hours in the transference of the whole balance of political power from one class to another. That may be the right thing to do. I do not say it is not. But, surely, it is a problem which should receive a little more attention than can be given to it in the course of a Friday afternoon! It destroys the whole theory on which our electoral system is based. Our present system, which has been admitted, I think, by all authorities who speak upon the question of franchise systems, is based on the representation of localities by and through the votes of those who are qualified by Parliamentary sanction to give them. You are going to substitute for that a wholly different system, an infinitely wider system, and, I venture to think, an infinitely more dangerous system. Hitherto, with the local area as the Parliamentary unit, you have given votes to those who have some permanent interest in the locality in which their votes are given. Under this Bill the Parliamentary unit becomes the individual. The hon. gentleman who moved the Bill frankly admitted that he was moved to take the course that he has adopted because he believed in the right of the individual man or woman to have a vote in order to assist them in carrying out their ordinary daily work. That, as I say, is substituting an entirely individualistic system for the one we live under at the present time.

A purely residential one.

Perhaps I have not made myself clear. Our present system deals with localities, and it is the locality which finds its protest through and by the votes of those permanently connected with it.

This would mean residence into the bargain.

Under this Bill you are no longer concerned with the locality: merely with the individual. It is quite true that the individual may live here. He must live somewhere. You are not concerned with where he lives, but that, as an individual, he is entitled to a vote. What will happen? You may have a situation in which the wishes and desires of those who are permanently connected with the locality may be wholly swamped, wholly overborne, by the incursion of a large number of men engaged upon a purely temporary work. I have always said—and hon. Gentlemen opposite objected most strongly—to the swamping of the votes of those who live in the locality by the incursion of those who have no permanent interest in that locality. I am not surprised that the hon. Gentleman should desire the individual system should be substituted for the registration of localities.

In the "Daily News" the other day I saw a letter, which no doubt expresses forcibly and fully the views which are held by a considerable number of Gentlemen opposite. I will read a sentence of that letter. It expresses completely one view:—

I observed in the speeches which were delivered by the two hon. Members that a great deal of time was devoted to a defence against attacks either threatened or actually made upon them by those who usually support their side with a very considerable degree of enthusiasm. That is the impression left on my mind. At any rate, I have observed in the columns of the daily Press that even some of those highly organised and militant ladies who voice the organised opinion of women, and who are so anxious, as a rule, to secure a limited women's enfranchisement, are exceedingly hostile in their attitude towards this Bill. So repugnant to them are the proposals which are made by the hon. Member opposite that they are pronouncing emphatically against them. I am informed—I confess I have not seen it—that some ladies have gone so far as to chain themselves to the railings to show how unwelcome are the attentions of the hon. Gentleman and his friends.

I think if the hon. Gentleman has followed the movement of these societies he will find that on all occasions they have opposed us and supported his own side.

I think not. I think if the hon. Gentleman will allow me I can express what he means in a different way, and the way in which I should put it is not that they support us, but that they are violently opposed to the hon. Gentleman's side. I mention that, however, merely to show that even amongst those who are most enthusiastic in favour of women's enfranchisement there is strong and rooted objection to the proposal of the hon. Member. Why is the Bill brought forward at all. There has been no demand for it. Not a score of Members of this House alluded to the question in their election addresses. ["Oh."] I believe the actual figure is 13; at any rate it is not important whether the figure was 20 or 30. The important matter is that there was no general attention given by the country at the last election, nor by the great bulk of the Members of this House, to this question with which we are now asked to deal. I am not aware that anything has occurred in the three years since the last election which would lead one to suppose that there has been that growing volume of public opinion, without which a movement of this kind cannot exist. It may be urged that this is the full, logical and complete development of the great principle of our constitution, that taxation and representation should always go hand in hand. But to speak of that in connection with our electoral system is a complete fallacy. We have not got it now, we have never had it, and I am inclined to doubt whether we shall ever have it in its complete form. The doctrine that taxation postulates representation was formulated entirely apart from the question of the franchise. It was formulated at a time when, owing to the Government's blindness to and misunderstanding of the just wishes of our Colonial fellow-kinsmen, the North American Colonies were lost to the British Crown. I only wish I could think that our present Government would turn a more sympathetic and attentive ear to the wishes of our Colonial fellow-kinsmen as voiced by their Prime Ministers. There is no real demand for this Bill, and it does not extend the principle which is fundamental to our system. When, in addition to that, we find that the Bill is wholly unworkable, it will be agreed that my Amendment is not out of place.

Let me go to the clauses of the Bill, the governing principle of which is residence during three months. What is residence? That is a question easy to ask, and, one would think, easy to answer; but when I came to look into it, I found myself in considerable difficulty. Let me suggest a couple of instances. Take the case of a fisherman, who is often at sea. Let us assume that he is at home at the beginning of May, and that he is at sea for a month, say from June, when he comes back and goes away again, just before the conclusion of the qualifying period. Are fishermen in those circumstances qualified? If they are, then it is without residence. If they are not, then I submit that they would suffer from a sense of great injury and injustice. Or take the case of a man who is ordered by his doctor to go to the seaside, and who goes to Hastings. After he has lived there three months he is entitled to be registered. When his health is re-established he leaves Hastings, in which he has no further interest, probably wishes never to see it again. Yet he is a fully qualified elector for that place, and, in addition to that, he has other votes outside by occupation or ownership, or by the lodger franchise; in fact, you would be increasing the number of that very class of voters so repugnant to you and whom you are so anxious to destroy. Some days were spent in this House in dealing with plural voters; but, of course, hon. Gentlemen who support this Bill will say that their system will prevent the exercise of more than one vote. Clause 2 of the Bill says that it is desirable that plural voting should come to an end. What is the use of saying that a person registered as a Parliamentary elector in more than one constituency shall select that in which he is to vote? You provide no machinery to ensure that, nor any means for detecting an infraction of your law, and the elector will be able to laugh in the face of those who are responsible for the passing of this Bill.

How are you going to deal with the enormous increase in the numbers of those voters you are going to put on? Revising barristers have a great deal of work now, and you are going to double, and, in some cases, to treble the size of the present electorate in various constituencies. I have some figures, and, for instance, in Liverpool it is anticipated that manhood suffrage alone, with six months' residential qualification, would increase the electorate by one hundred per cent. There are special reasons there, because you have seamen on shore unable to get ships, why Liverpool should be specially high. There are other towns where the increase of male—I am not counting females— voters with a six months' qualification will increase 50, 60 or nearly 70 per cent. If you established a three months' qualification, and in addition add the whole of the women that you propose to enfranchise, you will have a large number of constituencies of 100,000 or 120,000 votes. How is the revising barrister going to deal with the registration of the constituency of that enormous size? How are the Overseers to find out whether those persons are entitled to the vote? It seems to me that the only way the Overseers can form any kind of correct opinion will be to hold a census in the parish on the 15th April, which is the beginning of the qualifying period, and hold another on 15th July, which is at the end of the qualifying period. And then they will not know whether vast numbers of those people are really entitled to the vote or not. It is perfectly clear that the method which is employed by the hon. Gentleman will open the door to thousands of fraudulent claims. I think until he has thought out the provi- sions of his Bill in greater detail he can hardly expect us to pass it into law.

These figures by which you are going to add so enormously to the numbers of the electorate will double and treble the size of the constituencies. You are bound to have a redistribution Bill, and without having a redistribution Bill you cannot carry this. Is the hon. Gentleman on some future Friday going to lay a redistribution Bill before us, or are the Government going to take up this Bill without introducing a redistribution Bill. You are bound to introduce a redistribution Bill, and on this point I confine myself to a single sentence from no less an authority than the Prime Minister, who expressed it in such terse, admirable language that I am sure the House will give it attention. He said:—

Question put: "That the word 'now' stand part of the question."

The hon. Member who has just sat down discovered an objection to this Bill that it was being discussed on a Friday afternoon. I venture to suggest that his abstruse mathematical calculations as to the number of voters it is proposed to enfranchise falls to the ground when we recollect the proceedings in the Committee which this Bill has to go before before it is finally placed on the Statute Book. He objects that the Bill, which he calls ambitious and far-reaching, does not include redistribution, which he seems to suggest would not be a suitable subject for discussion on another Friday. I venture to suggest further to him that many of his objections are merely Committee points. He says that the clause which deals with plural voting does not provide for any machinery as to voters selecting constituencies. If he will read Clause 2 of the Bill he will see the following:—

"A person registered as a Parliamentary elector in more than one constituency shall not vote as such during any calendar year except in that one of those constituencies which he has selected as his voting constituency for the year, and in the register for which his name is marked accordingly, under regulations to be made by Order in Council."

The Plural Voting Bill contained those words; but it also contained a vast number of details of machinery.

I agree there may be objections to this machinery, but there is machinery by Order in Council by which men and women can choose the Constituency in which they desire to vote. When the hon. Member went on to deal with the period of residence for the franchise, I am afraid I did not follow him. He says, if I may venture to quote from recollection, that the people who vote in any Constituency are those interested in the locality, who have a permanent interest, and for whose vote Parliamentary sanction is obtained. Of course, nobody can vote without Parliamentary sanction, and this Bill is designed to obtain Parliamentary sanction for the enfranchisement of a large number of voters. I do not understand his theory as to the permanent interest in the locality. Does it exist in the case of freeholders in the Boroughs who have a right to vote in the neighbouring county in which they have no interest. When we come to examine these fundamental differences in principle, we find that it is a "question of twelve months against three months. The hon. Member supposed the case of a man residing in Hastings for three months and obtaining a qualification. But, supposing the man goes to Hastings for twelve months and leaves, are we to regard the twelve months qualification as permanent interest, while the three months is not. It seems to me that this question of a small amount of time is by no means a question of fundamental interest. But there is, as I understand it, a fundamental difference of opinion between those who hold my views on this subject and those who hold the views frequently expressed on the benches opposite. The Conservative view of the franchise seems to be that each interest a man has should, so far as we can provide a way, be represented by a vote. If he divides his interest he multiplies his claims to a vote. Therefore, if he live in several places, he should have many votes, and should be able to exercise them at as many elections as he could attend. I hold that a man's claim to a vote is founded on the fact that he is called upon to abide by and to live under the laws made by the Parliament to which representatives are sent. A man cannot multiply his interests, and ought not to be able to multiply his votes merely by choosing to invest his money in several different Constituencies. It seems to me that every man on reaching adult age is equally deserving of a vote, subject to the usual qualifications. The hon. Member for Sevenoaks gave away his whole case for the opposition to this Bill when he said that if you once grant that principle there is no logical reason for the refusal to women of the right to vote also. It is because we who support this Bill feel that, that at the same time as we desire to make a great step forward in the direction of manhood suffrage, we include in the same Bill the right of women to an equal vote with men. If I may, with all respect for the distinguished Member who seconded the Bill, I desire to divorce myself from the suggestion that domestic servants should be excluded. Nor can I quite understand the desire to make the enfranchisement age 25. So long as legal responsibilities result on a man's reaching the age of 21 I think the franchise should be given at that age. The hon. Member for Sevenoaks dealt with the opposition which has notoriously been raised to this Bill by the Women's Social and Political Union. The hon. Member must know that there are a great many people choosing different methods for the advancement of the cause of woman suffrage. The Women's Social and Political Union adopt their own peculiar methods—the methods which commend themselves to them. I should be the last to condemn any method for the propagation of an object in which I am sincerely interested. The fact that their methods differ from ours matters very little. They are, if I may say so, entirely ignorant of the exigencies of Parliamentary life. They do not understand the difficulties experienced in obtaining the passage of a women's enfranchisement Bill. We have been told that the Government will grant no facilities for the passage of such a Bill alone; but we have been promised that when the Government Be form Bill is brought forward a democratic Amendment to accomplish woman suffrage may be moved and will probably be carried, as a majority of the Members of this House support such a measure, and that no formal opposition will be offered to it by the Government. Therefore it is incumbent upon those who desire the enfranchisement of women to endeavour to determine at an early stage what exactly is meant by a democratic Amendment. There is to be no opportunity for the enfranchisement of women separately from an increased instalment of manhood suffrage; therefore, as it seems to me an unanswerable logical proposition that women should be given the vote on the same terms as may now or hereafter obtain in the case of men, and, as we desire to see the vote extended as far as possible to all men, so it is desirable to obtain the vote for women in the same way as it is extended to men under the Reform Bill promised by the Government. It seems to me that all those who believe in the theory of manhood suffrage must, as a necessary corollary of that belief, support this Bill, because so long as you admit the theory upon which all men should vote, there is no reason to deny to women, who are equally interested with men in the proper conduct of the government of the country, the right to vote also.

In conclusion, I, for one, am not influenced in my decision on this matter by the consequence which so many Members seem to dread—namely, that such a measure will enfranchise a majority of women. It does not seem to me that such a consequence, if it were a consequence, is one which ought to deter the House from an act of justice. I do not think it is a real difficulty, because, just as at present we have never seen in England the spectacle of all men voting together, so it seems to me perfectly ludicrous to suppose that any question will ever arise upon which all women would vote together as women. Therefore, when you in this matter remove the disqualification of sex, so also, I should have thought, it would have been possible to remove from one's mind the consideration of voters as men in one category and as women in another, and just to consider them as those who share in the benefits and disadvantages of the legislation of the country.

I am not going to discuss the general question of women's enfranchisement. That general question will remain where it is after the discussion of this afternoon, in spite of the petition of society ladies and their housemaids which has been presented. I rise simply to express the attitude of the woman suffrage societies towards this Bill. Every woman suffrage society throughout the country, without exception, repudiates this measure. Those societies contain in their membership women of all classes; they differ very much in their opinions upon such questions as adult suffrage and electoral reform, but they are absolutely united as to what is the best policy to pursue to bring about the enfranchisement of women. There are Members of this House, and there are members of all political parties in the country, who feel although they do differ in their opinions on other matters, Chat the demand for the enfranchisement of women on the same terms as the vote is held by men, has always been a simple and understandable demand put forward by the woman's suffrage societies of this country. Their chief reason for confining themselves to that is because they believe, and, I think, rightly believe, that it secures for them the largest common measure of support. For instance, we had on the division on the Bill last year a considerable measure of support from those who sit on the Conservative benches. I do not suppose if this Bill goes to a Division this afternoon that a single Conservative Member will support it. The last annual conference of the Conservative associations of the country expressed approval of conferring the Parliamentary vote on women on the same terms as it is held by men. If the removal of the sex disability is to wait until every adult man has obtained the vote, then I think the realisation of that demand will be indefinitely postponed. I was very much interested in what was put forward by the hon. Gentleman who moved the rejection of the Bill, namely, his reference to the fact that there does not exist in the country any strong demand for manhood suffrage. I think I may modestly claim to be one who has had as large an experience at public meetings as any Member of this House. I have been constantly on public platforms for over 15 years, and yet I am able to make this statement, astounding to myself as it is, that I have never yet at election times or at other times had the question of manhood suffrage raised. But there is in the country a very strong demand for the enfranchisement of women. It doubtless will be said in the course of the debate to-day that women do not want the vote. I am perfectly ready to admit that there is a very large number of women who do not want the vote, but it is equally true that there are a great many men indifferent about it. The fact is that any man with the requisite qualification can get the vote if he makes a demand for it, and the absence of any strong demand for the extension of the vote proves that those who are outside the pale of the political franchise care very little about the extension of the political franchise. This Bill proposes to give a vote to those who do not want it. I think, if I may say so, that the hon. Member who moved the second reading of the Bill made out as good a case as is possible for the position he has taken up in regard to the terms of the Bill. But the Bill, while putting insuperable obstacles in the way of giving the franchise to women, proposes to give it to men who have never made a demand for it. The "Manchester Guardian," a sound and sage Liberal organ, stated in an article the other day, denouncing this very Bill, that it will put insuperable obstacles in the way of the speedy realisation of the removal of the sex disability. The woman's suffrage societies, therefore, refuse to be turned aside from their purpose by this proposal, because they believe that it would indefinitely postpone the removal of the sex disability. They wish the removal of the sex disability in the first place, and, that having been removed, other questions can be considered on their merits.

I very much regret that the hon. Gentleman who introduced the Bill should, in using his good fortune in the Ballot, have departed from the policy he has formerly advocated. For the last three years, along with myself, he has been a joint secretary of the Parliamentary Committee for the Enfranchisement of Women, and I think the woman's suffrage societies had a right to expect that he would remain true to their cause. I rose simply for the purpose of putting before the House the unanimous opinion of the woman's suffrage societies of this country. I believe their line of policy is the wisest policy, and the one most likely at the earliest possible date to realise their object. My own position is this: While agreeing in the wisdom of their policy, I have always taken the position that I would support any Bill which proposes the enfranchisement of women. Holding that position therefore, I cannot go into the Lobby against this Bill this afternoon.

Attention called to the fact that 40 Members were not present. House counted, and 40 Members being found present—

The experience of the House at present in regard to the interest taken in this matter is only a reflex of the confession made by the hon. Member who moved the second reading of the Bill, when he admitted that he had no expectation of its passing into law. It really reduces the importance of his own measure from the dignity of a Bill to that of a mere abstract Resolution. Nothing struck me more forcibly during the speech of the hon. Member who moved it than the endeavour to justify the selection of this particular form of woman suffrage as a competitor against the other proposals for effecting line same purpose, but on a very much reduced scale, which have hitherto engaged the attention of the House. I noted with regret that he did not feel it necessary to use a line of argument other than mere abstract reasoning in favour of the Bill which he was commending to the House. The right hon. Gentleman who seconded him gave the stock reasons which have been advanced from time to time in favour of woman's suffrage, but we heard really very little argument from the hon. Member who moved the second reading. With the sole exception of the allegation that this Bill would enable the righting of an economic wrong by means of a vote he offered no justification for the third clause of the Bill. He was more concerned to make some apology to the school of politicians to which the hon. Member belongs who last addressed the House. I want to address myself, before I deal with the clauses of the Bill, to one or two observations which fell from the right hon. Gentleman who seconded the Bill. He made the remark that this House if left to itself does not legislate for women. I do not think that a more unsubstantial statement has ever been made. Certainly the House of Commons has not received many tokens of good will from the Women's Social and Political Union, but their official newspaper refers to— part of a man is not followed by consequences which may ensue in the case of a woman, but a departure from virtue on the part of a woman may entail the passing of the husband's property to a son who is not his own. The right hon. Baronet spoke also of restrictions imposed on women labour. This House has never imposed restrictions upon the labour of women from any selfish motives. On the contrary, it has legislated in the highest interests of women. The reference to the adoption of women's suffrage in the Colonies amounts to nothing. The population of the British Empire is 400,000,000. What is the population of the Australian Commonwealth? About 4,000,000 or 5,000,000, while the population of New Zealand is about the same as that of Glasgow. Can there be any sort of analogy?

I want to say a word or two about the position of those hon. Members who have backed the Bill, and to give my general grounds of objection to the extension of the franchise to women under any circumstances and at any time. I want the House to ask itself this question— What authority have those who move and support the Bill to introduce a measure of this kind? I very much doubt if they were to go back to their constituents to-morrow and ask for approval with regard to this Bill whether any of them would come back again. If there is any one thing certain it is that men electors are opposed to women suffrage. If it had been the dominating question at the General Election, very few supporters of it would be in this House to-day. Men electors recognise that women's suffrage would confer political extinction on men. The hon. Member for Cambridgeshire spoke as if the extension of the suffrage to all adult males was in itself a desirable thing. The hon. Member for Blackburn said that he had never received a demand for adult suffrage. There is this to be said, if there is no demand—and I do not believe there is a demand—to augment the number of male voters, is it wise or justifiable to augment the suffrage at all? I should say myself that an ideal representative system is one from the operation of which you can derive representation of every interest, however small or various those interests may be; and the smaller the actual body of electors from whom you can derive that result the better. I represent a constituency in a large area, with only 10,000 voters. My great difficulty was to become acquainted in any way with the majority of those 10,000 voters. If you are going to multiply the elector with the light heart with which the hon. Member and his friends would do, you are merely augmenting the number of people who never see the candidate or hear the speeches, and who give an indifferent or an almost resentful vote when they are dragged out of their houses and carried off in motor-cars in time of elections. That is all I want to say with regard to the general extension of the franchise. I felt extremely interested in the suggestion let fall by the right hon. Baronet that the age should be increased from 21 to 25, but apparently that is repudiated by other hon. Members whose names appear on the back of the Bill. I believe the male voters are hostile to any measure of woman enfranchisement. What about the women themselves? I do not lay any particular stress upon the petition which has been presented this morning, but I do think that it does not lie in the mouth of the Mover of this Bill to pour contempt and scorn upon that petition. His friends, have constantly relied in the past upon signatures put to their own petitions, though their signatories during sixteen years do not equal by nearly 50,000 the number of signatures of women appended to the petition presented to-day. I think, in view of the observation of the hon. Member for Blackburn, who says it is largely signed by domestic servants, that it is worth mention that among the signatures are the names of every wardress in Holloway, where some of the women suffragists have from time to time been incarcerated. No doubt that petition does, not ascertain the views of the women. Certainly the tactics of the militant party in favour of the suffrage cannot be regarded as typifying the attitude of women either. What I believe to be the truth is that the great mass of women upon this question are absolutely and entirely indifferent. A certain number of them desire to be advertised in the Press, and love the excitement of periodical raids when they behave like mischievous children, but an enormous number are bitterly hostile to conferring the vote upon them. As far as this House is concerned, you are not entitled to press the view that women desire the vote. We are not here representing women; we have no right whatever, without the complete approval of the men voters to bring in a measure and support a measure which will, as this Bill would if passed into law, deprive them of all political power whatever if ever there arose any question of sex issue between men and women. I think one is entitled to ask what is the attitude of supporters of women's suffrage towards this Bill. The National Union of Women Suffragists attacks this Bill in very sour and acrid language; perhaps not so bitterly as the Women's Social and Political Union. They say that the passage of this Bill would widely extend the franchise to men, and seriously complicates the position by "alienating many supporters," and that it goes "far beyond any demand in the country." That brings me back to the only argument the hon. Member adduced in support of his Bill. His argument was that the conferring of the vote upon women was going to do something to right what he called an economic wrong, whatever that may be.

The underlying suggestion of my hon. Friend was that if you conferred the Parliamentary franchise upon women, then direct Parliamentary representation would enable these women to raise wages. That suggestion has been made over and over again by people who ought to know better, who have written books upon political economy, and who are leaders of this movement. It is repeated by the hon. Member when he talks about "righting economic wrongs," and it is repeated by these women suffragist societies who oppose this Bill. I want to test the honesty of the professions that this franchise which they claim for women would enable women workers to raise their wages. Everybody knows that the decrees of Parliament avail nothing against the economic forces that determine wages. But it is held up as a bait to these working women in Lancashire and elsewhere to support a measure of women enfranchisement; yet they know perfectly well, everybody in this House knows perfectly well, that this Bill which these suffragist societies condemn would give the working women the vote, while the Bill of the hon. Member for North Kensington and the hon. Member for St. Pancras, of which they approve, if passed, would not give the vote to a single working woman throughout the country. It is perfectly clear that under those Limited Bills the number of working women who would be enfranchised would be infinitesimal.

It would not have enfranchised married women, but it would have enfranchised a large number of unmarried women and widows.

The assumption at that time was that a million or a million and a quarter would have been the total added to the electorate, of whom I do not think it would be too much to say not 5 per cent, would have been working women spinsters living in a house of sufficient ratable value to entitle them to vote the same as men. The numbers would have been infinitesimal. There is no doubt every one of them would be enfranchised by the proposals made to the House to-day, yet this is the Bill which these women suffragists societies, angling for the support of these working women, now condemn. That to my mind shows the utter hollowness of the agitation, in so far as it claims to be an agitation in favour of the working-class women, and entirely disposes of the allegation submitted to the House by the hon. Member for Blackburn. It is suggested that two things will happen by more closely associating women with politics. The first is that you are going to improve politics and the second is that you will remove injustices and inequalities from women which apparently gall them very deeply. Our politics are of two kinds. We have our domestic politics and we have our national politics, and if our politics were purely domestic, as they are in the Colonies and in these small States in which women's suffrage has been accorded, I do not know that my hostility would go as far as it does, because women, so far as domestic politics are concerned, are daily, by the deliberate action of Parliament, being brought into closer and closer relations with them. The social evils which exist are no longer a ground of political dispute between the parties; the only dispute is as to the remedy that should be applied to them, and when that remedy has been fixed, it is nearly always relegated to local authorities, on which women are directly represented. In domestic politics, therefore, I think it is only a matter of time when a particular question in which they feel an interest will be brought within their power outside Parliament. In domestic questions, moreover, I think it is true to say that a mistake— Parliament very often makes a mistake—is not a very serious thing. You can put it right and set your own house in order without incurring any great danger or responsibility.

But I do hold that in regard to National politics the ground is entirely shifted. You cannot make mistakes with the same light-heartedness, and it is of the utmost importance that you should not do so. I apologise to the House for repeating an argument which has been used so often, but so long as this country is constituted as the directing power of a huge Empire, of a network of properties all over the world—it is of vast importance that our policy should be directed in the same masculine, virile way — it may be a brutal and bad way—but it must be directed in the same way and towards the same end as the policy of competing nations. On that ground I say it would be disastrous to this country to confer the vote upon women, and for the first time to divorce legal right from physical power. The ultimate sanction of all law, as everyone knows, is force. The vote is a mere symbol, and would prove perfectly ineffective in the hands of women, if—I am assuming that we mean something more in conferring it than a mere duplication of the votes of men—if women, as they might conceivably on some mistaken question of sex, range themselves against men, inasmuch as, although they might have the preponderating power as regards votes, they could in no circumstances enforce their views any more than they could if their vote was the vote of a member of a debating society. I doubt very much whether the country will approve of this Bill, in any of its provisions, for the grounds which I have stated, but I do certainly believe that any attempt to deal with this women's franchise question in this Parliament, either by a limited Bill or by a Bill of the comprehensive kind which has been brought before the House to-day, is improper, on the ground that the country has never consented to it, and I hope myself, when the time comes, that the Government will not assent to any measure of this kind being tacked to a reform Bill. If they do I shall make it my business to vote against them at the next election.

I confess I approach the subject from a somewhat different aspect to that of the hon. Gentleman who has just sat down. I have never been able to take the view that women as a whole are more disqualified, physically or intellectually, than a great many of those who exercise the suffrage to take part in selecting the Members of this House, nor do I think that they are less qualified to form virile views on Imperial questions. I believe that a great many women would vote quite as soundly as men at an election. My objection to women's suffrage has always been that I do not know where you can stop, and it is from that point of view that I was so surprised that men who have voted for women's suffrage in the past have introduced this Bill. I do not know whether they wish to recommend it to the House on the ground that women's suffrage is a good thing, and you cannot have enough of it, or whether they have entirely forgotten that many of us may be warned against taking any step in that direction at all by being shown the nature of the precipice which yawns in front of us; and what makes some of us surprised is to find on the back of the Bill the name of my hon. Colleague in the representation of Kensington, because in the discussion on his own Bill of last year he, answering the argument that we ought not to deal with the question of women's suffrage alone, and ought to include all the various questions of manhood suffrage, said we should in that case have a discussion of a more or less academic character, and if they did get a vote it would throw very little light on the matter with which the Bill dealt. If that was true last year, it is true to-day.

The hon. Member who moved the Bill frankly admitted that we were engaged on an academic discussion, and that it was absurd to suggest that a Bill carrying out this vast change in the franchise could be passed on the initiation of a private Member on a Friday afternoon. But it is not merely academic discussion; but the votes which will be given this evening will throw no light whatever on the views of hon. Members on the question of women's suffrage. Many will vote for the Bill on other grounds although they are opposed to women's suffrage, and many will vote against it although they are not opposed to women's suffrage, but are opposed to other subjects. We are really engaged in a discussion which is academic, and we are going to give a vote which will be no real indication of the views of the House on women's suffrage. The authors of this Bill have, I think, one justification which has escaped Members in the course of the debate. I hardly see what other course is open to them, in view of the statement of the Prime Minister that the Government would not consider the claim of women's suffrage except in connection with a Bill which proposes a very wide extension of the suffrage. I have never been able to understand the logic of that proposition. Their position is this, that women who have fulfilled all the conditions laid down by the law, and who are disqualified on the ground that they are women, are not to be enfranchised because there are a number of men in the country who are not enfranchised, and who have not fulfilled those conditions at all. There is no justification for that position except the Prime Minister believed that the more moderate extension of the franchise to women, such as that proposed by the hon. Member for Kensington last year, would not in fact accrue to the benefit of his own party. That has not been admitted by the Government, but it has been frankly admitted by the hon. Gentleman who introduced the Bill. He told us the result of such an extension of the franchise would be to increase the number of plural voters, and that you would make it more difficult to carry out any of those so-called reforms to which the party opposite are pledged. I do not see any escape from the argument that that is really the motive which is influencing the Government, because after all this objection to dealing piecemeal with the franchise is a very late discovery on their part. It never occurred to them that it was any objection to dealing with the question of plural voting without redistribution, and I do not suppose they are going to tell us that there is an objection in principle to dealing piecemeal with the franchise when it is a question of giving votes to those who have not already got them, but that it is no objection at all to a measure which takes away votes from people who already have them.

But there is one advantage which the House certainly does get from having the question of women's suffrage presented to us in connection with all these other reforms of the suffrage; it raises the clear issue of the principle which in our opinion should cover all extensions of the suffrage. If you take the view, which I certainly take, that the sole ground for extending the suffrage or giving the vote to anyone is the benefit which would accrue to the community, it is quite clear that the fact that your franchise system involves certain anomalies is no argument against it; that also that you can remove one of those anomalies without necessarily committing yourself to remove another. If, on the other hand, you say, as the authors of this Bill say, that everyone has a right to the franchise, no matter what service he does or does not render to the community, it is quite certain that you cannot adhere to any general line of disqualification, whether on the ground of security or otherwise, and you will be driven at least as far as the conclusions of this Bill. Personally, I think you will be driven much further, because, if you can say individuals have rights at all in connection with the suffrage, surely that right becomes more ap- parent in connection with the old doctrine of taxation and representation. Apparently there is very strong ground for saying that a man or woman who is heavily taxed has some right to be represented, but if you are going to say that everyone who pays taxes to the State has a right to exercise the suffrage, then, logically, you will be obliged to give the suffrage to the alien and the people who are under age, since both those classes contribute very largely to the State, and at the same time are debarred from all representation.

The supporters of this Bill and of every Bill of this kind which deals with manhood suffrage differ, as it seems to me, radically and essentially from all other reformers who have advocated extension of the suffrage in the past in this way. They have always been able to point in the first place to the fact that there were large classes of the community as such—the working classes in the towns in the case of the Reform Bill of 1867 and the agricultural labourers in the country in the case of the Reform Bill of 1885—which were debarred from representation. And they were also able to claim that, as regards the general mass of individuals composing these classes, they did possess that real interest in resisting hasty and revolutionary change, which attaches to dependence upon more or less fixed employment quite as much as to the possession of property, and which is the only security that their introduction into the lists of those who exercise the suffrage will be a solid and permanent gain to the community. Neither of these contentions can be advanced by the authors of this Bill or the authors of any Bill for introducing manhood suffrage. There is no class, putting aside the case of women, which at the present moment is debarred from representation, and of all the individuals in the community who have any interest in political change there are practically hardly any at all who have any difficulty under our existing system in getting themselves properly qualified and placed on the register. I do not deny for a moment that there may be isolated cases of individuals here and there whom it would be an advantage to have on the register, but who cannot get on owing to the present period of qualification. I do not wish to deny that there may be arguments in favour of altering that period, but at least the burden of proof lies with those who advocate shortening the period of qualification to show that the people who will thereby be admitted to the right of exercising the franchise are more deserving members of the community than many others, who would be excluded even if such a change took place. If we are going to consider the claims of individuals at all, there is a class of the community which has a very much stronger claim, namely, the members of the Army and Navy, who are performing incalculable services to the State, and who, by the very nature of their occupations, in many cases, cannot possibly fulfil the conditions of residential qualification. I do not know whether the authors of the Bill will say that an advantage may be held to be conferred on the community by the mere fact that you increase the numbers of those who are able to send representatives to this House—that, in point of fact, this House becomes more representative according as there are more or fewer electors in the country. That is an important point, because, as a matter of fact, I should have said that in many cases this House became less representative by an increase in the number of voters. Surely it is admitted that one of the results of the extension of the franchise in 1885 has been the disproportionate size of the majorities by which each party in turn is returned to power and the extraordinary disproportion between the balance of opinion in the House and the balance of opinion outside, and that was frankly admitted by the Prime Minister when he replied to a deputation on the subject of appointing a Commission to investigate the question of proportional representation. Until you are prepared, in connection with franchise proposals, to deal with the question of redistribution and the question of proportional representation, a mere increase in the number of the electorate makes this House not more but less representative than it is at present.

The Mover of the rejection pointed out that our present electoral franchise system rests, at all events in theory, on the representation of localities. It is quite true that this Bill does not abolish that in so many terms, but it renders it entirely nugatory? It is worse than if it did abolish it. You adhere to the principle of the representation of localities, and at the same time you enable any number of outside voters who have really no permanent connection with the locality at all to outvote the opinion of local residents.

I frankly admit that the case of women rests on an entirely different footing. There, at all events, you have a large class of the community as such which is wholly deprived of any representation in the House at all, a class which, nobody can deny, performs substantial services to the community, which contributes in many cases very largely to the taxation of the country, a class which is often, at all events, in the lower ranks of the social scale, seriously and prejudicially affected by much of the legislation which this House passes, and a class whose opinions on many subjects with which our legislation deals—questions like education and many questions of social reform—are of great importance, and might be of very real value. If, therefore, you are going to base your system of franchise at all on the question of individual right surely in the case of women the claim to exercise the suffrage on the ground of right is clear and almost incontestable. That does not present any difficulty to my mind, because I wholly deny that anybody has a right to exercise the suffrage at all, and I have no doubt whatever that to admit women on the lines on which the hon. Member proposes to admit them to allow the female element in the community to exercise a dominating voice in deciding questions of policy is a proposition which no large number of serious-minded persons will entertain for a moment. Therefore really the only serious question which we have to consider is whether there is any possible alternative which is not open to the objection to which the hon. Member's proposal is open, and which would secure to this House a reflex of the opinion of a certain number of women.

I do not agree that the Bill of the hon. Member for North Kensington fulfilled those conditions. It is quite true that under his Bill it was calculated that about one and a quarter millions would be enfranchised as compared with 7½ millions of women, but, on the other hand, it has been already pointed out in this debate that that limitation of the women vote would be attained by adhering to the present qualification of occupation of a house of £20 annual value, and would not, in point of fact, be placing women on the same footing as men. Married women in order to enjoy the franchise would require to have married not an artisan or labourer, but some member of the wealthier classes of husbands. It is impossible to suppose that you could have a franchise system which was based on a wealth qualification alone. Therefore we are driven to the conclusion that if you are going to attain these objects at all they can only be at- tained by some measure which gives to women some special kind of representation analogous, though not exactly similar, to that on which University representation is based; or else if this House ever adopts the system of the referendum they should give to the women of the community some power of exercising a controlling voice as to what legislation should be adopted.

But no such proposal is before us this afternoon. I have never seen a proposal of that kind put into practical shape. It would be diametrically opposed to the claim which all women's suffrage societies put forward to exercise the suffrage on a perfect equality with men; and the Prime Minister has definitely committed the Liberal party, so far as he can, not to deal with the question of woman's suffrage on these limited lines. Therefore, believing as I do that perpetual and constant changes in the basis of representation in this House is in itself a great evil, I see no alternative but to vote against every measure dealing with woman's suffrage which does not afford some promise of a final settlement of the question.

I should be glad if the House will allow me to endeavour to remove the suspense from the mind of the Noble Lord the Member for South Kensington that my name should appear on this Bill. I may give a brief quotation from the speech which I made on the subject, which will show that my conduct has been absolutely consistent in supporting this Bill, although I introduced a Bill last Session in which I said: "I should be in favour of a simple residential qualification. I would shorten the period required. I would put the lodger system on an equal footing. I would abolish plural voting and I would welcome adult suffrage." Now it is said by my noble Friend that I pointed out that those matters could not be passed by a Bill brought in by a private Member.

I beg your pardon. My point was that the hon. Member said that to bring in a Bill dealing with woman's suffrage and at the same time dealing with' all these other matters, would make it impossible to take a vote in this House on the question of woman's suffrage which would give an indication of how the House was divided on that question.

That is exactly the point I am coming to. It is perfectly true I said I cannot get the opinion of the House on woman's suffrage by bringing in those points; but we have now got the opinion of the House on woman's suffrage and, therefore, the object which I had in view last year has now been obtained. That object was only to get an expression of opinion from this House on the simple question whether the sex disqualification is a light or wrong principle. We have got it, and we have got it by an overwhelming vote of 3 to 1, and there is no reason to get it again unless hon. Members have changed their position since the 28th of February last year. I think they have not. My hon. Friend on the right has not changed, and I have no strong reason to think that other hon. Members have changed since then. But there is another important point that my noble Friend forgets. He says that we are now introducing a limited Bill. But since the last Bill was introduced the Prime Minister has made an important declaration. We now know that in this Parliament we cannot hope to obtain woman's suffrage unless we bring forward an Amendment to a reform Bill, and unless that Amendment is based on democratic lines. Now we want to know if we are keeping within the democratic lines which commend themselves to the Government. If not, we should like to know what are the democratic lines, which do commend themselves to the Government. For these reasons I think we are perfectly justified, having brought in a Bill with definite objects last year, in supporting this Bill, which has a more comprehensive object this year.

In reference to the remarks of the hon. Baronet who has spoken in support of this Bill I, for one, do not desire to dissociate myself from what he has said about the question of age. I do not know that I have any very strong opinion one way or another. I certainly do not object to the age of a male or a female voter being put as high as 24 or 25. The matter is not to be disposed of by the assertion which fell from the lips of an hon. Member that 21 is the-age of legal liability. That is not quite a correct legal proposition. It is the age of legal liability upon contracts, and it would be a very different matter to say that the age at which a man becomes liable under contracts should be raised to 25, because that would have very serious consequences. It would be a very serious thing if contracts were made by young men whose age was not known and were afterwards repudiated on the ground that these men were under 21. But because liability under contracts begins at 21, it does not follow that the age at which a vote for a Member of Parliament should be given should be as low as 21. The law recognises various ages for various liabilities. The age at which people are liable for punishment for crime, even for the capital penalty, is lower than 21. Other limits are fixed in reference to various offences, the age at which people may give evidence in courts of law, and other matters. Therefore I see no reason in all that for thinking that 25 would be too high an age at which the Parliamentary franchise should begin.

But there was another point made by the hon. Baronet with which I must disagree—that was in reference to the domestic servants. I cannot understand why there should be such a fear in reference to votes exercised by domestic servants. We have not been frightened about the male domestic servant—certainly in the cases where you have men qualified by the service franchise, and why you should think that the institutions of this country will all crumble to pieces because an occasional cook or housemaid will have the vote I cannot understand. People talk in this matter as if, suppose you enfranchise your man servant and maid servant, you might as well go on to enfranchise your ox and your ass and every other domestic animal as well. It is quite true that domestic servants may not have given very much thought to political matters. Why should they? These things have been altogether outside their sphere. I think you would have a very reasonable number among them in a short time who ought to have some means of making their views and their desires known, and among whom a considerable number would be found able to give reasonable and sensible attention to the points that come up for review at an election. I do not desire to take any further part in this discussion, and I thank the House for permitting me to make these few remarks.

Whatever may be the secondary features which adorn this Bill, there is no doubt that the head and front of it is the extension of the franchise to women, and to that question I propose mainly to address myself. The House will bear in mind that this is not a proposal which seeks the opinion of the House or the opinion of the Government on this question, but it is a Bill which the House is seriously asked to pass. This Bill is for extending the sovereign authority of the vote to the other sex. I maintain, as I have always maintained, that this Parliament which was elected in 1906, has no moral right whatever to make such a revolution. Opinion as to women's franchise was not elicited at the election of 1906—it was not even invited. The experience and knowledge of that election proves that women's suffrage scarcely stirred a ripple on the electoral waters. An investigation which I myself was enabled to conduct, and of which I spoke to the House some few years ago, proved that out of 670 Members of Parliament only 13 spoke of adult suffrage, as the hon. Member said who moved the rejection of this Bill, and only 48 referred to women's suffrage. The experience of hon. Member after hon. Member was that they were not asked questions during their election fights-on this subject, except from the central women's suffrage bodies in London and elsewhere.

To speak of my own experience for a moment, I had only one question asked me during my contest, and the subject of women's suffrage was never a subject of discussion. It is, therefore, contrary to fact—in fact, it is absurd—to pretend that at the last election or at any previous General Election women's suffrage was a live issue. Following up briefly the history of this question since that time, what do we notice? There has only been one election in which women's suffrage was the principal subject of discussion, and that was the by-election at Wimbledon, which is now represented by the right hon. Gentleman who was formerly President of the Board of Agriculture. There was only one Liberal candidate, and he professed women's suffrage as his principal merit. The Liberal candidate naturally attracted a certain number of Liberal votes, but I may add that he also especially invited Liberal votes because he was the Liberal candidate, apart altogether from the question of women's suffrage. But besides attracting certain Liberal votes, he most certainly repelled a large number, for whilst Mr. Fox-Pitt, the previous Liberal candidate five months before in January, 1906, polled 7,409 votes, Mr. Bertrand Russell, the women's suffrage candidate in May of the same year, polled only 3,299, or rather less than half the number of votes polled by Mr. Fox-Pitt, and that in spite of the fact that he must have attracted certain adhesive Liberals.

Since that date the militant suffragists claim that they have played a great part in the defeat of various Liberals because the Government which those Liberals desired to support did not speak definitely in favour of women's suffrage. To be more exact, it would be true to say that as anti-Liberals these militant suffragists did all they could to help the other side. But the verdict of experienced acquaintanceship with those elections went to show that the influence of those militant suffragists counted very little indeed in the result. Tariff Reform and the Licensing Bill might have been the cause, but certainly women's suffrage was not the cause. Since that time, about a year ago, the latent opposition to women's suffrage has taken the form of an organisation, and it has grown ever since. That opposition has been more systematically evoked than ever before. Two petitions have been presented to this House, spontaneously got up by a few ladies, for which some 30,000 signatures have been obtained. An attempt was made to discredit those petitions by describing them as bogus, because a certain number of signatures here and there appeared to be in the same handwriting. The chairman of the Election Petitions Committee, however, has declared that these petitions could not fairly be so described any more than any other petitions of a similar size. In all large petitions a certain number of signatures, usually of members of the same family, are put down in good faith by some single member of the family, but the petitions were not pronounced informal because of those signatures, but simply because the prayer had not been repeated on the top of each page, through the unfamiliarity of the ladies who got up the petitions with petition formalities. To-day I have had the honour of presenting, as the House saw, a petition ocntaining over 243,000 signatures. One hon. Member has suggested that this petition consisted of titled ladies, or ladies of position, and their housemaids. I may, just for a moment, in order to inform the House accurately on the point, show what is the analysis of the first page of this petition. First of all, there are two ordinary married women, living with their husbands, one a commoner, and one a peeress; one peeress, a widow and a great landowner; one headmistress (with a Cambridge degree) of a high school, one highly 'educated working woman, a "Times" librarian; one woman author, one woman wage-earner; and I may sum up the whole petition, as I have been asked to do, with the trades and professions represented in it. They are these: authors, journalists, secretaries, schoolmistresses (with university degrees, and down to the elementary school class), farmers, shopkeepers, typists, clerks, domestic servants of every rank, mill hands, shop assistants, fishwives, coastguards' wives, soldiers' and sailors' wives, charwomen, caretakers, and many others. I may add, that the experience of those who took the petitions round, was that the signatures were given, not only with readiness, but with eagerness. I was asked to add, that as the organisation was only very recently begun in Scotland, the Scottish organisers wished it to be known that scarcely the fringe of Scottish objection to woman's suffrage has, as yet, been touched.

It is not sufficient to say that these signatories do not themselves wish to have the vote. It goes further than that. They do not wish the Government of this country to be shared by the sex to which they belong. As to the general opinion in England among women, I think I may quote the respected wife of one of the hon. Members of this House, who said the other day—she being a strong supporter of women's suffrage:—

Is this Bill serious? If it is, then it is something prodigious. On the invitation of a private Member this House of Commons, in a single flash, is to give a vote to every man and woman—practically boy and girl one might truly say—above the age of 21, who is not subject to legal incapacity, and who has resided for three months in any particular place before July 15th in any year. The result of that will be to add at least 10,000,000 of women to the electoral roll, when not one woman has had the vote before. As has been pointed out more than once to-day, it will swell the electorate from 7,000,000 to over 20,000,000, and leave men in a minority of something like 1,500,000.

This is not a leap in the dark merely. It is a plunge into the flooded waters of ignorance, inexperience, sentiment, and emotion. I can readily imagine that certain parties hope to get some advantage from this enormous expansion of the franchise. George Meredith writes for women's suffrage, and thinks he writes with his eyes open, because he predicts that for a time there will be a swamping of Liberalism, and a strengthening of ecclesiastical pretensions. I am reminded of the remark of Mrs. Fawcett in public the other day— a remark that struck me very forcibly— "That if the women of Europe had been represented in the Governments of Europe the internecine quarrel between Church and State in Europe would never have taken place." I am inclined to agree with her. For it is more than probable, if the women of Europe had had the franchise, that the ecclesiastical lion would have lain down with the State lamb—inside him.

There is another party. I may be allowed to quote what one of the leaders of the Socialist party in this House said a short time ago: "I have nothing to fear from women's enfranchisement from the point of view of the political party with which I am associated." That, of course, depends upon the kind of promises which are made to women, and how much they believe. But, leaving that for the present, I cannot help recording my conviction that the new 10,000,000 of women electors will be a happy hunting-ground for that particular party.

As to how this Bill has been received by the suffrage societies, it is a matter .of common knowledge that the suffrage societies, to the number of 71, were united in their desire to break down the sex disqualification as their first step. They felt, and justifiably felt, that they could do this more easily, with the help of the 400 Members of Parliament who they claim have pledged themselves on this question by passing a Bill to extend the franchise on the basis of the property or occupation qualification. So these suffrage societies of all kinds are hostile to the present Bill, partly because some of them object to adult suffrage, and others because this Bill goes athwart their particular policy of abolishing the sex disqualification first. I may quote the words of the chairman of the executive of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies, words spoken in reference to the Bill, two years ago, of the hon. Member for St. Pancras. Mr. Walter Maclaren said:— may concern, is a premonition that if the property or occupation qualification is extended to women, the enfranchisement of the whole sex must follow. It is a case, in the end, of all women, or none. Even if it were not contrary to Liberal principles that the vote should depend upon cash or bricks and mortar, surely there are other ways of getting it. The bells and chains which have victoriously sounded and rattled before would undoubtedly sound and rattle again. What is going on in Norway at the present time? In 1907, the franchise was extended to women in Norway on the basis of property. Since then there has been no general election, so that it has been quite impossible to test the effect of the woman's franchise upon the Government or the policy of that country. But without any such general election to test and prove its effect, some members of the Government in Norway are already pushing universal suffrage for women as well as for men, and that measure is just now before the Norwegian House of Parliament. So it would be in England if once the property and occupation qualification is extended to women. The enfranchisement of all women must undoubtedly follow, and then they would be the majority of the electors in the country. It is no disrespect to women to say that the sex disqualification is absolutely sound. It is no more disrespectful than if we were to say that the man's sex is physically stronger than the woman's. For the final purposes of government, for the purposes of the sovereign vote and the sovereign authority, the sex disqualification is a sound one, because it has a natural basis which no artificiality and no unnaturalness can upset, and to disregard it must necessarily end in doing an irreparable wrong to any nation. It is not merely Conservatives, it is not merely philosophers, but it is practical politicians, and Liberal politicians, too, of great note, who declare that the ultimate basis of authority is physical force, and that force is characteristically male. In this respect the controversy, though it is older by a few years, has not in the least changed. The effect of sex is illustrated from both sides by what has so frequently taken place of late, the futile pretence of women throwing themselves against the line of police, on the other side the necessary forbearance of the police in dealing with disorderly women in comparison with the way in which they would deal with disorderly men; the necessity of pro- tecting women from the crowd that they themselves had collected when they drew together the criminal population of London into one place, and denuded other places at the same time of the protection of the police. For the enforcement of authority, whether internally or internationally the female sex is entirely out of it, to use a familiar expression, and rightly so by reason of their sex. Women have to be guarded rather than attacked, and protection necessarily implies inequality for the purpose of Government. So that if they have the vote, while they might be partners in enacting laws, they could not be partners in enforcing them; and it is not to the point to look forward to a golden age when justice and not physical force would be all that law required for its enforcement, when physical force need not be at the back of all law as the last resort. That this last resort sometimes comes is absolutely true, as the United States proved by their Civil War. Physical force remains even when the law carries itself out, as it were, automatically. Physical force does not cease to be there because a large number of people have forgotten that it is there, or because they put their heads into the sand. Sir Fitzjames Stephen wrote:— the utility is evident, and therefore the great change ought not to be made. Yet we are asked this afternoon, as a House of Commons, to pass this Bill before the country, which is intimately concerned in the results of such a Bill, has any opportunity of saying whether such a thing shall or shall not be. It is most natural, of course, that the hot-foot supporters of women's suffrage should desire to close the issue before the opposition, which has been late in rising, has had time to put its case. If the House connived at such an idea it would, as I ventured to say before, be a piece of sharp practice of which I am not going to believe this House would be guilty; for it is the duty of the House not to connive at such an enormous and sudden revolution, but to see to it that the revolution shall not be sprung on the country before it has been fully considered by the electorate and decided at the polls. And on that conclusion is based my heartfelt opposition to this Bill.

This debate has differed from the debate of last year in some very remarkable ways. In the first place, on former occasions we had almost invariably either the silent acquiescence or active support from speakers on the benches opposite. On this occasion we have for the first time had at least two important speeches made in direct opposition to this Bill. And yet the only change has been that in connection with the proposal for women's suffrage it has also been found necessary to effect a general increase in the electorate. The hon. Member for Blackburn, who spoke, as he always does, with great effect in this House, spoke in a critical manner of the Bill that has been presented by my hon. Friend the Member for Eskdale. He did so because, I think he said, all the women's suffrage societies were opposed to the action that is being taken by my hon. Friend. That is true, so far as it goes; but, on the other hand, I think we are bound to realise that the Women's Liberal Federation, which represents, I am told, 100,000 women, has expressed itself in favour of this Bill, and another very important body, and the body which represents the working women in this country more than any other almost, namely, the Women's Co-operative Guild, has also definitely decided that the Bill which commands their support should" be a Bill of a much more extended character than that which was proposed last year. I am told that they have now expressed accord with this particular Bill.

I am sorry I must differ from my hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn. After all, his opposition and the opposition of those suffrage societies, is based upon questions of policy, and on questions of policy every man is entitled to have a different opinion, and there is a very wide opportunity for divergence of views. He holds that this Bill is placing insuperable obstacles in the way of the achievement of the vote for women. On the other hand, those of us who had to do with this Bill think the contrary. I feel sure this House will realise that the two hon. Members, the Member for Eskdale and the right hon. Member for Bosworth, are so earnestly attached to the principle of women's suffrage that it cannot be thought they would introduce their Bill unless they thought that the Bill would really afford a means of furthering that cause. Far from desiring or attempting to place obstacles, we believe the Bill will materally assist that object. What was the position we had to consider when my hon. Friend was proposing to introduce this Bill? We had last year the decision of this House, which clearly laid it down, so far as the Members of this House were concerned, that a majority, and a very considerable majority, recognised that sex should be no bar to the Parliamentary franchise, and further showed us that in order to ensure the extension of the franchise to women, at any rate, if it was to proceed from the Liberal party, it would be absolutely essential that this movement in this House and outside of it should move more on the lines of democratic principles than it had hitherto done. It also showed that those interested in the movement in this House were honestly bound to place before this House in some Bill a definite proposal, carefully thought out, as to how they should propose that change in the law should be brought about.

With regard to the question of moving on more democratic lines, I believe that a grave mistake was made by many persons in thinking they could squeeze in women's franchise by introducing the thin end of the wedge. I believe they realise now there was no possibility of getting women votes unless it was done on some broad lines of enfranchisement. I believe that is the lesson taught by other countries. Wherever that suffrage is given it is given on the grounds of absolute equality be- tween man and woman. Wherever it is, in America or Australia, it is on the basis of adult suffrage, and on that basis alone has it been initiated. Much more was that the case the other day in the latest country to adopt it, the little nation of Finland, a nation which, every Member will admit, is quite on a par with us as regards the masses of our population, both in intelligence and in education. They have had a great movement which has culminated in the admission of women into the Parliamentary arena. One of the ladies who was over here not long ago, in explaining how the suffrage was given to the women of Finland, told the ladies present at the meeting, that in 1899 there—

Whom is the hon. Gentleman quoting?

Mme. Aino Malmberg, addressing a meeting of the Women's Freedom League, on 8th January, 1909.

The hon. Member for Sevenoaks says that this Bill means conferring the vote upon individuals. I am very glad he has put it in that way. It does mean conferring upon individuals the vote, and it is because we are firmly persuaded that no change in our franchise law can be brought about by a Liberal Government, or, indeed, any Government, that does not recognise that it is the individual who is to have the vote, that we have ventured to put this Bill before the House. The hon. Member also objects to the Bill because of many of its details. Into those details I do not propose to go; but I think my hon. Friend was justified in the course he has taken in introducing into the Bill the various details, such as plural voting and others, because he was honestly bound by the action of the House last year, if be brought forward a Bill at all, to bring forward one which explicitly stated what the proposals were. One of the reasons why the Bill of last year was inadequate was that it enfranchised only a very limited number of women. It would have enfranchised, roughly speaking, only 10 out of every 100 women in this country. Quite apart from the general question, it seems to me that if we aim at a condition of affairs under which the voice of women is to be heard in this country, we cannot admit a system in which 90 out of every 100 women will remain voiceless and unable to record their opinion. That would be no expression of the wishes of women. The views of women would not really be ascertainable, and from that point of view alone we are bound to admit a larger number of women than was proposed by last year's Bill.

What was the cause of this limitation? It arose from the fact that our present system of franchise is totally unsuited to the extension of the franchise to women. Our franchise laws rest on the relationship that an individual has to a particular piece of immovable property. It rests not on wealth or education, but on the more or less fortuitous relationship which exists between a man and his house or room. I say it does not rest on wealth, because the room which would entitle a man to a vote may be the smallest imaginable; be may occupy a hovel on the seashore or a single room in a town slum; but the fact that he occupies it will give him the right to vote. But he must be the person who has the exclusive right to that particular dwelling, however humble it may be, and owing to our social customs there are very few women who have that right. All married women and a large number of women who are unmarried would be excluded. Therefore it was essential that we should find some means whereby the social customs of the community would not prevent the great mass of women from having the vote. The last Bill, though it would have enfranchised rich and poor, would, after all, have failed to enfranchise the best class of women. An example occurred when the decision with regard to latch-key voters was given in London. That decision, owing to the fact that it turned a lodger into an occupier, added to the women on the municipal lists some 20,000 or 30,000 women, many of them of the humblest class. In some parts of London women occupying single rooms came on the register in large numbers; but, at the same time, the wives of the working classes, the mothers of families, the respectable, responsible womanhood, were left off the register. Therefore a Bill which would have omitted the best class of women evidently did not do justice to womankind, and could not have afforded a just criterion of the wishes of women. Accordingly those who are interested in the subject felt bound to find a better plan, and the only method that could be devised was to do away with this principle of occupation, with its limited legal definition—the occupation of a tenement—and put in its place residence. A question was asked as to what "residence" means. Residence is a term which long ago has been decided in the courts in reference to the question of votes. Roughly speaking, it has been defined as meaning the place where a man has his usual place of abode. With that definition, all the ideas as to a town being flooded with strangers, or of persons getting votes by going to the seaside on a visit, would prove to be without foundation.

We had to look at the matter from the practical point of view of what was going to happen in the near future. Those who have followed the application of the franchise laws must realise that, whatever Bill is brought forward next year will result in a very near approximation to what we know as adult suffrage. Even with regard to the enfranchisement of men, the 3,000,000 men who are unenfranchised are not deprived of their rights because they are humble, but because, owing to the extraordinary complication and absurdities of the registration law they cannot get on, or if they get off they have to stay off the register for some time. There are a considerable number of points in the present franchise law which are bound to be dealt with. There is the limitation of the period of occupation. That, I believe, in any Bill put forward by any party, would have to be materially shortened. The question of successive occupation would have to be dealt with. If the period of occupation was restricted to three months and there was a really efficient system of successive occupation, whereby a man could carry his vote with him on changing his residence, an enormous addition to the electorate would be brought about. Then there comes the question of the latch-key vote. I believe that any Bill introduced would have to deal with that subject. It stands in a position in which it is not logical that it should remain. Questions as to whether a man's vote should depend on whether he uses his own door-mat or not, whether he is allowed to keep a dog or not, whether he is allowed to play the banjo or not, have been raised in the discussions in the registration courts. Such questions cannot be allowed to remain in connection with any demand for the franchise in this country. In regard to the service vote, no proposal to amend it could be passed which will not extend that vote very largely indeed. Perhaps the most important of all are the difficulties which have arisen in regard to the lodger vote and joint occupation. Both of these franchises are in reality property franchises. People are shut out because of the rental of £10 required in the cases of a lodging or the joint occupation of a house. Any proposal to amend this and do away with the £10 limit would necessarily result in the admission to the electorate of a very great mass of men. I mention these details because I feel convinced that any alteration in the law would bring us very near to male adult suffrage. That means that we should have to accept the principle of residence as the principle which would entitle a man to have a vote, and that is what this Bill proposes to do. But the objection is raised that by doing so we should include a very large number of men and a very large number of women. That is perfectly true; but the number can be reduced at any rate by limiting the age, and that would be a matter for further consideration.

After all, we come back to this—that the objection to this Bill, as very well summed up by the Member for Sevenoaks, is that it is a dangerous proposal; dangerous because it enlarges the electorate to an extent of several millions. Well, that is the objection which was raised on all previous occasions when there was any proposal to enlarge the franchise. In 1832 these words were used in this House:— tention to some recent events. I do not propose to criticise or to judge the action of anybody outside; I think some of them have been mistaken. Some of them have done more harm to their cause than good, but we must bear in mind that the women who have been carrying on this method of procedure have only constituted a very small fraction of the women of the country. Side by side with them are a large number of responsible and sensible women who deprecate these methods, and who have advocated the cause with every reasonable argument pertinaciously for many years. We ought not to allow their case to be damaged by what we think the mistaken tactics of certain suffrage associations. But, after all, can we not also recognise that they were to a certain extent justified? They have read history, and they know the methods that were used in former years. They have tried pacific persuasion, and they got some 400 hon. Members of this House to declare in their favour. Since then, they have taken strong steps which some of us deplore, but we must also realise that, under the circumstances, they were inevitable. They have brought the question to the forefront. Their methods have shown that they are in earnest in what they are doing. These ladies who are going to prison do so with no desire for self-advertisement or from any hysteria. That which has moved them to take this action is an earnest and convinced belief in a great cause. I believe this House would make no greater mistake than by thinking that this movement is a passing movement. It will grow. The women believe—and they rightly believe—that their demand for justice cannot be refused permanently. They say: Your principle has been to place your trust in the people. Why trust one half only? Cannot you trust the whole of the people? I believe that principle will in the long run prevail. I support this Bill willingly and earnestly, and I hope the House will give hon. Members an opportunity of dividing on it. It has already been stated that it is impossible to think that a Bill of this magnitude can go any further this Session. We know the practical difficulties that will arise. We also know that unless a private Member's Bill is sent upstairs to a Grand Committee it cannot get any further; and all we ask now is that the House should have an opportunity of voting on the general question involved in the Bill.

The hon. Member who moved the second reading of this Bill gave the House two reasons for doing so. As far as I understood him 25 years have passed since the franchise had been dealt with, and the second reason was that it was very desirable that a democratic party should give some indication of its intention in this matter. He intimated at the same time that he had no desire or intention that this Bill should go any further during the Session. I respectfully suggest that in the interests of private Members it would be far better to deal with such subjects by means of resolutions on Tuesday or Wednesday evenings instead of occupying a Friday sitting with a Bill on an abstract subject—a Bill which it is obvious can never be carried into law. But as the hon. Member has moved this Bill in this form, it is necessary that the House should take some cognisance of it, and discuss its various provisions. Nobody can say the hon. Member has brought forward a small Bill. The principles involved are of such a far-reaching nature that it practically amounts not to a reform of the fianchise, but to a revolution of the franchise in Parliamentary elections. What ground has the hon. Member for bringing forward a Bill of that kind? Can he say that there has been at the general election, or at any series of bye-elections, any serious desire by the people of this country to have the franchise further extended? Not more than thirteen Members of this House mentioned manhood suffrage in their election addresses at the last general election. Is it desirable that the franchise should be so much further extended? I think everybody on both sides of the House will admit that at the present moment the franchise is exercised by a great many people, who in many cases are not fit for it. I am not exaggerating when I say there are people in both parties who vote blue or yellow simply because their fathers or their uncles voted blue or yellow before them. They have not the least idea of the important issues upon which they are going to vote; they vote because they are in favour of a particular colour, or because they have a fancy for a particular candidate. From a mere party point of view, I have not the least objection to extending the franchise. I know that when the last Reform Bill was introduced, it was prophesied from the Tory side of the House that there never again would be a Tory-returned for an agricultural constituency. That prophesy has proved to be absolutely delusive. I do not think that as a party we, as Conservatives, have anything to fear from a further extension of the franchise. But I ask the House to consider if it is really desirable, in the interests of good Government, that the franchise should be further extended, I think hon. Members will agree that this House, as it is constituted, is representative of all classes of the community, and I think we may honestly say that all classes of the community are here represented; but if you extend the franchise still further to the less educated, to the lower classes, what will happen? Will the House remain the real representative of all classes of the community it is today? If you transfer the electoral power to the less educated, and, therefore, to the lower classes of the community, I think you must admit that you will but give a larger representation to the lower classes and a smaller representation to the other id the country. On that ground alone I think the House ought to pause and consider very seriously before it attempts in a Bill of any sort to confer the franchise to a large extent upon the lower classes of this country. Then the hon. Gentleman proceeded in the short space of six lines to abolish plural voting. I have always objected to the abolition of plural voting, and I shall always object to it, because I cannot for the life of me see why it is unjust that if a man possesses a large business in a town, giving employment to many people, and at the same time chooses to buy a property or residence outside the town, he should not be entitled to a vote for the borough in which his business is and a vote for the county in which he and his family reside. There is the still further objection to the abolition of plural voting, and a still further defence of it, that during the existence of the present Government we cannot fail to recognise that repeated, and not altogether veiled, attacks are being made on property, and I think it is only fair and sportsmanlike that the party opposite should give the owners of property a little more representation than they have at present. Arising out of this question I think the hon. Gentleman ought to offer himself for the post of Parliamentary Draftsman to the Government, because when the latter introduced a Bill to abolish plural voting it consisted of five clauses, a schedule with a total of 117 lines, and by the time the Bill had passed through the House it consisted of nine classes, a schedule and 313 lines. The hon. Gentleman, however, proposes to do in the short space of six lines the same thing, and therefore one would certainly recommend him for the post of Parliamentary Draftsman.

In an equally short space the hon. Gentleman proposes to confer the right to vote upon the female part of the population. The hon. Gentleman and his supporters tell us that they have done the cause of women's suffrage a great deal of good by introducing this particular clause, which confers the franchise on every adult woman, but I think they have done a great deal of good to the anti-women's suffrage movement. Many people have supported women's suffrage simply with the idea of conferring the franchise on women of property, and they would decline to admit the principle that once you adopt the proposal of giving a vote to women of property it is impossible to stop there, and you must give the vote to every woman over a certain age. Therefore I think they have done for the anti-suffrage people a good thing by disposing of this myth upon which so many people founded their support, and given a clear indication of what women's suffrage really means. There is one clause which is omitted from the Bill, and that is in the Franchise and Removal of Women's Disabilities Bill of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Forest of Dean, to the effect that no person shall be disqualified by sex or marriage from being elected or being a Member of either House of Parliament. That, I presume, is quite an oversight on the part of the hon. Gentleman, and now that he and his supporters admit that women ought to have the vote they cannot surely deny the same persons the privilege of being elected Members to sit in this House. The right hon. Baronet who seconded the second reading of the Bill referred in somewhat scornful tones to the petition presented against the Bill by the hon. Member for Cricklade, and he said he did not believe in petitions and that the pro-suffrage people had long ago given up the idea of presenting petitions in its favour. I am not surprised that they have given up the policy of presenting petitions. The petition against the Bill has 243,842 signatures. I do not think the hon. Gentleman opposite would admit that the cause of woman's suffrage is one of recent growth. I think he will admit that it has existed for a good many years. When I tell him that during the past 16 years the sum total of the whole of the signatures in the 1 various petitions presented to the House in favour of women's suffrage has only amounted to 193,678, I do not think the House will be surprised that the women's suffrage party have given up the policy of presenting petitions.

The real objection from my point of view to including women among those entitled to have the vote is that once you give the vote to every adult woman it means that you are granting the power of deciding the future of the country to the majority of the people, who really are women. It is admitted by all that there are at present about 1,000,000 more adult women than men, and the ultimate power of the government of the country will thereby necessarily pass into the hands of women. I cannot myself think that can be a desirable thing. The ultimate power of government of any kind depends upon force, and women are, from the physical incapacity of the sex, disabled from carrying out the functions of governing. We have also to remember that it would be quite possible under this Bill for the majority of women, either by themselves or together with a very small minority of men, to elect to Parliament a majority who are pledged to some reforms which women are in favour of and which men are utterly opposed to. I cannot conceive that an occurrence of that kind would be either in the interests of peace, order or good government. I can hardly imagine men ever consenting to have some law passed, as the result of the votes of women, to which law the majority of men are bitterly opposed.

Then, again, we were referred to the analogy of New Zealand and Australia. But surely that is a very inapposite analogy. It is quite true that New Zealand and Australia have women's suffrage, but they are only concerned, so to speak, with domestic legislation, and I believe the majority of men over women in those countries is very large indeed, and therefore quite the reverse of the state of affairs in this country. We in this country have to deal not only with the affairs of Great Britain, but of the British Empire, and when we find that of the great European countries the only ones which have adopted women's suffrage are Norway, the Isle of Man, and the province of Finland, I do not think we get any good example for Europe or any reason why this country should adopt it.

I was much interested in the speech of the right hon. Baronet who seconded the second reading, and I felt inclined to ask, when he sat down, why he had consented to second it, be- cause on every important point of the Bill the right hon. Gentleman differed completely from the actual terms of the Bill. He said that the age should be raised from 21 to 25. There are a good many arguments both for and against his proposal, but a good many Members of this House in years past were elected before the age of 25, and I would suggest that if gentlemen are fit to be elected Members of this House before they are 25 they are fit to exercise the vote. Then he said he would move in Committee to prevent the result of a majority of votes in this country being held by women as opposed to men. That cannot be done without expurgating a very large part of the Bill. On the question of domestic servants his proposition was an extraordinary one on the democratic side of the House. He said that because a large number of domestic servants lived in their masters' houses, therefore they were not fit to have votes. Does not he recognise that at the present moment there are cases of married butlers, married cooks, and married gamekeepers who occupy houses of their employers, and yet are allowed to have votes, and who, as far as I know, are not terrorised by fear of what their masters will do, but vote according to their consciences. The short discussion of today must make it clear to everyone that this is not a Bill which ought to be brought forward by a private Member, and it is certainly not a Bill which the Government can adopt until the general sense not of this House but of the present electorate of this country has been taken upon this important matter.

My hon. Friend the Member for Cricklade may be trusted, I think, to say the best that can be said against woman suffrage, and the fact that he has merely repeated the old arguments in all their elusiveness, and has found no new argument, is, I think, an encouragement to those who support this Bill, and the cause of woman's suffrage in general. My hon. Friend repeats the argument made use of on a previous occasion to the effect that we in this House had no right to make such a vital alteration in the suffrage, inasmuch as the issue of woman's suffrage was not one of the leading issues at the last election. I would say in reply to that that it is impossible that all the thousand and one issues that do arise in the course of the Parliamentary year can be made leading questions before the country. There can be only a few leading questions at any one general election. Three or four questions occupy the front, but if the fact remains, nevertheless, that 400 Members gave pledges to those who asked for them, that they would support woman's suffrage, that is sufficient to justify this House taking legislative action. If my hon. Friend's objections were to be pressed, then a number of the Bills we have actually passed would be ruled out on the plea that we had no mandate from the country. I accept the mandate argument to this extent: if the Government were suddenly to take up an issue of Constitutional importance in regard to which neither its Members nor their followers had given any indication of their intentions to their Constituents—for instance, a Bill such as the last Government took up, dealing with education— then, in a case like that, I think that you might argue there has been no mandate. That argument cannot rationally be put with regard to a question which has been discussed for two generations on public platforms, and with regard to which very few candidates have escaped being asked their opinion. My hon. Friend opposite has put in an incoherent way a series of arguments on this subject, and he spoke of the prejudices of women and their unbalanced tendencies in regard to matters of opinion. I understand that he rather distrusts women generally, and regards it as a danger to entrust them with a vote. Nevertheless, the hon. Member lays stress on the fact that a monster petition has just been sent to this House by women, and he points to that as a free expression of the views of women, and he asks the House to be influenced by that petition. The hon. Member is quite ready to attend to the opinion of women when it coincides with his own, but he considers their opinions are not worth attending to when opposed to his own views. I do not think it is any use discussing the amount of unbalanced opinion amongst women. I do not suppose my hon. Friend would claim to be more opposed to the principle of clericalism than myself; but I cannot recognise that the disposition of women towards clericalism gives me any right to deny them a vote. The worst conceivable evils of clericalism are averted by the happy opposition of sects. The Church of England is never able to swamp the country because of the dissenting churches, which are arrayed against it. It is that which saves the country, and the introduction of women into the electorate would leave that factor exactly as it is. It would mean that a number of women connected with the Church of England would be enfranchised, but a proportionate number in the dissenting churches would also be enfranchised. Therefore, whatever harm one particular sect would be able to do it can do at the present time. I agree that clericalism is a most lamentable factor in our politics at the present moment, but the introduction of women to the franchise would not introduce any new element into the situation.

As for unbalanced opinion, does the hon. Member opposite suppose that there is no unbalanced opinion amongst hon. Members sitting opposite. I observe many of them putting forward the economics of Bedlam, and calling it Tariff Reform. Nevertheless I do not regard that as a ground upon which I should refuse the franchise to hon. Members opposite. And has my hon. Friend any notion of curing the defects he deplores? His arguments seem to imply a preparedness to contemplate the other sex as likely to be intellectually weak so long as the human race endures. I suppose the hon. Member would like to see an improvement in women in this respect, and I see in women's suffrage one of the methods of improving the judgment and the character of women. Is it unfair to assume that the better judgment of men is due to their political training; and is the conclusion not that if women's judgment is to be improved they should be allowed the same opportunities of training their judgment as men? I do not think there is anything in the argument of the hon. Member as to the danger of enfranchising 10,000,000 women at once. If the politicians of the country are divided into two broad parties opposing each other they cannot be equally wrong, and, at all events, one will tend to neutralise the errors of the other. Probably the enlarged constituencies may be found a little troublesome, but the number of the votes will not really affect the case, because there is no rational ground for supposing that women are ever going to be ariayed against men. The hon. Member for Cricklade made the old assumption that women will tend to vote en masse against men. That danger has been stated again and again—that women being far in the majority, it is a dangerous thing to give the power into their hands. Suppose I put it this way—that in this country—in spite of theories to the contrary—dark-haired persons were in the majority, and therefore it was a danger to light-haired persons that dark-haired persons should have the vote. You say that is a physiological irrelevance. I answer that it is exactly in accord with the arguments used against woman's suffrage. The sex is not in one political camp any more than man. Everyone who thinks at all in the matter knows that the enfranchisement of women, as women, will not mean a possible voting majority on one side, but that women's votes will be distributed between the two or more political parties, the same as in the past. My hon. Friend was so much at a loss for good arguments as to fall back on the old thesis that the exclusion of women from the franchise is sound because it is natural. If I were to rely on my natural common sense in this particular dispute, I should say that if the women pay taxes they should have representation too. It is natural that male prejudice may be against it, but so it was once against the higher education of women, and there was not a single advance made in the education of women during the last 100 years that has not been resisted by that spirit of natural conservatism that has been mentioned.

As to the final argument about the law of force, I have never been able to follow it to its conclusion. The hon. Member argues that government was originally, and ultimately rests, upon force. But it operates equally as regards men and women at the present. No one person, however strong, is stronger than the State. There are weak men and strong women. There have been many Members of this House, esteemed Members, who suffered from physical weakness, and there are plenty of women outside who would be dangerous where physical strength was concerned. If this theory has any point at all, it affects males that are incapacitated, infirm, and crippled. Why is not the disfranchisement of these proposed?

A great deal has been said as to the propriety of raising the voting age to 25. There are difficulties in assenting to that proposition. I myself was at 21, engaged, through journalism, in instructing my fellow creatures in political matters. If I was entitled to teach political matters at 21, I can scarcely propose to withhold the vote from others till they are 25.

You may have taught wrrongly.

My hon. Friend suggests that I may have taught wrongly. I think that is very probable. The effective answer would be that if I at that age had been refused the right to vote—and I may say in the very singular arrangements of our country I have only voted once in my life—I do not think I should have taken it very much to heart; and if the vote were limited generally to the age of 25, both men and women under that age I think would be prepared to bear the burden with something like equanimity. The right hon. Baronet who seconded the Bill argued that we should withhold the vote from domestic servants, and an hon. Member referred to this as the despising and ruling out of that class. The right hon. Baronet had no intention in any way to stigmatise the class. He simply meant that domestic servants are largely under the influence of their rich employers, and that they would be compelled in general to vote in favour of their employers. I do not, however, think that, is a good argument, and the vote should be given to domestic servants, and the results faced as in other cases. It has been quite clearly shown by several speakers that those of us who supported the Bill last year, and in that way indicated our belief in the principle of women's suffrage, can perfectly consistently go on to support the Bill of this year, which deals with the question on a more logical basis than the Bill of last year. I understand that a large number of women's suffrage societies outside object to this particular Bill, and claim that all who profess to believe in women's suffrage should first remove the causes of women's sex disqualification. I would say in reply to those who take up that position that they are cutting the ground from under their own feet. I am a supporter, and have always been a supporter of women's suffrage. Women have always asked for the suffrage as an inherent right, irrespective of sex, and I have supported their claims as one of citizen right. If woman has the rights of property, if she has the duties of a citizen, and if she is allowed equality of rights in the courts, then, as a citizen, she ought to have the vote. But these ladies now claim to deal with the question solely on grounds of sex. They cannot dispute that if they have disabilities and grievances with regard to the franchise a great many men are also disfranchised: but then, ladies now come and argue that they care nothing about the disabilities and grievances of other citizens, and they claim that the disqualification of their sex should first be dealt with. There can be no force in such an argument. Their grievances are only on a level with the grievances of other citizens, as in the terms of their former case. It is very obvious that the movement carried on on these lines is in the interests of hon. Gentlemen opposite; I do not mean that hon. Gentlemen opposite are parties to it; but, as we know well, that a number of ladies who have not got votes have the greatest objection to the rectification of the franchise in other respects. They not only claim to get the vote, but they claim to get the unjust multiplicity of votes that rest on property, and they presume to tell us who are determined not to submit to any extension of that unjust multiplicity, that we are resisting the principle of the enfranchisement of women.

I think I can speak for a good many on this side who were supporters of the woman's suffrage cause before recent troubles and tempests have arisen, and who will continue to support it in spite of the misconduct of some women. I think we can claim to say on what grounds we form our conclusions and why we hold to those grounds.

The hon. Member for Tyneside and the hon. Member for Preston alike are always determined to give us logic which ignores the actual facts of life. Thus has the former ignored the fact that the difference of sex is the one ground why women should not have the vote, and absolutely the only ground on which they can be refused. That one simple fact, to which nine out of ten Members of this House will subscribe, he characteristically left outside his logical arguments. To-day my hon. Friend the Member for Eskdale threw down on the floor of the House a Bill replete with revolution, while explaining that the bomb is not intended to burst. The first remark I have to make with regard to the Bill is how is it he is so intensely dissatisfied with the electorate and an electoral system which sends him and his Friends to the House in such an overwhelming majority? If there is any justification for this Bill whatsoever, it must be on the ground that the existing electorate is unfavourable to him and to those who hold office. Another question I ask. How is it that he to-day proposes in this Bill to create an enormous number of outside electors, who will come down and will entirely swamp him and his friends at any election? It seems to me that my hon. Friend's Bill is replete not only with revolution but with ingratitude to the existing system, of which he is him- self, I am glad to own, a very fair and a very good product.

The great difficulty with this subject is that when you leave logical lines and come back to actual facts you are accused of being frivolous. I protest that there could be nothing more serious than this Bill. I regard it as a tremendous revolution as it is. I asked a plain question when this or a similar Bill was before the House last year, and I was accused of being flippant. I asked was there any hon. Member who would come there and however much he may esteem his wife, be ready to say that he is proud to be-under petticoat government. There is not one. Rather would not the husband of the most capable lady who has a husband in the House of Commons come here and', say:— hon. Member for West Staffordshire, who, I am sure, in the fullness of time will occupy as powerful and weighty a position as is now occupied by the right hon. Member for the Bosworth Division. But if the right hon. Baronet was in a tight place, and did not quite know how to vote, would he go to the hon. Member for Staffordshire for advice? I do not think he would. Then I ask him, in the name of common-sense, if the father would not go to the son, or the mother to the daughter for advice in the affairs of life, why should this great Empire go to parochial daughter countries like New Zealand?

Then I take another point. The hon. Member introduced the case of the Ranee of Jhansi, who died fighting in the mutiny, as a proof that you can have women ready to fight. I do not think that that is a good example. I do not want to see women fighting against our Empire. Moreover, this lady was one of our bitterest foes in the mutiny, and, as her valiant soul has now departed for upward of fifty years, I should do no harm to her shade if I say that what forced her against us was the fact that we disapproved of her governing her little Principality by means of her lovers—a method by which ladies of high spirit are believed sometimes to carry on the affairs of their estates or families. I cannot help remarking, too, on the exceedingly undemocratic ground taken by the right hon. Baronet. I am not sure that he was not right about the maid-servants, but I was rather astonished to hear it put forward as a proof of the merits of this Bill that they could be excepted from its benefits.

The hon. Member for the Sevenoaks Division also made one or two statements to which I take exception. He said that representation is individual in character, and that if you once allow that you cannot refuse the vote to women. I agree, but he gave away the whole case by the argument which he put forward. You cannot refuse the suffrage to women on any ground other, than sex. No one can say they are less capable, less eloquent, less virtuous, less patriotic, or less ambitious than men, or that they are inferior in any respect. On the contrary, let us own that they are better, and that they have higher and greater duties to perform; it is on that ground that I would refuse them the suffrage. I believe that in this movement lies the germ of the degradation of womanhood. There was a famous woman who rose to the throne, and in a great crisis in the affairs of her husband, herself, and her country, said:— ting the vote. There is a certain amount of money available for wages, and if the wages of women are raised the wages of men will be proportionately decreased. What advantage that would be to either side I confess I cannot see. It was urged that women should have a vote because a great number of petitions were in favour of the proposal. But now that there has been a counter-move on our side we are told that petitions really do not count. The right hon. Baronet, in his very interesting speech, referred to Queen Victoria. It was asked: "Who can say that woman is not fit to have a vote when Queen Victoria ruled over this Empire?" It may be worth while to see what Queen Victoria said on this subject. In one of Queen Victoria's letters she said that every day she was more convinced that women, when they are good women, are not fit to rule—"We are not made for governing, and if we are good women, we must dislike these masculine occupations." This was the opinion of a woman of great talent and common sense, more capable of ruling than any other woman. The right hon. Baronet referred to the opinion of our Indian Empire. I have here a little cutting from one of the Indian newspapers in which it was said that "the late Sovereign laboured under one disadvantage—she was a woman, and could not restrain her servants from playing ducks and drakes with her promises." That was the opinion of one of the chief Indian native newspapers, though Indians had boundless veneration for the Queen.

An hon. Member trotted out Finland, and it never fails to be trotted out in these debates. He asked if the people of Finland are inferior in intelligence to the people of this country. I lived there for some time. The people of Finland are enormously inferior to the people of this country. There is no comparison between them. The conditions are wholly different. The supporters of women's suffrage ransack the world for precedents. Are Englishmen to go for examples to the agricultural solitudes of Wyoming, the mines of Colorado, or the polygamous plains of Utah? These, Mr. Speaker, are the directions to which the British Empire is to look for examples on the question of women's franchise.

And if we are to follow the lead of New Zealand—it belongs to ourselves—in that respect, why not in regard to Tariff Reform? Why not as regards military defence? I saw that the Minister of Defence in New Zealand—and I honour him for it —stated the time is soon coming when men who will not qualify themselves to fight for their country will be ostracised by those who do. If we are to take the example of New Zealand, why take it in one particular? The number of women in New Zealand, I may observe, is not in the slightest degree comparable to our own, for there the women are in a minority. I cannot understand how any man can contemplate with equanimity the prospect of his wife posing as a Tariff Reformer and canvassing the street, while he himself, as a Free Trader, is holding his committee room upstairs in his house, his wife explaining to her neighbours that her husband is a decent man, keeps the family going, and so on, but that on the question of politics he is an absolute idiot. I ask if this extra vote in the family is likely to do other than destroy the comfort and happiness of the English home. We hear a great deal about the opinions of philosophers. I will just give one case, that of Herbert Spencer in a letter to John Stuart Mill. He wrote that giving political power to women would retard and diminish liberty, strengthen the hands of authority, and stimulate all kinds of State legislation, a great mass of which is antagonistic to personal freedom.

I repeat that on this matter the only question is the question of sex. Women are disqualified by their sex; they have higher duties of their own. In heaven's name, let them go on performing the duties which nature intended them to perform.

Although the time is very limited, I think it is sufficient for me to say the very few words I have to say to the House. It is well known, and has been often said, that on this question whether woman should have the suffrage, the Members of the present Government are not altogether of one opinion, and throughout this Parliament it has never been made a Government question. The situation in that respect is unchanged and entirely unaffected by the introduction of the Bill which is now under the consideration of the House. But this Bill raises other and much wider issues. It proposes to extend the franchise to all adults of either sex, subject to the condition of three months' residence. I myself, and, I believe, all my colleagues, whatever may be our opinion of women's suffrage, are strongly in favour of a reform upon a wide scale of the existing franchise—the abolition of plural voting, the disappearance of the artificial and illogical distinction between occupiers and lodgers, the material shortening of the period of qualification, and thoroughgoing simplification of the machinery of registration. Apart from the question of sex, as to which I do not recede from but reaffirm what I have previously said, as to what the Government contemplate and intend and not committing myself so far as men are concerned to the precise proposals of my hon. Friend, I wish to see a large reform on the lines I have indicated; but I must add this, any measure of the kind ought, in my opinion, if it is to take its place upon the Statute Book, to proceed from the responsible Government of the day, and be carefully moulded under the stress of deliberate and prolonged Parliamentary discussion. I understand that promoters of this Bill are quite willing, if it is read a second time, that it should be committed to a Committee of the whole House, a course which I think is a very wise one for them to take, but at the same time that, apart from all other considerations, for the reasons which I have given, is sufficient reason why I, at any rate, and my colleagues, should not vote at this moment for the second reading of the Bill.

rose in his place, and claimed to move: "That the question be now put."

Question put: "That the question be now put."

The House divided: Ayes, 158; Noes, 124.

Question put: "That the word 'now' stand part of the question."

The House divided: Ayes, 157; Noes, 122.

Bill read a second time.

I beg to move: "That the Bill be referred to a Committee of the whole House."

Motion agreed to.

Whereupon Mr. Speaker adjourned the House without Question put, in pursuance of Standing Order No. 3.

House adjourned at fifteen minutes after Five of the clock till Monday next.