The new Electoral Law in the colony of Victoria gives
votes to all women who pay municipal rates, and at the last election they availed themselves of their new power. It is reported that they voted "very well," favoured "educated candidates;" as might have been expected, women being born aristocrats ; "gave plumpers," which was natural, as they could no more admire two candidates than two curates at once ; and "despised the ballot," which was inevitable, as they never show cowardice except in presence of a noisy danger. A woman would no more shrink from voting for an unpopular man than from attending him in the small-pox, though she probably would not pass an angry turkey to reach either polling booth or sick bed. It is to be observed that the female voters in Melbourne are all either widows or spinsters, wives not paying municipal rates.
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