On Friday week in the House of Commons Mr. Dickinson
Moved the second reading of his Women's Suffrage Bill. The effect of the Bill was to include women wherever the masculine gender is used in the qualification for voters ; and it also pro- vided that a woman should not be disqualified by marriage. Mr. Dickinson said that at least four hundred Members of the present House had approved the principle of women's suffrage. The old argument that women ought not to vote because they could not fight had been disproved. The vote could not be withheld, either, on grounds of intellectual inferiority. Women's suffrage worked well in four American States, and in our Colonies where it existed. Sir Henry Campbell. Bannerman supported the principle of the Bill, arguing that there should be no taxation without direct representation. Woman was not an "outlander by predestination." In many matters women's knowledge would be more valuable than men's. He disliked, however, this particular Bill, which would enfranchise a minority of well-to-do women, and the Govern- ment, recognising that this was not a party question, would leave the House to vote as it pleased. The rejection of the Bill was moved and seconded by Liberals. Mr. Massie declared that Mr. Gladstone was opposed to women's suffrage, and when there was some dissent from this, he said: "I have it on a postcard from Mr. Gladstone himself." Eventually the Bill was talked out, the Speaker having refused to accept the Closure.
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