Sir Albert Rollit moved on Wednesday the second reading of
his Bill for giving the Parliamentary suffrage to all women who• now possess the right of voting at municipal elections. It did not give women either the lodger franchise, or the forty-shilling - freehold franchise, or the service franchise. The State of Wyoming,—only recently admitted as a State,—which only sends one representative to Congress, is the only precedent for giving the Parliamentary franchise to women, and it does• not appear that there it is greatly valued or freely exercised- No other State or country has at present conferred the Par- liamentary franchise on women. Oddly enough, considering the extraordinary acrimony exhibited on both sides at the meeting of Tuesday night at St. James's Hall, where there was, indeed, a regular riot, Sir Albert Rollit maintained that the possession of the franchise by women would "soften the acrimony of party feeling." In our belief, it would greatly enhance it, and enhance it especially amongst women them- selves, as some of the extraordinarily violent outbreaks of women against Mr. Gladstone within the last few days suffi- ciently show. One lady, for instance, writes to Thursday's:' Times that the only excuse possible for Mr. Gladstone is that he is falling into his "dotage?' Mr. S. Smith moved the rejection of the Bill. He held that it would set on foot a most revolutionary social movement, and if carried, would start a crowd of women on an oratorical campaign in favour of extending the franchise to married women, and so wiping out the "stigma" cast upon marriage by the limitation of the Parliamentary vote to unmarried women who are householders.
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