7 MAY 1870, Page 3

The Women's Rights are looking up in the world. On

Wednes- day, Mr. Jacob Bright's "Women's Disabilities Bill" was carried through its second reading, in a thin house, by a majority of 33, —124 to 91. What most excites our surprise is the great apathy which seems to have been felt about the subject. Surely if women had cared about it, they would, at least, have interested their husbands, and fathers, and brothers sufficiently in it to make them. anxious to vote. Mr. Jacob Bright was rash enough to say that the enfranchisement of women,—not of course of the handful of women who are at present householders, whom alone his present Bill proposes to enfranchise, but of all women standing in an equally trustworthy position to male electors,—would not in his belief strengthen the Conservative party at all. was quite right that whether it would or not, is not a matter in any way bearing on the question ; but his sanguine temperament is to us a matter of wonder. If all the best qualified women had had votes, the Irish Church Bill would certainly have been lost last year, and probably, —paradox as it may seem,—the Women's 'Disabilities Bill would have been defeated this.