On Tuesday afternoon began the discussion of the new clauses
which were proposed as additions to the Bill. And, after some unimportant proposals of Mr. Ecroyd's had been negatived, Mr. Woodall's amendment for the enfranchisement of women on the same terms as men, was moved. He maintained that this question had already been fully brought before public notice, and that the declaration signed by 110 Members at the commencement of the last Session, that no Franchise Bill would be deemed by them adequate which should fail to enfranchise women, was clear notice to the Government of the wide interest taken in the question. The minute majority by which the resolution in favour of women's suffrage was in the same Session defeated,—a majority of only 16,—proved, when compared with the majority of 116 by .which on a previous occasion the same resolution was defeated, that women's franchise was gaining rapidly in public favour. The Leeds Conference was strongly in favour of women's suffrage ; and the speech made by the Prime Minister himself in 1867 declared that the onus of proof lay on those who regarded women as incapable of properly exercising the suffrage. Mr. Woodall ridiculed the argument that women are politically disqualified on the ground that they do not con- tribute towards the strength of the Army and Navy ; for on that ground, he said, a great number of the Members of the House of Commons would be themselves disfranchised. He insisted on the services rendered by women such as Miss Octavia Hill, Miss Florence Nightingale, the late Mary Carpenter, and so forth, to social causes, and on the increasing part women are playing every year in the teaching of the people, as well as in other active occupations,—there are 20,000 women who are tenant-farmers, and as such the employers of a con- siderable amount of labour,—and he declared that women laboured under many serious legislative and administrative injustices which would be removed by their adequate repre- sentation in Parliament. The women, he reminded the Rouse, are "our own flesh and blood," and Liberals had no right to ask how they would use the franchise, if they had once satisfied themselves that it was unjust to refuse it to them.
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