NEWS OF THE WEEK.
THE chief event of the week has been the suffrage debate in the Commons. On Tuesday the Bill to give women occupiers the Parliamentary vote was read a second time by 299 votes to 190. But the House rejected by 320 votes to 175 the proposal to refer the Bill to a Standing Committee. As there is notoriously no time for the Bill to be considered by a Committee of the whole House, and the Government offered no facilities, the second division was tantamount to the rejection of the Bill. Like a clever conjurer, the House first produced a white rabbit from nowhere, then put it under a hat, and finally made it vanish into thin' air. The debate was opened on Monday before a crowded House, when Mr. Shackleton, the proposer of the Bill, moved the second reading. He confessed himself quite unable to understand why women should be excluded from the vote. Their success in education, litera- ture, and medicine proved their right to record their opinion on public affairs. The rejection was moved by Mr. F. E. Smith in a speech of much dash and brilliance. He argued that the grant of votes to a few women must end in the enfranchise- ment of the whole sex. If this Bill was passed, the sex disqualification as such would be done away with for ever, and the rest was bound to follow. Mr. Shackleton had confessed that his object was universal adult suffrage.
