een growing in numbers. Only the refusal of the Government
to give time for the discussion of the Bill in Committee has prevented a
Woman's Enfranchisement measure, which on several occasions has received a
second reading, from passing the House of Commons; and the announcement by
the present (1911) Government that full facilities for such discussion are
to be granted next year (1912) would indicate that the removal of political
sex disabilities is close at hand. Women are not asking for adult suffrage,
but are willing to receive enfranchisement on the terms that qualify men as
electors, and the Conciliation Bill, as it is called--because members of
every political party have agreed to make it their Bill--would place on the
roll of electors rather more than a million of women voters.

Meantime, while waiting for the removal of the anti-democratic barrier that
excludes them from full political citizenship, women are admitted in the
United Kingdom to an equal share with men in all local government. Since
1869 women who are householders have enjoyed the municipal franchise, and
as Poor Law guardians and members of school boards, they have been freely
elected to sit side by side with men. In 1907 women were declared eligible
by Parliament for membership on county and borough councils, and for the
chairmanship of county councils and the mayoralty of boroughs. Since this
Act was passed we have seen women elected to the councils of great
cities--Manchester and Liverpool, for instance--and chosen as mayors in
several towns. No political movement in recent years has been of greater
public interest or importance than the agitation for "Votes for Women." The
demand for enfranchisement is based on the old constitutional ground of the
Parliamentarians of the seventeenth century--that those who are directly
taxed by Government must have some political control of the public
expenditure--and it is supported by the present leader of the Conservative
Party[86] on the ground that government can only be carried on in England
by consent of the governed.

The demand for the parliamentary franchise is with us the expression of
that deep dissatisfaction at the unequal relations of the sexes that is
felt by many men, and by far more women, all over the civilised world. As
the middle-class man and the workmen of Great Britain were sure that they
could not get from Parliament an understanding of popular grievances, still
less fair treatment, until