s our
law-makers are not directly responsible to us for their conduct in
Parliament, they may, and do, safely neglect our interests, and pass
laws which jeopardise our liberties and subordinate our just rights of
person, property, and offspring to the supposed interests of the men
whom they represent.

The spirit which animates Parliament pervades the whole of our social
life; and women suffer from lack of educational facilities, and from
obstacles to success in industrial and professional life, in ways
which have no parallel in the case of men. All these things have been
urged again and again until we are weary of repeating them; and we ask
ourselves, as we mentally review our position, Where shall we find
some new argument wherewith to arrest the attention, and compel the
action, of those who have the power, but seem to lack the will, to do
justice? It is curious to note that the great point on which the mass
of men seem united is their _sex_. Prejudices of race, of caste, of
colour may be overcome; but the pride of sex remains. Rights of
citizenship are accorded to the small shopkeeper, artisan, lodger,
agricultural labourer, and to the illiterate who knows no difference
between one party and the other, either as to tendencies or methods of
government. The Anglo-Saxon confers rights of citizenship upon the
foreigner, upon the negro (as in the United States), upon the Maori
(as in New Zealand)--the last of whom, sitting in the New Zealand
House of Representatives, helped to maintain this glorious prerogative
of sex by giving their casting-votes against a measure intended to
meet the claims of the Anglo-Saxon women in New Zealand.[1]

[1] The Parliamentary Franchise was conferred on the women of
New Zealand in 1893, the same year in which the above was
printed. In 1907 the Hon. R. Oliver, late member of the
Legislative Council, writes: "The interest now taken by women
in New Zealand in the politics of the country is remarkable,
and is regarded as a decided gain to the community."

And all this despite the admitted fact that the social and economic
problems, which are coming more and more into the field of
parliamentary labours, are all but incapable of solution without the
help of enfranchised women.

Must women, then, following the example of men, learn to put sex in
the first place and regard all other interests as secondary? Is this
really what men wish to force women to do? One would th