we may then remember with gratitude the ardent enthusiasm
of the suffragettes and forget the foolish and futile ways in which it
was manifested. There has never been any doubt as to the ultimate
adoption of women's suffrage; its gradual extension among the more
progressive countries of the world sufficiently indicates that it will
ultimately reach even to the most backward countries. Its accomplishment
in England has been gradual, although it is here so long since the first
steps were taken, not because there has been some special and malignant
opposition to it on the part of men in general and politicians in
particular, but simply because England is an old and conservative
country, with a very ancient constitutional machinery which effectually
guards against the hasty realization of any scheme of reform. This
particular reform, however, is not an isolated or independent scheme; it
is an essential part of a great movement in the social equalization of
the sexes which has been going on for centuries in our civilization, a
movement such as may be correspondingly traced in the later stages of
the civilizations of antiquity. Such a movement we may by our efforts
help forward, we may for a while retard, but it is a part of
civilization, and it would be idle to imagine that we can affect the
ultimate issue.

That the issue of women's suffrage may be reached in England within a
reasonable period is much to be desired for the sake of the woman's
movement in the larger sense, which has nothing to do with politics, and
is now impeded by this struggle. The enfranchisement of women, Miss
Frances Cobbe declared thirty years ago, is "the crown and completion"
of all progress in women's movement. "Votes for women," exclaims, more
youthfully but not less unreasonably, Miss Christabel Pankhurst, "means
a new Heaven and a new Earth." But women's suffrage no more means a new
Heaven or even a new Earth than it means, as other people fear, a new
Purgatory and a new Hell. We may see this quite plainly in Australasia.
Women's votes aid in furthering social legislation and contribute to the
passing of acts which have their good side, and, no doubt, like
everything else, their bad side. As Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who devoted
her life to the political enfranchisement of women, declared, the ballot
is, at most, only the vestibule to women's emancipation. Man's suffrage
has not introduced the millennium, and it is foolish to suppose that
woman's s