Before leaving this subject it is of interest to note that the question of providing accommodation for ladies desiring to listen to the debates in the House of Commons {273} was brought up more than once during the reign of William the Fourth. Miss Martineau, in her "History of the Thirty Years' Peace," makes grave complaint of the manner in which the proposal for the admission of ladies to hear the debates was treated alike by the legislators who favored and by those who resisted the proposition. The whole subject, she appears to think, was treated as a huge joke. One set of members advocated the admission of ladies on the ground, among other reasons, that their presence in the House of Commons would tend to keep the legislators sober, and prevent them from garnishing their speeches with unseemly expressions. Another set stood out against the proposal on the ground that if ladies were allowed to sit in a gallery in sight of the members, the result would be that the representatives would cease to pay any real attention to the business of debate, and would occupy themselves chiefly in studying the faces and the dresses of the fair visitors, and trying to interchange glances with the newly admitted spectators. The conditions under which ladies may be permitted to listen to the debates in the House of Commons form a subject of something like periodical discussion up to the present day. There is, as everybody knows, a certain number of seats set apart behind the Press gallery in the House of Commons for the accommodation of women, who are admitted by orders which members can obtain who are successful in a balloting process which takes place a week in advance. About twenty members only out of more than six hundred can win two seats each for any one sitting of the House, and no member can approach the ballot for at least a week after he has accomplished a success. The Ladies' Gallery holds only a very small number of women, and it is jealously screened by a gilded grating something like that through which the women of an Eastern potentate's household are permitted to gaze upon the stage from their box in the theatre.