But when we turn to New Zealand, where a House elected under adult suffrage has fulfilled its allotted term of three years, we may expect to find more definite results. In that Province, as in South Australia, women were enfranchised by a House which had received no popular mandate to that effect; in fact, the matter had scarcely been discussed in the constituencies, though attention had been drawn to it by the advocacy of several successive Premiers. In 1892, however, a new Electoral Bill, which conferred the franchise on all adult women, was passed by the House of Representatives {193} and accepted by the Council subject to the insertion of a clause which absolved women in some cases from attendance at the polling booth. The Government refused to accept the amendment, and the Bill lapsed for the session. In the following year it was reintroduced in the original form, and was passed by both Houses, though only by a slender majority in the Council. The Act contains the striking and, as far as I know, unique provision that the names of voters who have not exercised their privileges are to be erased from the rolls, though a claim for reinstatement may be made at the next periodical revision. The elections, which took place at the end of 1893, aroused widespread interest in the members of the fair sex, of whom nine out of every eleven who were registered went to the poll and proved conclusively that, though the desire for the vote might not have been general, women would not refrain from its exercise. With the help of their lords and masters, they falsified the expectations of those who had anticipated a reaction in favour of Conservatism, by retaining in power, with an increased majority, a Government which is, in some respects, even more Radical than that of South Australia. So complete was the defeat of the Opposition that it was reduced to a remnant of twenty members in a House of seventy-four. Another important feature was the return of a body of Prohibitionists who aimed at legislation which would enable the electors {194} in a locality to close all the public-houses by a bare majority. As they sat on both sides of the House, they did not affect the numerical strength of the two parties, but constituted a force which it was impossible for the Government to ignore. But while the consequent liquor legislation and the increased prominence of the temperance movement are the principal effects of the extension of the franchise to women, other measures of considerable importance are connected with the new factor in the sphere of politics.