“But, believing as I do, that with the admission of women into the conduct of affairs of State, wars, and all their attendant horrors, would quickly become a thing of the past, I dwell shortly on the second clause, passing on to the third, which, in conjunction with the first, I regard as the most important part to be examined. “It is now eleven years since County Councils were established. At the very first elections women were chosen as representatives, but on an appeal to the law they were ousted from their seats. We have wisely remedied that state of things, and no one thinks it odd or extraordinary now, to see women sitting in these County Councils as members. On the contrary, it is tacitly acknowledged that their presence is, and has been, productive of much good. Well, will honourable gentlemen tell me in what great particulars these County Councils differ from Parliament? “Both are debating assemblies, and both are conducted on almost similar lines. What is there preposterous and appalling in the suggestion that women should become Members of Parliament, and when, by genius or talents, they can attain to such, assume Cabinet rank, and claim the right to carry on the affairs of their country? It is merely custom that now debars them, a custom established by the selfishness and arrogance of man, and accepted by woman in the same manner as slaves in the past, from long custom, accepted the lash from their taskmasters. The taskmasters had established the right to flog their slaves; they had dammed up the slowly rising waters of rebellion, but these rose to their level at last, and overflowed, and slavery is no more. The analogy holds good in the case of woman, whose greater slavery is not yet entirely overcome. That it will finally be, is as certain as that the hours of Time never go back. You may fight against it, you may pile the dykes higher, you may go on damming the rising waters as you will, but the time must inevitably come, when those dykes and dams will crumble away beneath the overwhelming flood, which your own efforts will have entirely accumulated and brought to its tremendous and irresistible strength. We may be met with many arguments in condemnation of this bill. One will be that it will obstruct the rite of marriage. We deny this. We grant you that it may diminish the number of marriages, but we contend that this will be a blessing rather than a curse. Thousands of miserable unions are yearly effected in consequence of woman’s unnatural and one-sided position in Society. In all these cases she does not marry because, with a knowledge of the subject, with every profession thrown open to her and chance to get on equal to men, she is satisfied that she prefers married life. No. In the cases referred to, she marries for money, or for position, or to escape the restraints of home, or because she has no chance of making her way in the world, and the result is that