Hope for the best in this matter is all the more justified in that Englishwomen are by nature peculiarly loyal to their men: they are far more apt to refrain out of motherliness from opposing them than to thwart them out of perversity, and more ready to propitiate their Bills and Toms when they come home tired from work than to expect a similar attention on their part. If the privilege of the franchise was conferred on women as a recognition, the privilege implies duties also, especially the duty of rendering the privilege valuable to the State. The degree to which Englishwomen, as political beings, cultivate a tactful independence will be the measure of the value which they are extracting from the privilege. Besides, women in public life will protect themselves far more successfully against the gapes of idle curiosity by developing a large bulk of political capacity than by trying to merge themselves inconspicuously, but ignominiously, with the men. In any case, whether they are convinced or not, they will not succeed in what lawyers might call the “merger” of the two sexes. My symbol of the division lobby here tickles the brain conclusively: it may stand, to the philosopher, for all the emotional current which runs as inevitably between the two sexes as electricity between the two poles of a magnet. The granting of full political rights to women has truly introduced a new element into politics which even the most heartfelt wish cannot possibly conjure away. This element is the appeal of woman to man and man to woman which in every degree, from starkest crudity to most refined subtlety, is present in all human relations of the two sexes. That force of attraction, on which Henry Adams so brilliantly and whimsically reflected, is part of that persistent “nature” which the most assiduous application of the pitchfork will never drive out. A constituency is but a collection of human beings who bring to all their preoccupations, politics included, the mental and moral habits which they have acquired, and members of Parliament, as an observer at Westminster has infinite opportunity of noticing, are human beings with all the holes in their logical armour and all the susceptibility to moral influence and emotional suggestion which is a quality of the species however civilised. Until they argue by mathematical symbols, pure thinking in their debates will always be diluted by other influences. If the influence of women be added, this cannot fail to have its effect. Why should anyone expect it to be otherwise? Politics cannot be separated artificially from the rest of life even by the most sedulous endeavour. Political and social elements in existence are inextricably mingled. Queen Elizabeth was an effective ruler, but she showed herself a woman too; the great Empress Catherine and Maria Theresa did not act politically by the dry light of reason alone; and who can deny the influence of the current which runs between man and