One disability only remains--the sex disability that denies the parliamentary franchise to women. In the middle ages women were excused from parliamentary attendance, but there was no notion that their powers and privileges as landowners were shortened because, on account of their sex, they were granted exemption from Parliament and from juries. In 1868 a test case--Chorlton _v._ Lings--was brought, and the judges decided that women householders were not to be registered as electors, and it was left to Parliament to pass a Women's Enfranchisement Bill. From the time of John Stuart Mill's advocacy in 1867 there have always been supporters of Women's Suffrage in the House of Commons, and in the last five years these supporters have been growing in numbers. Only the refusal of the Government to give time for the discussion of the Bill in Committee has prevented a Woman's Enfranchisement measure, which on several occasions has received a second reading, from passing the House of Commons; and the announcement by the present (1911) Government that full facilities for such discussion are to be granted next year (1912) would indicate that the removal of political sex disabilities is close at hand. Women are not asking for adult suffrage, but are willing to receive enfranchisement on the terms that qualify men as electors, and the Conciliation Bill, as it is called--because members of every political party have agreed to make it their Bill--would place on the roll of electors rather more than a million of women voters. Meantime, while waiting for the removal of the anti-democratic barrier that excludes them from full political citizenship, women are admitted in the United Kingdom to an equal share with men in all local government. Since 1869 women who are householders have enjoyed the municipal franchise, and as Poor Law guardians and members of school boards, they have been freely elected to sit side by side with men. In 1907 women were declared eligible by Parliament for membership on county and borough councils, and for the chairmanship of county councils and the mayoralty of boroughs. Since this Act was passed we have seen women elected to the councils of great cities--Manchester and Liverpool, for instance--and chosen as mayors in several towns. No political movement in recent years has been of greater public interest or importance than the agitation for "Votes for Women." The demand for enfranchisement is based on the old constitutional ground of the Parliamentarians of the seventeenth century--that those who are directly taxed by Government must have some political control of the public expenditure--and it is supported by the present leader of the Conservative Party[86] on the ground that government can only be carried on in England by consent of the governed.