the illegitimacy laws; you know that a woman sometimes commits the dreadful crime of infanticide, while her partner, the man, who should share her punishment, gets off scot free. Ever since my girlhood, a period of about thirty years, I have belonged to organisations to secure for women that political power which I have felt essential to bringing about those reforms which women need. We have tried to be what you call womanly, we have tried to use "feminine influence," and we have seen that it is of no use. Men who have been impatient have invariably got reforms. I have seen that men are encouraged by law to take advantage of the helplessness of women. Many women have thought as I have and for many, many years have tried by that influence of which we have so often been reminded to alter these laws, but have found that that influence counts for nothing. When we went to the House of Commons we used to be told, when we were persistent, that Members of Parliament were not responsible to women, they were responsible only to voters, and that their time was too fully occupied to reform those laws, although they agreed that they needed reforming. We women have presented larger petitions in support of our enfranchisement than were ever presented for any other reform, we have succeeded in holding greater public meetings than men have ever held for any reform, in spite of the difficulty which women have in throwing off their natural diffidence, that desire to escape publicity which we have inherited from generations of our foremothers; we have broken through that. We have faced hostile mobs at street corners, because we were told that we could not have that representation for our taxes which men have won unless we converted the whole of the country to our side. Because we have done this, we have been misrepresented, we have been ridiculed, we have had contempt poured upon us, and the ignorant mob incited to offer us violence, which we have faced unarmed and unprotected by the safeguards which Cabinet Ministers have. I am here to take upon myself now, Sir, as I wish the Prosecution had put upon me, the full responsibility for this agitation in its present phase. I want to address you as a woman who has performed the duties of a woman, and, in addition, has performed the duties which ordinary men have to perform, by earning a living for her children, and educating them.