Meanwhile, since the so-called "Raid" on the House that had led to our imprisonment, candid friends had been constantly telling us that we had entirely alienated the sympathy of those who had hitherto supported the enfranchisement of women. Yet, even whilst the "Raid" had been in progress, a very much larger number of Parliamentary representatives were agreeing to give their places in the private Members' ballot to a Woman's Suffrage Bill than had ever done so before. When the result of the ballot became known, it was found, that for the first time in the history of the movement, the fortunate member who had secured the coveted first place out of 670 was willing to devote it to introducing a measure to give votes to women. It was a Liberal member, Mr. Dickinson, who had won the first place and had decided to introduce the Women's Enfranchisement Bill. The anti-Suffragists at once began to work actively against the measure and the first Women's Anti-Suffrage Society that had ever been formed was inaugurated to oppose it. Two petitions against the Women's Enfranchisement Bill, one of them said to be signed by 21,000 and the other by 16,500 persons, were presented to Parliament on March 5th and March 22nd. They were heralded by the jubilations of our opponents but when the petitions came to be examined they were rejected by the Petitions Committee of Parliament as "informal." This was because the separate sheets upon which the signatures had been written were not each headed by the prayer against the granting of Women's Suffrage, and there was consequently no evidence to prove that the signatories had known for what purpose their names were being collected. Afterwards Mr. J. M. Robertson examined the Anti-Suffrage Petitions and reported that "whole batches of signatures had been written in by a single hand," that "the batch work began on the very first sheets," and that it appeared as though the petitions "had been got up wholesale in this fashion." Mr. J. H. Wilson, M.P., Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on Public Petitions, afterwards stated in the House of Commons, that the names of whole families of persons had undoubtedly been written in by the same hand. But even had these petitions been so evidently authentic as to have been accepted by Parliament without question, they would still have been quite insignificant as compared with the great petitions and memorials in support of Votes for Women, which had been presented year after year since 1866. But the days in which women might have won or lost the Parliamentary vote by petitioning had long gone by, and all politically minded women knew this.