could be overcome. But in large and old countries, of stable and complex constitution, it was very far from easy to readjust the ancient machinery in accordance with the new demands. The difficulty by no means lay in any unwillingness on the part of the masculine politicians in possession; on the contrary, it is a notable fact, often overlooked, that, in England especially, there have for at least half a century been a considerable proportion of eminent statesmen as well as of the ordinary rank and file of members of Parliament who are in favour of granting the suffrage to women, a much larger proportion, probably, than would be found favourable to this claim in any other section of the community. That, indeed,—apart from the delay involved by ancient constitutional methods,—has been the main difficulty. Neither among the masculine electors nor among their womenfolk has there been any consuming desire to achieve women’s suffrage. The result has been a certain tendency in the Woman’s Movement to diverge in two different directions. On the one hand, are those who, recognising that all evolution is slow, are content to await patiently the inevitable moment when the political enfranchisement of women will become possible, in the meanwhile working towards women’s causes in other fields equally essential and sometimes more important. On the other hand, a small but energetic, sometimes even violent, section of the women engaged in this movement concentrated altogether on the suffrage. The germs of this divergence may be noted even thirty years back when we find Miss Cobbe declaring that woman’s suffrage is “the crown and completion of all progress in woman’s movements,” while Mrs. Cady Stanton, perhaps more wisely, stated that it was merely a vestibule to progress. In recent years the difference has become accentuated, sometimes even into an acute opposition, between those who maintain that the one and only thing essential, and that immediately and at all costs, even at the cost of arresting and putting back the progress of women in all other directions, is the parliamentary suffrage, and on the other hand, those who hold that the suffrage, however necessary, is still only a single point, and that the woman’s movement is far wider and, above all, far deeper than any mere political reform.