The Pilgrimage also led to a deputation from the N.U.W.S.S. being received by Mr. Asquith. We noted, too, in his attitude and language a notable improvement; we felt that his education in the principles of representative government was progressing. Mrs. Harley, Miss Margaret Robertson, Mrs. Rackham, and Miss Royden spoke chiefly of the widespread interest in and sympathy with our movement which had been demonstrated during the Pilgrimage. It fell to me, as leader of the deputation, to try to wring from him some acknowledgment that he had not fulfilled the pledges he had given the suffrage deputation in November, 1911. I reminded him of these pledges, and maintained that they had not been fulfilled, and reviewed the series of events which had led suffragists to the unanimous conclusion that the only way in which their fulfilment was now possible was by means of a Government Bill. I reminded Mr. Asquith that several of his colleagues had repeatedly assured us that the opportunity offered them by him in November, 1911, was far better than any chances afforded by a private Member's Bill. Mr. Asquith at this point interjected, "So they were. It was the truth." This enabled me again to emphasize our main point—namely, that the offer of time for a private Member's Bill was a totally inadequate substitute for what we had lost by the Government's mishandling of their own measure. Proceeding, I recalled two comparatively modern instances in which Liberal Governments had been divided on the question of franchise reform. Lord Palmerston, leader of the Liberals in the early sixties, opposed the extension of the franchise to working men just as Mr. Asquith now opposed its extension to women. The result was that it was left to a Conservative Government to carry the needed reform. Lord Goschen, in 1880, had stood aside from active participation in party politics because of his opposition to the enfranchisement of the agricultural labourer. I pressed Mr. Asquith to follow the example of Lord Goschen rather than that of Lord Palmerston, and not to allow his own views to stand in the way of what he himself had acknowledged to be the desire of the majority of his colleagues in the Government and the House of Commons. Finally, I urged him not to shut his eyes to the fact that the women's demand to share in self-government was a vital and living movement, a development of the basic principle of democracy, and was founded on the growth of education and the wider industrial and professional opportunities which women had won for themselves during the last two generations. "We have ceased to have the serf's mind and the serf's economic helplessness, and it follows that the serf's political status no longer contents us. The Government is now meeting the demand of women for free institutions with coercion, and nothing but coercion. It is not thus that the victories of Liberalism have been won. I readily admit that the