for whom he had sacrificed so much, feel so deeply the
need of the power which the franchise would have given them to keep
so good a friend in the House of Commons. Not only was Mr. Bright
defeated, but Mr. Eastwick, the friend who had always seconded the
bill, also lost his seat with about seventy others of our
supporters. We were thus compelled to look around for fresh
leaders. The task of bringing in a bill was accepted by Mr.
Forsyth, the Conservative member for Marylebone, one of the London
boroughs; with him were associated Mr. Stansfeld, Mr. Russell
Gurney and Sir R. Anstruther, men differing widely on matters of
party politics. The bill was introduced early in the session, but
no day was found for it, and in the middle of July it was
withdrawn. Considerable discussion was excited by the unexpected
action of Mr. Forsyth, who on his own responsibility inserted in
the bill an additional clause by which married women were
especially excluded from its operation. Although the insertion of
this clause would probably have made no difference, the bulk of
legal opinion being that under the law of coverture, married women
even when possessed of property are not "qualified persons," yet
the society joined in requesting that this additional clause should
be dropped and the original form of the bill adhered to.

Memorials, signed by upwards of 18,000 women headed by Florence
Nightingale, Harriet Martineau, Lady Anna Gore Langton (sister of
the Duke of Buckingham), Frances Power Cobbe, Anna Swanwick, were
again this year forwarded to Mr. Disraeli and Mr. Gladstone. An
important memorial was also forwarded from a large conference held
in Birmingham in January, which represents very accurately the
special aspects of the question in England. The president of the
conference was Mrs. William Taylor, sister-in-law of Mr. Peter A.
Taylor, M. P.:

_To the Right Honorable William Ewart Gladstone, M. P., First
Lord of Her Majesty's Treasury:_

The memorial of members and friends of the National Society for
Women's Suffrage, in conference assembled at Birmingham, January
22, 1874, showeth, that your memorialists earnestly desire to
urge on the attention of her majesty's government the justice and
expediency of abolishing the disability which precludes women,
otherwise legally qualified, from voting in the election of
members of parliament.

They submit that the disability is anomalo