nchise involves the personal attendance of women
at the polls, and that since your words were uttered changes have
been effected which render the process of voting absolutely
identical for municipal and parliamentary elections, and the
whole proceeding perfectly decorous and orderly. Experience has
proved that women can vote at municipal elections without
prejudice to the fundamental particulars of their condition as
women, whatever these may be; and this experience shows that they
may vote in parliamentary elections without the smallest personal
prejudice or inconvenience. The school-board elections have also
shown that women can appeal to large constituencies and go
through the ordeal of public meetings, addresses and questions
from electors, to which men must submit who seek the suffrages of
a great community, without any sacrifice of womanly dignity, or
of the respect and consideration accorded to their position and
their sex. They therefore submit that events have obviated the
objections you entertained in 1871 to the proposal to give
representation to women, and that the course taken by the
administration over which you preside in assenting to the
extension of the municipal and school-board franchise to them; in
calling them to the public functions of candidates and members of
school-boards; and lastly, of securing the passing of a law which
renders the process of voting silent and secret, have taken away
all reasonable grounds for objecting on the score of practical
inconvenience to the admission of women to the exercise of a
vote, which they would have to give in precisely the same manner,
but not nearly so often, as those votes which they already
deliver.

It has been said that there is neither desire nor demand for the
measure, and further, that women do not care for and would not
use the suffrage if they possessed it. But the demand for the
parliamentary franchise is enormously greater than was the demand
for the municipal franchise, and for the school-board franchise
there was no apparent call. Yet these two measures were passed
purely on their own merits, and it was not held to be necessary
to impose on their promoters, over and above the obligation to
make out their case, the condition that a majority of the women
of Englan