zens than the
2,000,000 whom the right honorable gentleman proposes to
enfranchise by this bill. Well, then, let it be the family
vote--that is to say, exceptions apart, let the basis of our
constitution be that the family, represented by its head, should
be the unit of the State. Now that is the idea which recommends
and has always recommended itself to my mind. But on what
principle, or with what regard to the permanence and stability of
that principle, can you exclude the head of the family and give
that family no voice, because the head happens to be a woman? If
this clause be excluded from the measure, as it will be, this
will not be a bill of one principle, but of two principles. It
will not be a bill containing only the principle of household
suffrage interpreted as the family vote, but one founded on these
two principles--first, a male householding vote; and, secondly,
the exclusion of the head of the household when the head is a
woman. That is a permanent principle of exclusion, and therefore
the bill with this clause left out is a declaration for ever
against the political emancipation of women.

After some speeches against the motion Colonel King-Harman said:

In the old state of the franchise it was not so much a matter of
importance to women whether they possessed votes or not, but now
that this bill proposed to create two million new voters of a
much lower order than those now exercising the franchise, it
became of importance to secure some countervailing advantage.
They were told this was a matter which could wait. What were the
women to gain by waiting? They had waited for seventeen years
during which the subject had been discussed, and now they were
told to wait till two million of the common orders had been
admitted to a share in the parliamentary management of the
country. The honorable member for Huddersfield (Mr. Leatham) had
used an argument which he (Colonel King-Harman) thought a most
unworthy one, namely, that the franchise was not to be extended
to women, because, unhappily, there are women of a degraded and
debased class. Because there were 40,000 of them in this
metropolis alone, the remaining women who were pure and virtuous
were to be deprived of the power of voting. But would Mr. Leatham
guarantee that the 2,00