this right "for all women duly
qualified," as but few married women are qualified by possessing
property in their own right, the result would have been
substantially the same without making any invidious distinctions.
Mrs. Taylor and Mrs. Bright felt that as married women were the
greatest sufferers under the law, they should be the first rather
than the last to be enfranchised. The others, led by Miss Becker,
claimed that it was good policy to make the demand for "spinsters
and widows," and thus exclude the "family unit" and "man's
headship" from the discussion; and yet these were the very points
on which the objections were invariably based. They claimed that if
"spinsters and widows" were enfranchised they would be an added
power to secure to married women their rights. But the history of
the past gives no such assurance. It is not certain that women
would be more just than men, and a small privileged class of
aristocrats have long governed their fellow-countrymen. The fact
that the spinsters in the movement advocated such a bill shows that
they are not to be trusted in extending it. John Stuart Mill, too,
was always opposed to the exclusion of married women in the demand
for suffrage.

If our English friends had our system of conventions and
discussions in which every resolution is subject to criticism,
changes could be more readily effected. But as their meetings are
now conducted, a motion to amend a resolution would throw the
platform into the wildest confusion and hopelessly bewilder the
chairman. We saw this experiment made at the great demonstration in
St. James' Hall the night before Mr. Mason's bill was to be acted
on in the House of Commons. For its effect on their champions some
were desirous that a resolution should be endorsed by that great
audience proposing higher ground; that instead of "spinsters and
widows," the demand should be for "all duly qualified women." After
the reading of one of the resolutions Miss Jessie Craigen arose and
proposed such an amendment. Mr. Woodhall, M. P., in the chair,
seemed quite at a loss what to do. She was finally, after much
debate and prolonged confusion, suppressed, whether in a
parliamentary manner or not I am unable to say. Here we should have
discussed the matter at length if it had taken us until midnight,
or adjourned over until next day, "the spinsters and widows" having
been the target for all our barbed arrows until completely
annihilated.

Spending tw