When, on July 6, the question of the removal of women's electoral disabilities was discussed in the House of Commons, the chief point relied upon by the opponents of the resolution moved by Mr. Mason was, that it was not clear whether the resolution, if carried, would have the effect of enfranchising married women, who, in virtue of the Married Women's Property Act, are no longer precluded from possessing the necessary qualification. It is no secret that some of those—for instance Mr. Mason himself—who are in favour of removing the disability of sex, are not in favour of removing the disability of marriage; whilst others desire the removal of both disabilities. If Parliament should see fit to admit women to the benefits of representation, opportunity would no doubt be afforded, during the passage of a Reform Bill that extended the suffrage to women, for the House of Commons to declare distinctly whether it wishes to give the right of voting to married women who possess the qualification or not. In this, as in other matters, it appears to me very unpractical to reject a substantial measure of reform because it does not grant all that may be thought desirable. Personally I entirely sympathise with those who wish to see the disability of coverture removed. If, however, the House of Commons is willing to remove the disability of sex, but unwilling to remove the disability of coverture, I think those who represent the women's suffrage movement outside the House of Commons would be acting most unwisely to reject what is offered to them. Many of the supporters of the Reform Bills of '32 and '68 were in favour of universal suffrage, but had to be content with a smaller instalment of enfranchisement. Mr. Chamberlain said the other day, at Birmingham, that Radicals nearly always had 'to accept a composition,' and the women's suffrage party may have to do the same.
I have said that the sense of justice is not so much wanting as the motive power which will convert a passive recognition of the existence of wrong into an active determination to get that wrong righted. It must not, however, be forgotten, that without being consciously unjust or cruel, there is such a thing as a torpid sense of justice. As the ear gets deafened and the vision gets blurred by frequent misuse, so the sense of justice becomes feeble and dim by constant association with laws and customs which are unjust. To live in a society whose laws give women 'something less than justice,' is apt to pervert the conscience, and make those whose imagination is not very active acquiesce in injustice as if it were part of the inevitable nature of things. Magistrates, for example, who sometimes punish men less severely for half-killing their wives than for stealing half-a-crown, are partly responsible for this faulty sense of justice, and may be partly regarded as the victims of it. We want—to use an expression of Mr. Matthew Arnold's—to call forth 'a fresh flow of consciousness' on all these questions where the interests
