votes of the female householders, with that system of election pledges which is now enabling minorities, and even small minorities, to control national legislation, will form the crowbar by which the next barrier will be speedily forced. The framer of the Bill, in fact, himself tells his dissatisfied supporters that the limitation to unmarried women is introduced only to hoodwink the House of Commons, which must be very manageable if it can be so easily duped. It is for married women especially that the boon is sought by the authors of the movement, whose favourite argument is the elevating effect which would be produced on the marriage bond by making political interests common to man and wife.
Marriage itself, as it raises the position of a woman in the eyes of all but the very radical section of the Woman's Rights party, could hardly be treated as politically penal. And yet an Act conferring the suffrage on married women would probably be the most momentous step that could be taken by any legislature, since it would declare the family not to be a political unit, and for the first time authorise a wife, and make it in certain cases her duty as a citizen, to act publicly in opposition to her husband. Those at least who hold the family to be worth as much as the state, will think twice before they concur in such a change.
With the right of electing must ultimately go the right of being elected. The contempt with which the candidature of Mrs. Victoria Woodhull for the Presidency was received by some of the advocates of Female Suffrage in America only showed that they had not considered the consequences of their own principles. Surely she who gives the mandate is competent herself to carry it. Under the parliamentary system, whatever the forms and phrases may be, the constituencies are the supreme arbiters of the national policy, and decide not only who shall be the legislators, but what shall be the course of legislation. They have long virtually appointed the Ministers, and now they appoint them actually. Twice the Government has been changed by a plebiscite, and on the second occasion the Budget was submitted to the con-
