the women as well as the men. They are unable to understand why this determination to secure women's enfranchisement should appear precisely at the moment when the Liberal Party, after years of weary waiting on the opposition benches, finds itself once more in power. They ask with reiterated irritation, "Why did not the women attack the Conservatives? Why do they wait until the Liberals are in power to take up the policy of harassing any government that will not immediately deal with the question of Women's Suffrage? Why will they not be patient and trust to those who are their best friends to choose the right time for carrying through this reform?"
And so far has this bewilderment grown in some cases that a few Liberals, who ought to be better able to recognise sincerity when it is before their eyes, believe that the whole agitation has been incited by the Conservatives as an underhand means of injuring the Party in power. During the Hexham election the term "Toryette" was invented by this ignorant section, and one insulting question commonly asked of the Suffragists was: "How much are you getting from the Tories for this?"
This slander is only pardonable when uttered by totally ignorant people—and hardly that, indeed, if the framers of it have had opportunities of actually seeing and hearing the leaders of the franchise agitation, women who risk livelihood and social position and with many regrets separate themselves from their own political parties in order to concentrate all their energies on this one question. Yet
