She was a member of the W.L.F., and was always impatient of the way Party was placed before the Franchise.
‘I was sorry to see how the Suffrage question was pushed into the background by Lady Aberdeen. However, I shall stick to the Federation, and bring them to their senses on that point as far as my influence goes. It is simply sham Liberalism that will not recognise that it is a real Liberal question (1893).
‘That is a capital letter of Miss M‘Laren’s. It is quite true, and women are awful fools to truckle to their party, instead of putting their foot down, about the Franchise. You would certainly hear more about wife murders than you do at present, if the women had a vote.
‘Do you know what they said at the Liberal Club the other day in answer to some deputation, or appeal, or rather it was said, in the discussion, that the Liberal Party would do all they could to remedy abuses and give women justice, but the vote they would not give, because they would put a power into women’s hand which could never be taken away. Plain speaking, was it not?
‘Did I tell you that I have to speak at a drawing-room meeting on Woman’s Suffrage? Mrs. Elmy asked me to. I had just refused to write a paper for her on the present state of medical education in the country, for I thought that would be too great cheek in a house surgeon, so I did not like to refuse the other.
‘The drawing-room meeting yesterday was very good. I got there late, and found a fearfully and awfully fashionable audience being harangued by a very smart-looking man, who spoke uncommonly well, and was saying everything I meant to say.
‘Mrs. Elmy smiled and nodded away to me, and suddenly it flashed on me that I was to second the motion this man was speaking to. I was in such an awful funk that I got cool, and got up and told them that I did not think Mr. Wilkins had left any single thing for me to say; however, as things struck people in different ways I should simply tell them how it struck me, and then went ahead with what I meant to say when I got in. Mrs. Elmy was quite pleased, and several people came up afterwards, and said I had got on all right. Mrs. Elmy said, I had not repeated Mr. W., only emphasised him. He was such a fluent speaker, he scared me awfully.’
The decade that saw the controversy of Home Rule for Ireland, was the first that brought women prominently into political organisations. Many women’s associations were formed, and the religious aspect as between Ulster and the South interested many very deeply. Elsie was not a Liberal-Unionist, and, as she states her case to her father, there is much that shows that she was thinking the matter out for herself, on lines which were then fresher than they are to-day.
From Glasgow, in 1891, she writes:—
‘I have spent a wicked Sunday. I read all the morning, and then went up to the Infirmary to bandage with Dr. D. Dr. T. says I am quite sure to be plucked, after such worldliness. I have discovered he is an Australian from Victoria. Dr. D. is an Aberdeen man and a great admirer of George Smith. Also, a violent Home Ruler. Never mind about the agricultural labourer, Papa dear! I am afraid Gladstone’s majority won’t be a working one, and we shall have the whole row over again in six months. Dr. D. says every available voter has been seized by the scruff of his neck and made to vote this time. And, six months hence there’ll be no fresh light on the situation, and we’ll be where we are now. I should not wonder if the whole thing makes us devise some plan for one Imperial Parliament and local government for Ireland, Scotland, and the Colonies, ending in making the integrity of the Empire “and unity of the English speaking race” more apparent than it is now, and with the Irish contented and managing their own affairs in their own mad way. Our future trouble is with the Labour Party.
‘Mr. Gladstone has been so engrossed with his H.R. measure that he does not seem to have noticed these other questions that have been quickly growing, and he has made two big blunders about Woman’s Suffrage and the Labour question. I have no doubt these men are talking a lot of nonsense, and are trying for impossibilities, but there is a great deal of sense in what they say. It is no good shutting our eyes to the facts they bring forward.
‘As to Mr. D., I am very much afraid you would not agree with him. He is a rank Socialist. The only point in which he agrees with you is that he would make everybody do what he thinks right. Only his ideas of right are very different from yours. He believes in an eight-hour day, local option, and State-owned mines. His chief amusement at present is arguing with me. He generally gets angry, and says, “I argue like a woman,” but he always pluckily begins again. He was a tradesman, and gave it up because he says you cannot be an honest tradesman nowadays. He is studying medicine; the last day I worked at “brains” he rampaged about the room arguing about the unearned increment. I tell him he must come and argue in Edinburgh—I have not time at present.
‘I will tell you what I think of the Home Rule Bill to-morrow—that is to say, if I have time to read it. It is really a case of officers and men here just now. I can’t say “go on” instead of “come on.” I cannot order cold spongings and hot fomentations by the dozen and then sit in my room and read the newspapers, can I?’
‘Glasgow, May 1892.
‘What do you think of Lord Salisbury’s speech, inciting to rebellion and civil war? Now, don’t think of it as Lord Salisbury and Ulster, but think of it as advice given by Mr. Gladstone to the rest of Ireland. If you like to take the lead into your own hands and march on Dublin; I don’t know that any Government would care to use the forces of the Crown against you. You will be quite justified because the Government of your country is in the hands of your hereditary foes. There is only one good point in Lord Salisbury’s speech, and that is that he does not sham that the Ulster men are Irishmen. He calls them a colony from this country. Lord S. must have been feeling desperate before he made that speech.’
‘1894.
‘I think Mr. Chamberlain’s speech was very clever. It was this special Home Rule Bill he pulled to pieces, and one could not help feeling that that would have been the result whatever the Bill had been, if it had been introduced by anybody but Mr. C. His argument seemed to be in favour of Imperial Federation, as far as I could make out. I have no doubt the Bill can be very much improved in committee, but the groundwork of it is all right. The two Houses and the gradual giving over of the police and land, when they have had time to find their feet. As to the retaining the Irish members in Parliament being totally illogical, there is nothing in that; we always make illogical things work. And the Irish members must stay.
‘I do like Mr. Balfour. He is so honest. I expect he hates the Irish Party as much as any man, but he spoke up for them all the same. If he had not, I don’t believe Mr. Chamberlain and some of the others would have spoken as they did. The Conservative Party was quite inclined to laugh at the paid stipendiaries until Mr. Balfour spoke.
‘I have been reading up the Bishop of Chester’s scheme and the Direct Veto Bill. I don’t like his scheme. It would be very nice to turn all the pubs into coffee-houses, but a big company over whom the ratepayers have no control would be just as likely to do what would pay best, as the tramway companies now, who work their men seventeen hours and their horses three, at a stretch. It would be quite a different thing to put the pubs under the Town and County Councils. As to this Bill it is not to stop people drinking, but simply to shut up pubs. A man can still buy his whisky and get drunk in his own house, but a community says, “We won’t have the nuisance of a pub at every corner,” and I am not sure that they have not that right, just as much as the private individual has to get drunk if he chooses. A great many men would keep straight if the temptation were not thrown in their faces. The system of licences was instituted for the good of the public, not the good of the publican.
‘The Elections will be three weeks after my exam. Dearest Papa!—There is as much chance of Mr. Gladstone being beaten in Midlothian as there is of a Conservative majority.’
Another friend writes:—