LAMBETH PALACE.
CHAPTER XXVI.
THE INVINCIBLES.
The Married Women’s Property Act—The Opening of Parliament—Changes in the Cabinet—Arrest of Suspects in Dublin—Invincibles on their Trial—Evidence of the Informer Carey—Carey’s Fate—The Forster-Parnell Incident—National Gift to Mr. Parnell—The Affirmation Bill—The Bankruptcy and other Bills—Mr. Childers’ Budget—The Corrupt Practices Bill—The “Farmers’ Friends”—Sir Stafford Northcote’s Leadership—The Bright Celebration—Dynamite Outrages in London—The Explosives Act—M. de Lesseps and Mr. Gladstone—Blunders in South Africa—The Ilbert Bill—The Attack on Lady Florence Dixie’s House—Death of John Brown—His Career and Character—The Queen and the Consumption of Lamb—A Dull Holiday at Balmoral—Capsizing of the Daphne—Prince Albert Victor made K.G.—France and Madagascar—Arrest of Rev. Mr. Shaw—Settlement of the Dispute—Progress of the National League—Orange and Green Rivalry—The Leeds Conference—“Franchise First”—Lord Salisbury and the Housing of the Poor—Mr. Besant and East London—“Slumming”—Hicks Pasha’s Disastrous Expedition in the Soudan—Mr. Gladstone on Jam.
An unnoticed Act of Parliament came into force on New Year’s Day, 1883, which marked the progress of what may be termed the social revolution in England. This was the Married Women’s Property Act, which had been passed with very little debate in the previous Session. If it be true that the position which women hold in a State is an unerring test of its standard of civilisation, the reign of the Queen will be notable in history, as one in which the social progress of England has been most rapid. In England, said J. S. Mill, Woman has not been the favourite of the law, but its favourite victim. During the last quarter of a century, however, this reproach has been wiped
CHARLES DARWIN.
(From a Photograph by Elliott and Fry.)
away. Year by year new avenues of employment have been opened up to women. One of the first acts of Mr. Fawcett when he became Postmaster-General was to admit them to the service of the State. Parliament, under the wise guidance of Mr. Forster, decided to give them a fair share of the public endowments set aside for secondary education. They were afterwards admitted to the benefits of University education; one of the learned professions—that of medicine—was thrown open to them; and political enfranchisement is even within their reach. But in 1883 the law for the first time recognised the fact that married women could hold property, and abandoned the barbaric doctrine that for women matrimony implied confiscation. The Married Women’s Property Act, which was passed by Mr. Osborne Morgan, did for the women of the people by law, what was done for women of the upper classes by marriage settlements. It gave a married woman an absolute right to her earnings, so that her husband could no longer seize them under his jus mariti. It gave her, in the absence of settlements, an indefeasible right to any property she might have before or that might come to her after marriage, so that she could use it as she pleased without her husband’s interference. It made her contract as regards her own estate, as binding as if she were a man, quite irrespective of her husband’s consent. On the other hand, it of course released the husband from liability for all his wife’s debts, unless she contracted them as his agent. That such an Act should have been passed by a Parliament in which women were not represented, and in which, till recently, arguments in favour of the emancipation of women from a state of tutelage were disposed of by coarse jokes, speaks well for the chivalry and high sense of justice that characterise British manhood.[184]
The autumn Session of Parliament (which opened on the 24th of October, 1882) had been spent in a struggle over the new Procedure Rules, the Ministry endeavouring to persuade the House of Commons to adopt the principle of Closure, which the Conservatives opposed with all their strength. In this struggle the Ministry won. They carried their Rules for checking obstruction, and so when Parliament met, on the 15th of February, 1883, it was expected that the Session would be a busy one. The composition of the Cabinet had been considerably changed during the previous year. Mr. Bright and Mr. Forster had left it, Mr. Bright’s secession being due to his disapproval of the bombardment of Alexandria; Lord Derby had now become Secretary to the Colonies; Lord Kimberley had gone to the India Office; Lord Hartington was Secretary for War; Mr. Childers, Chancellor of the Exchequer; and Mr. Dodson, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. Sir Charles Dilke entered the Cabinet as President of the Local Government Board. As Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs he was succeeded by Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice, a painstaking but unsteady Whig. The din of the extra-Parliamentary strife of the recess was stilled, and the House of Commons, like the country, was in a mood to welcome Liberal measures carried out in a conservative spirit. Among those announced in the Queen’s Speech were Bills for codifying the criminal law, for establishing a Court of Criminal Appeal, for amending the Bankruptcy, Patent, and Ballot Acts, for reforming Local Government, and for improving the government of London.