If that were so, it was very odd that those most concerned in the Bill did not appear to be aware of it, because last year there was a great dispute on that matter.... Last year he saw a letter, signed "A Married Claimant of the Franchise," in a newspaper, who said that a married woman could not claim to vote as a householder, but why should she not pay her husband a sum for her lodgings, so as to entitle her to claim the lodger franchise? (Laughter.) ... If that Bill passed, how would they contend against further claims? (Hear, hear.) ... And what were they to say to those women who were to have votes until they married? The moment the woman householder came out of church or chapel as a wife her vote would vanish, and her husband would become the elector. (A laugh.) It seemed to him that if they passed that Bill and went no further, what Mr. Mill called "the subjection of women" was decreed by the very measure intended to enfranchise them, and by the very women, and the very party in that House, who were in favour of that Bill. (Hear, hear.) Then again, if all men being householders had a right to be elected, on what principle were women not also to have a right to be elected? (Hear, hear.) Those who opposed that Bill had a right to ask these questions, and to have an answer to them. If they were to travel that path, let them know how far they were going, and to what it led.... If they granted that every woman, married or unmarried, was to have a vote, the hon. member for Lincolnshire had referred to what would happen in every house where there was a double vote. If the husband and wife agreed, it would make no difference in the result of the election; but if they disagreed, it would possibly introduce discord into every family; and if there were discord between man and wife, there would certainly be discord between the children.... In that House they had one peculiar kind of knowledge—namely, of the penalties they paid for their constitutional freedom.... Was it desirable to introduce their mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters to the excitement, the turmoil, and, it might be, the very humiliation which seemed in every country to attend a system of Parliamentary representation? (Hear, hear.) Women were more likely to be tainted in that way than men were. There had been some instances of it, ever since the Municipal Act gave them votes. He knew a place in his neighbourhood where scenes of the most shocking kind had occurred.... In another borough in Lancashire, at an election, women—by the hundred, he was told—but in great numbers—were seen drunk and disgraced under the temptation offered them in the fierceness and unscrupulousness of a political contest.... The hon. member for Warwickshire had referred to priestly influence. On that he would only say that the influence of the priest, the parson, and the minister would be greatly raised if that Bill were passed. (Hear, hear.) ... Well, they were asked to make that great change and to incur all those risks—for what? To arm the women of this country against the men of this country—to defend them against their husbands, their brothers, and their sons. To him the idea had in it something strange and monstrous; and he thought that a more baseless case had never been submitted to the House of Commons. (Hear, hear.) If all men and women voted, the general result must be the same; for, by an unalterable natural law, strength was stronger than weakness, and in the end, by an absolute necessity, men must prevail. He regretted that there should be any measure in favour of extended suffrage to which he could not give his support; but women would lose much of what was best in what they now possessed, and they would gain no good of any sort, by mingling in the contests of the polling-booths. He should vote for that measure if he were voting solely in the interests of men; but he would vote against it with perfect honesty, believing that in so doing he should most serve the interests of women themselves. An honourable member who voted for the Bill last year, in a conversation with him the next day, told him that he had very great doubts in the matter, for he found wherever he went that all the best women seemed to be against the measure. (Laughter and cheers.) If the House believed that they could not legislate justly for their mothers, their wives, their sisters, and their daughters, the House might abdicate, and might pass that Bill. But he believed that Parliament could not, unless it were in ignorance, be otherwise than just to the women of this country, with whom they were so intimately allied; and with that conviction, and having these doubts—which were stronger even than he had been able to express—doubts also which had only become strengthened the more he had considered the subject—he was obliged—differing from many of those whom he cared for and loved—to give his opposition to that Bill.
[A Passion in the Desert.]
From the French of Balzac.
[The greatest of French novelists hardly needs an introduction. Innumerable books of recent years have rendered him and his peculiarities familiar to the world—his ponderous figure and his face like Nero's, his early struggles as a Grub-street hack, his garret in the Rue Lesdiguières, his meals of bread and milk at twopence-halfpenny a day, his midnight draughts of coffee, his everlasting dressing-gown, his eighteen hours of work to five of sleep, his innumerable proof-sheets blackened with corrections, his debts, his duns, his quarrels with his publishers, his gradual rise to affluence and glory, his romantic passion for the Russian Countess, his marriage with her after sixteen years of waiting, and his death of heart disease just as the land of promise lay before him. Balzac, who took all human nature for his theme, and who pourtrayed above two thousand men and women, made but one study of an animal—a circumstance which gives "A Passion in the Desert" an interest all its own.]
T is a terrible sight!" she exclaimed as we left the menagerie of Monsieur Martin.