Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 3.djvu/945

854 seventy others of our supporters. We were thus compelled to look around for fresh leaders. The task of bringing in a bill was accepted by Mr. Forsyth, the Conservative member for Marylebone, one of the London boroughs; with him were associated Mr. Stansfeld, Mr. Russell Gurney and Sir R. Anstruther, men differing widely on matters of party politics. The bill was introduced early in the session, but no day was found for it, and in the middle of July it was withdrawn. Considerable discussion was excited by the unexpected action of Mr. Forsyth, who on his own responsibility inserted in the bill an additional clause by which married women were especially excluded from its operation. Although the insertion of this clause would probably have made no difference, the bulk of legal opinion being that under the law of coverture, married women even when possessed of property are not "qualified persons," yet the society joined in requesting that this additional clause should be dropped and the original form of the bill adhered to.

Memorials signed by upwards of 18,000 women headed by Florence Nightingale, Harriet Martineau, Lady Anna Gore Langton (sister of the Duke of Buckingham), Frances Power Cobbe, Anna Swanwick, were again this year forwarded to Mr. Disraeli and Mr. Gladstone. An important memorial was also forwarded from a large conference held in Birmingham in January, which represents very accurately the special aspects of the question in England. The president of the conference was Mrs. William Taylor, sister-in-law of Mr. Peter A. Taylor, M. P.:

The memorial of members and friends of the National Society for Women's Suffrage, in conference assembled at Birmingham, January 22, 1874, showeth, that your memorialists earnestly desire to urge on the attention of her majesty's government the justice and expediency of abolishing the disability which precludes women, otherwise legally qualified, from voting in the election of members of parliament.

They submit that the disability is anomalous, inasmuch as it exists only in respect to the parliamentary franchise. The electoral rights of women have been from time immemorial equal and similar to those of men in parochial and other ancient franchises, and in the year 1869 a measure was passed, with the sanction of the administration of which you are the head, restoring and confirming the rights of women ratepayers to the exercise of the municipal franchise.

The electoral disability is further anomalous, because by the law and constitution of this realm, women are not disabled from the exercise of