Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 6.djvu/742

 726 HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE Corrupt Practices Act of 1883, which made paid canvassing illegal and otherwise reduced electorial expenses. Very soon after it came into operation both the chief political parties organized bands of educated women to act as canvassers, election agents, etc., in contested elections. The war stimulated this electorial activity of women. A general election was held in 1900 and in the absence of husbands, sons and brothers in South Africa, many wives, mothers and sisters ran the whole election on their behalf. Several of these were well known anti-suffragists. Even Mrs. Humphry Ward herself, on the occasion of an important anti-suffrage meeting in London, excused her absence on the ground that her presence was required by the exigencies of the pending election in West Herts, where her son was a candidate. Suffragists again were not slow to point the moral if women were fit (and they obviously were fit) not only to advise, persuade and instruct voters how to vote but also to conduct election cam- paigns from start to finish, they were surely fit to vote themselves. The death of Queen Victoria in January, 1901, called forth a spontaneous burst of loyal gratitude, devotion and appreciation from all parties and all sections of the country. Every leading statesman among her councillors dwelt on the extraordinary pene- tration of her mind, her wide political knowledge, her great practical sagacity, her grasp of principle, and they combined to acclaim her as the most trusted of all the constitutional monarchs whom the world had then seen. How could she be all that they justly claimed for her, if the whole female sex laboured under the disabilities which, according to Mrs. Humphry Ward, were imposed by nature and therefore irremediable? Nevertheless, it must not be supposed, genuine as were these tributes to Queen Victoria's political sagacity, that her example immediately cleared out of the minds of the opponents the notion that women were fitly classed with aliens, felons, idiots and lunatics, as persons who for reasons of public safety were debarred from the exercise of the Parliamentary franchise. The Parliament returned in 1906 had an immense Liberal ma- jority. There were only 157 Unionist members in the House of Commons against 513 Liberals, Labour men and Nationalists, all of whom were for Home Rule and therefore prepared to sup-