Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 6.djvu/743

 WOMEN S MOVEMENT IN THE UNITED KINGDOM 727 port in all critical divisions the new administration which was formed under the Premiership of Sir Henry Campbell Banner- man. The new House contained 426 members pledged to Women's Suffrage. The Premier was himself a suffragist but his Cabinet contained several determined anti-suffragists, notable among whom were Mr. Herbert H. Asquith, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Mr. James Bryce, chief secretary for Ireland (now Lord Bryce), who became British Ambassador to the United States in 1907. The new Prime Minister received a large, representative suffrage deputation in May, 1906, in which all sections of suffragist opinion were represented, and their case was laid before him with force and clearness. In reply he told them that they had made out "a conclusive and irrefutable case" but that he was not prepared to take any steps to realize their hopes. Yhen asked what he would advise ardent suffragists to do he told them to "go on pestering." This advice was taken to heart by the group (a small minority of the whole) who had lately formed in Manchester the organization known as The Women's Social and Political Union, led by Mrs. Pankhurst. An unforeseen misfortune was the death in 1908 of Sir H. C. Bannerman and the fact that his successor was our principal opponent in the Government, Mr. Asquith. It was not very long before he revealed the line of his attack upon the enfranchisement of women. He informed his party in May, 1908, that his inten- tion was to introduce before the expiration of the existing Parlia- ment a Reform Bill giving a wide extension of the franchise to men and no franchise at all to women. In the previous February a Women's Suffrage Bill which removed all sex disability from ing franchises had passed its second reading in the House of Commons but this apparently had no effect on Mr. Asquith. There were, however, some cracks in his armour. He admitted that about two-thirds of his Cabinet and a majority of his party favourable to Women's Suffrage and he promised that when >wn exclusively male Reform Bill was before the House and had got into committee, if an amendment to include women were ninved on democratic lines, his Government, as a Government, ion taken by Mr. Gladstone upon his Reform Bill of 1884,
 * !d not oppose it. This was at all events an advance on the