Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 6.djvu/758

 74 2 HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE for twelve months previous to the last I5th of July. Seven out of every eight voters were placed on the register through this qualification. It was not a property qualification, for the tiniest cottage at a shilling a week could qualify its occupier for a vote if he had fulfilled the condition just described; and a man might be a millionaire without getting a vote if he were not in occupation of qualifying premises. Before the war the regis- ter of voters was kept up to date by annual revision. The war, however, made this difficult and the Government in 1915 gave directions that this annual revision should be abandoned. As the war went on, the existing register, therefore, rapidly became more and more out of date. Millions of the best men in the country had become disqualified through their war service by giving up their qualifying premises. The House of Com- mons again and again postponed the date of the General Election but the occasional by-elections which took place proved that there was no register in existence on which it would be morally pos- sible to appeal to the country. The old, the feeble, the slacker, the crank, the conscientious objector would all be left in full strength and the fighting men would be disfranchised. A Par- liament elected on such a register would, Mr. Asquith declared, be wholly lacking in moral authority. Therefore, by sheer ne- cessity the Government was forced to introduce legislation deal- ing with the whole franchise question as it affected the male voter. A Coalition Government of the Liberal, Conservative and La- bour Parties had been formed in 1915. This improved suffrage prospects, for many of the new men joining the Government, more especially Lord Robert Cecil, the Earl of Selborne and the Earl of Lytton, were warm supporters of our cause; while in making room for these newscomers, Mr. Asquith found it pos- sible to dispense with the services of men of the type of Sir Charles Hobhouse, Mr. A. J. Pease and others who were our opponents. The formation of a Coalition Government helped us in another way. Neither of the great parties, Conservative and Liberal, had been unanimous on the women's question and the heads of these parties lived in terror of smashing up their party by pledging themselves to definite action on our side. Mr. Glad- stone had broken up the Liberal Party in 1886 by advocating