Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 6.djvu/762

 HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE as a Government but as a House of Commons measure. The victory, therefore, was all the more welcome to us because it was the result of a free vote of the House. Mr. Asquith's re- traction of his former errors was quite handsome. He said, among other things, that his "eyes which for years in this matter had been clouded by fallacies and sealed by illusions at last had been opened to the truth." It required a European War on the vastest scale that the world had ever known to shake him out of his fallacies and illusions, and many of us felt that it would have been better if a less terrible convulsion had sufficed to awaken him, but still, now he was awakened, he was prompt in owning he had been in the wrong and therefore no more was to be said. The subsequent stages of this Representation of the People Bill were a series of triumphs for the suffrage cause. The second reading debate was taken on May 22d and 23d and again turned almost entirely on the women's question; the ma- jority was 329 to 40. When the Bill was in Committee and the clauses enfranchising women were taken up on June 19 the majority was 385 to 55, or exactly seven to one. On June 20 a last division was made, when the number of anti-suffragists was only 17. Our friends in the Speaker's Conference had so often im- pressed on us the danger of departing, even in the direction of obvious improvement, from its recommendations that we had carefully abstained from urging any deviation from them ; but when the immense majorities just quoted showed that the Bill and our clauses in it were safe beyond a peradventure, we did press very strongly that the same principle should be applied to Municipal suffrage for women which had already been sanctioned by the House for the Parliamentary Suffrage, namely, that the wives of householders should be recognized as householders, which would entitle them to vote. On November 15 an amend- ment to this effect was moved but was not accepted by the Gov- ernment. There were vigorous protests in our favour from all parts of the House and the debate on it was adjourned. During the interval the N.U.W.S.S. and other societies with whom we were cooperating bombarded the leader of the House and the Minister in charge of the bill with letters and telegrams