Page:Letters to a friend on votes for women.djvu/19

 LETTER II

ARGUMENTS IN FAVOUR OF WOMAN'S SUFFRAGE

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Will the grant of Parliamentary votes to English women promote the welfare of England?

This, my dear friend, is the inquiry to which you wish to have a candid and reasoned answer. It is assuredly a question which every elector throughout the United Kingdom will, as he values the prosperity of his country, be called upon, it may be within a few months, and certainly within two or three years, to answer. It is a problem to which not one man in a thousand has given careful attention. In the attempt to solve it an elector will receive little aid from his leaders. The hesitation of the Government and the ambiguous silence of the Opposition are of bad omen; they suggest transactions and intrigues; they foretell that a fundamental change in the constitution of England, to which the world pre- 9