Page:Letters to a friend on votes for women.djvu/97

 suffrage should pass through Parliament, whilst exciting less attention than a Bill allowing the consolidation or union of two or three great railway companies. They have, I trust, averted the risk, against which we must still be on our guard, that the admission of women to the Parliamentary franchise should be the result of party intrigue. Their duty, and I am certain their wish, is to continue with vigour the good work they have begun. A petition signed by more than 250,000 women has already told for much. Let the numbers be doubled, and it takes no prophet to predict that the pledges and opinions of candidates for seats in Parliament will undergo a miraculous change. Women can do more than any men to check an agitation which may delay for years the removal, at the instance of moderate reformers, of really injurious restraints upon the free action of women. Moderate reform has everything in its favour. It has produced all the definite improvements—and they are many—in the condition of English women which have been effected during the last fifty years. The petulance of lawlessness can boast of no beneficial achievement whatever. It