Page:The Feminist Movement - Snowden - 1912.djvu/154

 life, John Bright voted for woman suffrage, moved thereto by the sincerity and earnestness as well as the eloquence of Mill. His well-known objection to woman suffrage was his fear that the power to vote would carry the power to sit, and he disliked the thought of the woman Member of Parliament. Mill also presented to the House the first woman suffrage petition, which contained 1499 names, some of them the names of the most distinguished women of the times, Florence Nightingale, Harriet Martineau, Mary Somerville, and Mrs Josephine Butler.

Though the women were defeated in the Commons in 1867, and in the Law Courts in 1868, the discussion which arose out of these two events resulted in the creation of a more enlightened public opinion upon the question of the status of women. Many doors were opened to them, not without much effort on their part, which were previously closed. In 1869 the Municipal Franchise was restored to women, and in 1870, by the passing of the Education Act of that year, they were made eligible for membership of School Boards, to which several brilliant women were at once elected. The first Married Woman's Property Act, which gave a married woman the right to her own earnings, was passed in the same year, 1870. In 1867 and 1871 University education was made possible for women, and