Page:The Feminist Movement - Snowden - 1912.djvu/194

 One thought strikes the careful reader who pursues this question of woman suffrage to its deepest depths, and that is, the singular and suggestive fact that the bad and vicious elements are invariably against votes for women. It has almost invariably been a combination of the saloon, the brothel, and the race-course which has defeated woman suffrage in those States where it has been submitted and defeated. The thought suggests itself: if woman suffrage is the portentous and terrible thing it is said to be, why do all the elements of selfishness and corruption combine in the effort to defeat it whenever it is proposed?

one part of his magnificent biography of Mr Gladstone, Lord Morley points out at some length the change which has taken place in the character of politics during recent years. A hundred years ago Parliament concerned itself primarily with questions remote from the lives of the common people. It is not so to-day. The overwhelming majority of the questions with which modern Parliaments deal are questions which touch the lives and the interests of the great masses