Page:The case for women's suffrage.djvu/33

 word 'person' instead thereof." Mr. Mill opened by saying that the extension he was about to propose could excite no party feeling or class feeling. He dwelt on its justice, its constitutional character. "Allow me to ask, what is the meaning of political freedom? Is it anything but the control of those who do make politics their business by those who do not? Is it not the very essence of constitutional liberty that men come from their looms and their forges to decide, and decide well, whether they are properly governed, and whom they will be governed by?" He showed that the question was in truth a development of the greater sense of mutual interest and companionship that was arising between men and women, and the evil for the character of each which an unequal level must entail.

Amongst others, Mr. Fawcett supported him. On a division there were Ayes, 73; Noes, 196. Majority against the amendment, 123. Pairs and tellers brought the total votes in favour to 81.

But a further amendment substituting the words "male persons" for men was also rejected, and Mr. Chisholm Anstey ("the champion of the Suffrage cause in law, even as Mr. Mill was in Parliament") now drew further attention to the fact that women had ancient legal rights to the franchise, and the Manchester Committee, backed by the London, Bristol, and Birmingham Societies, which had by now started into existence, resolved to take its stand on the existing law.

Fortune was in their favour, for the name of Mrs. Lily Maxwell, a small shopkeeper in Manchester,