ABSTRACT

Mr. Leif Jones, M.P., proposed: " That this meeting is strongly of opinion that no scheme of redistribution can be satisfactory to the country which is not accompanied by such electoral reform as shall admit women to the register as Parliamentary voters, and caJls upon His Majesty's Government to carry out this urgent and long-delayed reform." The exclusion of women from the Parliamentary Suffrage was the strangest anomaly in the British constitution. It was contrary to the first principles of our constitution, and of justice. Every woman could exclaim with Rosse,:i,u, "Birth was the first of my misfortunes." He hoped that Conference would do something to dissipate the notion that women did not care about the vote. The position of the question in Parliament was not altogether satisfactory. It had been before Parliament eighteen times in the last thirty-eight years. There was a majority in its favour on four occasions, and a majority against it on twelve occasions, and on the other two occasions it was talked out. · It was perfectly true it . was not a. party question, but although there was a majority both in the country and in the House in favour of it, it did not seem to advance. What was everybody's business seemed to be nobody's business, and he confessed he did not see how it was to get through until it was made a Government question.