ABSTRACT
Mr Gladstone's sole allusion to our claim was not the allusion of one who saw anything undesirable in it. He simply indicated that in his view it was inopportune; that is, that he was anxious to secure the franchise for two millions of men who were householders, and so complete the circle of male household suffrage, and that all women should wait. No body of electors, doing their own work, and pleading their own cause, is unconsciously doing her work and pleading her cause. If women have a wrong to redress, a mistake to prevent, a grave conviction to enforce, they must get up a special machinery of agitation, at once elaborate and clumsy, which absorbs strength and skill which ought to be spent directly upon the object to be gained. If the condition of women depended wholly upon the electors, the consequences to society would have been very evil.
