ance Act did indeed melt rapidly away in 1913. In spite of a vehement professional meeting of protest on Jan. 7, the British Medical Association found itself forced by the independent action of doctors in all parts of the country to release its members from their pledge not to serve on the panels; and, though the Act remained for long unpopular, medical benefit was brought generally into operation, as arranged, on Jan. 15. At first the panel doctors were greatly overworked, and there were many hitches in administration. To obviate these, and to meet ob- jections raised by the great Friendly Societies and by the trade unions, a substantial amending bill, involving a further charge on the State of 200,000 per annum, was introduced and carried by the Government. The Opposition did not fail to point out that this immediate necessity for amendment proved their charge that the provisions of the original Act were hasty and ill-considered; but Mr. Lloyd George was able to claim in Aug. that there were 18,000 doctors and 9,000 chemists working under the Act and prospering through it; that 270,000 workers were receiving sickness benefit, and that 20,000 consumptives 13,000 in sanatoria had been already treated. In Feb. of the following year he boasted that there were over 20,000 general practitioners on the panels out of 22,500 in Great Britain; that nearly 4,500,000 had been distributed among them, besides 933,000 for drugs and an unallotted balance between doctors and chemists of 310,000.
The internal controversy among the Unionist party about Tariff Reform was also settled, at any rate temporarily, at the Unionists beginning of 1913. Mr. Bonar Law's Ashton declara- and Food tion did not satisfy the opponents of food taxes, who Taxes. were strongly supported by important organs of the Unionist press, and early in Jan. a memorial was presented to him signed by almost the whole body of Unionist M.P.'s, advocating a further modification of the proposed procedure but strongly deprecating any consequential change of leadership. The leaders acceded to their followers' wishes. After stating that the Unionist policy would be not to impose new duties on food, in order to secure the most effective system of pref- erence, until they had been submitted to the people at a general election, Mr. Law addsd that he and Lord Lansdowne would have preferred that this change of method should be accom- panied by a change of leaders, but in deference to the ex- pression of opinion in the memorial they would remain. In a speech at Edinburgh on Jan. 24, Mr. Law claimed that, in spite of the modification, the flag of imperial preference was still flying, and the Unionist policy remained perfectly definite. They would impose a lower tariff than that of any industrial country on manufactured goods; they would give the Dominions the largest preference possible without food duties; and they would try to establish cooperation throughout the Empire in trade as well as in defence. They would work out with the Dominions the best scheme to this end, and put it before the electors for their assent. The solution was welcomed by the bulk of the Unionist party, and was accepted by Mr. Austen Chamberlain, though he said in Dec. that his submission to the conditions laid down at Edinburgh was the bitterest sacrifice he had ever made. There were protests in extreme Tariff Reform circles, but these did not seriously impair the regained unity of the party.
But no solution was found, before the war broke out, of, the franchise question, of the grave problems of industrial unrest, fi/se or ^ tnose involved in the two great measures going Bill and forward under the provisions of the Parliament Act Women's the Welsh Disestablishment bill and the Irish Home Suffrage. Rule bm The Franchise bm which the Government
had introduced was to serve two main purposes: to abolish plural voting, and to afford a means, by way of amendment, of testing the opinion of the House of Commons on women's suffrage. The abolition of plural voting was strongly resented in the City of London, the most famous constituency in the country, as thereby an electorate containing the principal bankers and merchants of the Empire would be transformed into one consisting of a small number of resident caretakers and messengers. But it was the proposal to enlarge the bill by including women's
suffrage in it that proved fatal. On Jan. 27 the Speaker ruled, as a matter of order, that, if any amendments of the kind were inserted, the bill would become a new bill and would therefore have to be withdrawn. The Reform bills of 1832, 1867, and 1884 had been designed to enfranchise new classes of the people: this bill was not, and therefore could not properly be amended in the sense desired by the advocates of women's suffrage. The Government accordingly withdrew the measure, promising, however, to give facilities for a private member's suffrage bill in the next session. This contretemps was a blow both to the prestige of the Government and to the suffragist cause. Mili- tancy was at once resumed and was rampant throughout the year; Mrs. Pankhurst, the leader of the movement, announced that she would hold nothing sacred except human life. Shop- windows were smashed; golf links were defaced; telegraph wires were cut; church services and public meetings were interrupted; a woman lost her life in attempting to inter- fere with the race for the Derby. But arson was the principal weapon of the extremists, and during the year many railway sta- tions, grand stands, boat-houses, pavilions, unoccupied country- houses, and even churches were by them wholly or partially burnt down. Popular feeling, in consequence, ran high against the militants; their meetings in London were broken up and had to be prohibited by the police. A large proportion of the women who were convicted of committing outrages and sent to prison started a hunger-strike. This move was met by forcible feeding a practice against which public opinion revolted, and for which was substituted, under an Act passed ad hoc and nicknamed the " Cat and Mouse " Act, a system of releas- ing prisoners on licence. The atmosphere produced by these events was not favourable to the Women's Suffrage bill, which was rejected on May 6 by 267 votes to 219, all parties being divided except the Labour members who solidly supported the bill. The " Cat and Mouse " Act proved a failure. The women released under it qualified for prison once more, directly their strength was restored, by committing fresh outrages, and the authorities, who could not let their prisoners die on their hands, resorted again to forcible feeding in spite of the protests of many clergy and humanitarians. Meanwhile the non-militants, who formed the great majority of the supporters of the women's suffrage movement, were not inactive. Under Mrs. Fawcett's leadership they constantly pressed ministers to introduce a Government bill; and they advertised their cause by promoting a pilgrimage of women who perambulated the length and breadth of England at the height of summer in eight separate contingents, uniting at the end in a great demonstration in Hyde Park on July 26. In spite of the efforts of both sections, the Government maintained its neutral position. But it introduced a simple Plural Voting bill in April, with a view to passing it ultimately into law under the Parliament Act. It was carried through Committee in the House of Commons, in spite of Opposition protests, by the " Kangaroo" closure, and was rejected, because it was unaccompanied by a measure of redistribution, on second reading by the House of Lords. There was a repetition of this process in the session of 1914; but, owing to the outbreak of war, the bill was not introduced in 1915, and so failed. A compromise was arranged on another measure, the Temperance (Scotland) bill, to which it had been intended to apply the Parliament Act. In the shape in which the House of Lords passed the bill, it provided for local option on the question of liquor licenses in certain areas in Scotland; the popular vole, however, was postponed until 1920 when, it may be added, the Prohibition- ists met with a severe defeat.
Militancy was continued and intensified in the first half of 1914. Outrage so frequently took the form of wanton damage to valuable pictures in the National Gallery, Royal Academy, and other exhibitions that public galleries *f"f B ' erf
, Militancy
had to be closed. Arson was rampant. Bombs 101914.
were exploded in well-known churches, the corona- tion chair in Westminster Abbey having a narrow escape from serious injury by this method. An unsuccessful attempt
