year, and he said that as the women had finally been given the privilege, the Government desired to have a real live women’s vote, and every opportunity should be afforded to them to exercise their votes. He also gave instructions that extra polling-booths should be erected as soon as possible to meet the convenience of the new electors.
It has been stated already that Mr. Seddon was not personally connected with the movement, although it was brought to a successful issue in the very first year of his Premiership, and is one of the prominent features of his administration. As a matter of fact, the movement began two years before he was born, thirteen years before the establishment of responsible government in the colony, and nearly forty years before the first Liberal Party came to change the face of the colony’s politics. It is true that Sir George Grey formed the first Liberal Party, and was the first great Liberal leader, but Liberalism was present in New Zealand before he came into touch with its politics. It could not have been otherwise. Amongst the people who left England to meet the hardships of life in a new land there were many with broad views and with something more than a leaning towards reformatory legislation. In some cases, it was their Liberalism that sent them from their native land. They wanted a freer atmosphere, where they could shape the ideas they had formed in regard to legislative freedom.
Amongst these men was Mr. A. Saunders, one of the advanced Liberals of his day. It is largely owing to his advocacy that the woman franchise movement was started. He preached the granting of the franchise when those who discussed the proposal in any degree of seriousness were looked upon as faddists of the most pronounced, and sometimes of a dangerous, type. With all the world, apparently, against them, they stood the brunt of severe criticism, and they held to their doctrines through the unpopularity and the scorn that came from the very people the reform they advocated was most likely to benefit. Mr. Saunders, who spoke in favour of the movement in 1843, lived to see it achieve its great success half a century later. There were giants in those days, as in later ones, and Mr. Saunders had the good fortune to live among the Monroes,
