Whether, then, as most suffragists are agreed, the best thing to do is to destroy the sex disability first, or to start with a wider measure, the enfranchisement of all married women is a necessity, not only of just, but of stable politics, and must certainly come in the near future.
"How beggarly appear arguments before a defiant deed!" These words of Walt Whitman, the poet who has written more sanely about women than perhaps any other, must have occurred frequently during the last few months to ardent friends of the Women's Movement, watching with a fearful interest the doings of the Women's Social and Political Union. By a long course of patient effort, by the gradual increase of women's influence in politics, trade unionism, and co-operation, the ground had been prepared for a great upheaval of the disfranchised sex. But the electric spark was needed which should turn woman the suppliant into woman the rebel. That spark has been supplied by the heroism and devotion of the women of the Social and Political Union. In face of these, objections may occur to the mind, but criticism is almost silenced among those who feel deeply how great is the work the members of the Union have achieved. Society has been angry and shocked, but society, for the first time in the history of the movement, has been compelled to listen. During the recent by-election at Hexham, while "Tariff Reformers" preached to inattentive ears, and even the candidates themselves received only moderate audiences, every village eagerly gathered together
