a cabinet minister and of two other gentlemen holding offices of great importance." He, therefore, was proposing to his colleagues that he should be authorised to request the three gentlemen referred to, to do the Government the favour of retaining their respective offices. As they had never resigned them, this petition that they should withdraw their resignation seemed a little superfluous.
The blow to women's suffrage dealt by the defeat of Mr. Woodall's Amendment to the 1884 Reform Bill was a heavy one, and was deeply felt by the whole movement. But though fatal to immediate Parliamentary success, the events of 1884 strengthened our cause in the country. Everything which draws public attention to the subject of representation and to the political helplessness of the unrepresented makes people ask themselves more and more "Why are women excluded?" "If representative government is good for men, why should it be bad for women?" "Why do members of Parliament lightly break their promises to non-voters?" It will be remembered that the Reform Bill of 1884 was not finally passed until late in the autumn. While the final stages of the measure were still pending, the Trades Union Congress meeting at Aberdeen passed a resolution, with only three dissentients, "That this Congress is strongly of opinion that the franchise should be extended to women rate-payers." Thus at that critical juncture the working men's most powerful organisation stood by the women whom the Liberal party had betrayed.
New political forces made their appearance very soon after the passing of the Reform Act of 1884, which have had an almost immeasurable effect in promoting the women's suffrage cause. The Reform Act had contained a provision to render paid canvassing illegal, and in 1883 Sir Henry James (afterwards Lord James of Hereford) had introduced, on behalf of the Government, and carried a very stringent Corrupt Practices Act. Its main feature was to place a definite limit, proportioned to the number of electors in each con-
