tion immediately, and the election began March 21. The women voted in considerable numbers, and were, as an eye-witness states, without exception quite intelligent and business like in this procedure. At the polling stations, the first persons who recorded their votes were women. We may mention in proof of their political gratitude that in the district where Mr. Sherwood was one of the candidates, every woman, whatever her party, voted for his reëlection.
Just before the opening of parliament in 1881, Mr. Courtney accepted a position in the administration, which rendered it impossible for him to continue in charge of any independent measure. By his advice, application was made to Mr. Hugh Mason, member for Ashton under Lyme. But the state of public business during the session never permitted the resolution to be discussed. The same disappointment occurred in the session of 1882—the difficulties in Ireland and Egypt occupying the attention of the government and the country to an extent which almost precluded any measure of domestic reform. Nevertheless, by constant and arduous efforts, these two years witnessed the passing of the Municipal Franchise bill for Scotland.
The Municipal Franchise act of 1869 applied to English women only. Early in the session of 1881, Dr. Cameron, member for Glasgow, introduced a bill to assimilate the position of Scottish women to that which their English sisters had enjoyed for twelve years. The bill passed the House of Commons before Easter, and was then brought forward in the House of Lords by the Earl of Camperdown, passed May 13, and received the royal assent June 3. This law applied only to women rate-payers of the royal and parliamentary burghs, and did not extend to the police burghs, the populous places endowed with powers of local self-government under the general Police and Improvement act of 1862. A request was sent to Mr. Cameron to exert himself for a similar extension of the franchise to the women of the police burghs, and he answered by introducing in the following year, 1882, another act which gave to all women rate-payers the right, not merely of voting at elections of burgh commissioners, but also of voting with the other inhabitants as to whether a populous place should be constituted a police burgh.
The election under these new measures was in November, 1882, and then Scottish women voted for the first time, excepting of course in school-board elections. The result was entirely satis-
