of 1906 he publicly congratulated a meeting of Unionist Free Traders on "the magnificent stand the agricultural labourers had made for Free Trade!" If his counsels had prevailed in 1880, not one of these men would have had a vote and could have made a stand for Free Trade or anything else. But in politics memories are short, and no one reminded Lord Goschen, as he had then became, of his stand against the labourers' vote a few years earlier.
As the time approached when the Government of 1880 would introduce their Bill to extend household suffrage to counties, the exertions of the women's suffragists were redoubled. One of the methods of propaganda adopted was the bringing forward of resolutions favourable to women's suffrage at the meetings and representative gatherings of political associations of both the great parties.
Resolutions favourable to an extension of the Parliamentary suffrage to women were carried at the Parliamentary Reform Congress at Leeds in October 1883, at the National Liberal Federation at Bristol in 1883, at the National Reform Union, Manchester, January 1884, at the National Union of Conservative Associations (Scotland) at Glasgow in 1887, at the National Union of Conservative and Constitutional Associations' Annual Conference (Oxford) 1887, and so on yearly, or at very frequent intervals, down to the present time.[1]
At the Reform Conference at Leeds in 1883, presided over by Mr. John Morley, and attended by 2000 delegates from all parts of the country, it was moved by Dr. Crosskey of Birmingham, and seconded by Mr. Walter M'Laren, to add to the resolution supporting household suffrage in the counties the following rider:—"That in the opinion of this meeting, any measure for the extension of the suffrage should confer the franchise on women who, possessing the qualifications which entitle men to vote, have now the right of voting in all matters of local government."
It was pointed out by Mr. M'Laren (now a member of the House of Commons and one of our mast valued
- ↑ Record of Women's Suffrage, p. 190, by Helen Blackburn.
