At first of course the new Government was too busy in allotting the
loaves and fishes of Office and in handing out the peerages,
baronetcies, knighthoods, Governorships, private secretaryships, and
promotions among the civil servants which had--not to put too fine a
point on it--been purchased by large and small contributions to the
Party Chest.
[Such a procedure seems to be inseparable from our present Party
system. In this respect the Conservatives are no better than the
Liberals; and it is always possible that in a different way the
Labour Party when It comes into power will be similarly inclined to
reward those who have furnished the sinews of war. The House of
Commons in the last Act which revised the conditions of elections of
members of Parliament was careful to leave open many avenues along
which Money might attain to the heart of things.]
But at length all such matters were settled, and the Cabinet was
free to face the steady demand of the women leaders of the
Suffrage movement; a demand that at any rate _some_ measure of
enfranchisement should be granted to the women of the British Isles
without delay.
We all know how this demand was received by the leading men of the
Liberal Party and by the more prominent Liberals among their
supporters in the House; with evasions, silences, sneers, angry
refusals, hasty promises given to-day (when Ministers were
frightened) and broken to-morrow; with a whole series of
discreditable tongue-in-the-cheek tricks of Parliamentary
procedure; till at last the onlooker must have wondered at and felt
grateful for our British phlegm; surprised that so little actual
harm was done (except to the bodies of the Suffragists), that no
Home Secretary or Police Inspector or magistrate, no flippant
talker-out of would-be-serious Franchise Bills was assassinated,
trounced, tarred and feathered, kidnapped, nose-tweaked, or even
mud-bespattered.
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