Woman's Franchise.

Feilding Star, Volume XIV, Issue 100, 11 February 1893, Page 2

Woman's Franchise.

In his speech of Saturday last, as reported in the Nelson Mail, the Minister of Education said : •' Personally he was in favour of grant ing the suffrage to women. His Party j was not elected to carry it, as it was not v leading question at the last elections, or an integral part of tbe policy which the Party was elected to carry. The Govern uient, however, accepted it loyally, and endeavoured to pace it through the only

House where it could. If the gentlemen in tbe other House had wished, they had only to pass it, but they annexed conditions which the Government regarded as hostile to the great principle of the ballot. The Ministers said that they would not accept those conditions. Three times they asked the Council to withdraw the ' obnoxious conditions in vain, and they said that they would not accept the conditions, and there the matter must lie. He did not think it fair to blame the Govern - I ment, as this measure was not an integral | part of their policy, and it was not pas6ed through the obstinacy of the Upper House. He thought that women should receive the franchise, and that the burden of disproof that they should do so lay on the opponents of the measure." Commenting on this, the Wellington Post says : " This is sot the language of a member of a Ministry determined to force a great measure through the Legislature by all the means at their command. It is rather the language of a Minister preparing the way to let a troublesome question drop altogether. There is not a word to indicate an intention to press the measure through next session, in fulfilment of the understanding on which its supporters allowed it to drop last year. We repeat the statement which we have often made —the warning we have often given - that on this great question Ministers have Elayed the women of the colony false, and aye betrayed the confidence reposed in them. The assertion by Mr Reeves that the Government had been unable to force the Bill through the Council is fully deceptive. The Government possessed full power to bring the Council into accord with the House on the subject, by making a sufficient number of new members a few weeks earlier than they exercised their power of appointing a dozen new Legislative Councillors. Had the Government been earnest, loyal, and sincere in regard to the admission of women to political power and privileges, they had, as was pointed out at the time, the means of carrying the measure in the Council as it had been carried in the House."