NEW FRANCHISE

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIV, Issue 9, 10 July 1912, Page 7

NEW FRANCHISE

SOLELY IN THE INTERESTS OF ONE PARTY. DISCUSSION IN~THE COMMONS. By Telegraph.— Press Association,— Copyright. LONDON, 9th July. In the House of Commons yesterday, Mr. Lewi* Hareourt, Secretary of State for the Colonies', moved the second reading of the Franchise Bill. He said it was considered tho one-vote-one-value was a necessary corollary of the one-man-one-vote principle. The Government intended' to pass both, with a redistribution of seats, before the next election. He did not think the House was prepared at the present moment to add ten and a-half million women to the electorate. Mr. E. G. Pretyman (Unionist member for Chelmßford) ' moved the Opposition amendment. He declared that in deciding to proceed with the measure — on whoso most important aspect, viz., that of female suffrage, the Government was admitklly not agreed — and which, left the most glaring electoral inequalities unremedied, the Cabinet had framed the Bill solely in the interests of one party. Clauses ought to be inserted enacting that the Bill should remain inoperative until the Redistribution Bill wa* passed. Other Unionists, described the Bill as "tricky, incomplete, unworkable, and mere gerrymandering." Sir Arthur Markham (Liberal member for Mansfield) said he desired the aboKtion of plural voting, but he wa* also a suffragust. Tiie Bill was a positive insult to educated women, whom it excluded while admitting three million men who never ought to have a vote. Mr. J. A. Pease, prefl F id'ent of the Board of Education, warmly resented an argument advanced by Sir Robert' Finlay (Unionist member for Edinburgh and St. Andrew's Universities), regarding university representation, that the Government had been influenced by mean and petty motives. Tne debate was adjourned.