OUR LEGISLATORS ON WOMAN SUFFRAGE.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XI, Issue 31, 5 August 1893, Page 63

OUR LEGISLATORS ON WOMAN SUFFRAGE.

(BY •BIRD’S-EYE.’) MR FISH • ’esitated to insult the women.’ At about half-past nine o’clock on Friday evening, Sir John Hall was noticed laboriously lifting to a prominent position an immense roll of paper. ‘The Women’s Franchise petition,’ passed from lip to lip, and so it proved. Much of the afternoon and an hour and a-half of the evening had been occupied in sparring, but at last the Horse seemed disposed to vary the proceedings by a spurt of work, and the veteran knight, evidently fearful that the mood would not last, seemed almost tremulous in his eagerness to seize the opportunity for which he lias been watching ever since the session opened. It came with the motion to go into committee on the Electoral Bill. ‘ I have here a petition, sir, from the women of the colony—a petition I am proud to have the honour of presenting. It is one praying for the electoral franchise, and it altogether contains more signatures than any petition ever before presented in the Australian colonies.’ Thus Sir John, then advancing to the table, he laid on it, amid derisive laughter, • a petition from seventeen Nelson women, and another from 669 women, said he. The laugh became defiant. * Another from 675 women,’ he went on, and laugh there was none. ‘ Another,’ and he began unrolling the huge roll, • from 25.919 women ’ * How many ’’ queried a deep voice, and he repeated the numbers. • I shall require a little assistance here,’ he said, presently, as the unrolled loops of paper began to embarrass him. A messenger stepped forward, and soon the solid roll

was bowling along the floor to the other end of the chamber, which it reached without being apparently at all diminished in size by the dozen yards which had been unwound from it. Members looked on silently, in some cases sullenly, during the operation, which absorbed some minutes. The length of the petition is, I believe, close on three hundred yards, and though the enemies of the movement pooh-poohed it on Friday night as affording no true indication of feminine opinion—that lofty champion of purity, the distinguished Mr Fish, of Dunedin, even asserting that its signatures were bonus—surely it should prove that no inconsiderable number of the New Zealand women are genuinely desirous of enfranchisement. The canvassers for the petition were not like those employed by Mr Fish last year, paid so much

a hundred. With the genuine workers, the business of canvassing was, if not exactly a * labour of love,’ at least a work of duty, and duty of a somewhat fatiguing sort. The time occupied, and the walking involved in the house to house canvass must have been considerable, and when it is remembered that the canvassing was set on foot by Leagues which had first to be organised, it must certainly be admitted that at least the women who have undertaken and carried out all this must be in earnest on the subject. Over a thousand women took part in the house to house canvass, which, had the canvassers been women of leisure, would, it is computed, have yielded double the number of signatures obtained. Will it be seriously contended that women don’t want to vote, and if a thousand women unmistakeably want to vote, are men like Mr Fish and those associated with him in opposition to this movement to say they shall not?

Of comae the usual tactics were resorted to on Friday night directly the House got into Committee. Luckily, Mr Fish’s voice, cracked by the strain he put on it last year, was unequal to any long stonewall, and though be gave proof that the Ethiopian cannot change his skin, * he was physically incapable of repeating last year's Hoods of invectives.’ In his dismay at finding his vocal powers deserting him, he feebly essayed sarcasm alternated with feigned simplicity. Frantically clutching at straws in his hopeless desperation, lie looked weak but still ven imous. His will to work evil to the Franchise was evidently as strong as ever, but his power—the power to make mischief, which goes with the possession of a bitter, unscrupulous, tireless tongue growing out of a throat of brass—was gone. In

husky accents he implored the Premier to say if he were * serious ’ in this proposal to enfranchise women, to disturb the ‘ appiness of oines, to introduce domestic discord, etc. The Premier having assured him that he was, the poor man was quite overcome. • The late Premier was a faddist, but the present one he had thought a man of common sense, and he had never expected Ai/n to incorporate such a ridiculous provision in any of his Government Bills. But as he says he means it, he must mean also to insult the women of the colony, for though this Bill proposes to give them the vote, it excludes them from “ the House.” He himself would “ 'esitate to insult them ”by offering them the vote minus the right toaseatin Parliament. It was no use members saying, " they don’t want that.” How do they know ? If only one woman in the colony wants that liberty, what right has this House to say that one shall not have it? He, Mr Fish, will not be a party to exclusion, he will vote for the amendment of the member for Avon, who says he does it to “ kill the Bill.” How will it kill the Bill ? Why should it kill the Bill ? He can’t conceive why and so on, and so on. When he subsided, there were others eager to follow’, some on his own lines, others in more dignified fashion, the names of these, are they not all in Hansard ? Over and against them are those who foiled them in their insidious attempt toensurethe Bill’s rejection in the Upper House by the insertion of a provision, ‘ the women of the colony do not want it at present.’ A pretty incident of the discussion was Mr Taipoa’s intimation ‘ that out of deference to Sir John Hall he meant this year to vote in favour of the measure. Though hitherto a consistent opponent, Sir John Hall’s distinguished services should be rewarded, he thought, by members helping him to gain the desire of his heart before he left them for ever.’ A significant item was Mr Scobie McKenzie’s speech, in which, by a hypothetical case, he pretty plainly implied that if women when they get the vote insist on their members car lying the * direct veto,’ those members will promise, but assuredly not perform. A tiying incident was the speech of Mr Taylor, whose little eccentricities afford a perpetual ohject lesson on the infallible wisdom of male voters, and a convincing proof that the political pie could not be bettered by women having a linger in it. A pleasant detail was the assurance by the Hon. the Premier that the Government are fully determined to carry through the measure as it stands, in one Bill, which assuiance entitles us to hope that at the next election New Zealand will afford a very lemarkalde object lesson to the world.