372 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



procrastination and delay, and autocratically overruling a 

 recent decision of the House, appointed a Committee " to 

 examine and, if possible, to submit agreed resolutions on the 

 following matters " : 



(a) Reform of the Franchise. 



(b) Basis for redistribution of seats. 



(c) Reform of the system of the registration of electors. 



(d) Method of elections and the manner in which the 



costs of elections should be borne. 



The Cabinet, to quote the words of Sir Edward Carson, thus 

 " referred the whole constitution of this country to a Com- 

 mittee not appointed by the House at all," for Mr. Speaker, 

 who has been " kind enough to consent " to preside over this 

 Committee (officially described as a Conference), accepts 

 responsibility for the selection of its members. The implied 

 claim of this curiously constituted body to instruct the House 

 how to vote upon such questions as Adult Suffrage, Women's 

 Suffrage, and Suffrage for Soldiers and Sailors was, fortunately, 

 repudiated in advance, as " one of the most absurd things ever 

 attempted," by the then leader of the largest and most influ- 

 ential section of independent opinion in the House, who, 

 moreover, did not hesitate to predict that " very little atten- 

 tion will be paid to its report when we get it." 



Realising, no doubt, the inadequacy of this device to stem 

 the rising tide of indignation in the country, at the dilatory 

 tactics of a Government which at one time declared it to be 

 impossible for soldiers and sailors, on active service, to vote 

 at all, at another time expressed anxiety to enable them to 

 do so and, all the time, refrained from taking any steps to make 

 their participation in a war-time election possible, Mr. Asquith 

 and his colleagues decided to introduce a Special Register Bill 

 which, when presented, contained no provision for the registra- 

 tion, as Parliamentary electors, of soldiers, sailors, and munition 

 workers, as such. It is unnecessary to follow further the fortunes 

 of this unhappy measure, the fate of which is well known. 



The conviction that until Parliament has set its own 

 house in order, no extension of the Franchise, however wide, 

 and no Electoral Reform, however drastic, can restore its 

 former authority to the House of Commons, or regain for it 

 its place in the regard of the nation, need not preclude a 



