The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1912-05-23
THE ARGUMENT OF BROKEN WINDOWS
By, Annie C. Porritt, Hartford.
Reprinted From The Independent, New York, April II,
 1912, by the Courtesy of the Editors

the castle of the Duke of Newcastle was burned to the ground, was one of the incidents that were necessary to prove to the governing classes in IS32 that the unrepresentative charac-, ter or the House of Commons had be- come intolerable. Bristol, where MT. Hobhouse made his speech, was also the scene of riots, during which the Blshop's palace similarly went up in names. The destruction of private Of men who wanted to be admitted to the franchise. and the House of Lords-then the obstacle to reform admitted the validity of the argu- ment and passed the Reform Act of 1892
 It was similar story in Canada in 1887. It took the Papineau rebellion in Quebec, and the Mackenzie rebel lion in Ontario, to win self-govern- ment for Britain's remaining North American colonies. The incident of the. tearing down of mile or two gument for reform in 1867, and in- duced the classes in possession of po- l1t1cal power to admit-grudgingly and inadequately-some of the working men of Great Britain to the fran chise. Threats to end the House of Lords were necessary to induce the aristocracy to enlarge the franchise a little further in 1884 and to let sev- eral million more of the working men
 into the represented classes.
 All this time-ever since the intro- duction of the first measure for wo- men suffrage in the House of Com mons by John Stuart Mill in 1367-the. women had been quietly urging their own cause. Education, persuasion, peaceful agitation were carried on consistently and patiently for forty-five years Again and again it was con- ceded by ministers and members of Parliament that so far as argument was concerted the women's case was won; that there was no necessity for further educational effort. The House of Commons had shown its opinion of the Justice of the women's case by repeatedly giving large majorities to bills conferring the suffrage on wo- men. But the question was not con- sidered urgent. It was commonly spoken of as a merely academic ques- tion," and according to English tra- dttion, there was only one way by which Votes for Women could be raised from the academic stage into a vital political issue. This way was to force it upon the attention of the Government which happened to be in convince Cabinet ministers that the women of England had withdrawn their consent from a government in which they had no share, and that there were only two courses open to the authorities-repres with con tinually increasing severity toward the rebels, or the concession of the right of self-gOvernment.
 So far the Cabinet has chosen the first alternative. The ministers have been unmindful of the fact that ''the
 blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church They have endeavor. ed to crush out heroism and self-sac- rifce with the crude weapons where with men try to -repress crime. They have not cOmprehended the spirit or the quality of the women to whom in the early days of the struggle mag istrates served out sentences of un- exampled severity for actions that certainly could not be called crimes. The authorities have met hunger strikes with torture. and protests with manacles and punishment cells. Now that the women have taken further step in procedure and have broken windows, instead of offering them selves for arrest by their persistent efforts to pass the cordons of police that guarded the Houses of Parlia- ment, the Government is resorting to the clumsy and outworn conspiracy laws-in the hope that a weapon which was quite ineffective in crushing out agitations of men may be sufficient ly powerful to bring to an. end the re- volt of the women.
 In the meanwhile no Liberal Gov ernment or Liberal Cabinet minister can engage for years in efforts to crush down a movement for liberty and self-government without paying tremendous price in loss of pres- tige and of principle. The Cabinet which in 1906 was backed by the lar- gest Parliamentary majority of mod ern times is now in an actual party minority in the House of Commons The ministers are divided; and the theory of Cabinet solidarity received a rude shock when members of thel same Cabinet openly appeared on the platform on opposing sides of this great question. Whether immediate acknowledgement crowns the efforts of the women or not, the militant action of the w. s. F. U. has resulted in making of woman suffrage not an academic question, the solution of which could be indefinitely postpon- ed. but the most vital and disturbing political issue of the moment, and the issue which must be settled beforel peace can be restored to the nation peace resting on the only sure basis of democratic government-the con- sent of the governed. So much has already been effected by militant tac-| tics, and the present panic of the English Government-the resort to ex> traordinary means of repression = is good proof that the Liberal ministers are not under any impression that the w. S. F. U. is mere aggregation IL