Genesis  31:44-49."


CHAPTER  XIII
BRITISH  ORGANIZATIONS  AND   INSTITUTIONS

During  Miss  Willard's  sojourn  in  England  the
suggestive  and  instructive  points  in  the  organi-
zations and  institutions  of  that  country,  especially
their  expression  in  woman's  life  and  work,  vitally
interested  her.  As  the  guest  of  Lady  Henry
Somerset,  opportunities  to  study  their  promin-
ent phases  and  characteristics  were  many  and
varied.  To  attend  political  conventions  in  which
men  and  women  were  equally  interested,  was  to
her  a  novel  experience.  English  methods  of  elec-
tion were  an  absorbing  study,  but  the  most  inspiring
phenomenon  was  the  place  of  prominence  given  to
women  in  political  life.
With  great  stirring  of  spirit  she  thus  describes  a
convention  of  the  Woman's  Liberal  Federation:

Nowhere  on  the  face  of  the  earth  have  women
organized  with  so  much  strength,  skill,  and  devotion
to  forward  beneficent  political  movements  as  in  the
mother  country.  Seventy-five  thousand  of  them
are  banded  in  the  Woman's  Liberal  Federation  for
the  purpose  of  advancing  the  interest  of  that  great
party  which  has  for  many  years  been  "casting  up

210


BRITISH   ORGANIZATIONS  211

the  highway"  of  euiiinci])utlon  by  which  England
shall  pass  over  into  the  promised  land  of  liberty,
equality,  fraternity.  Mrs.  Gladstone  has  been  from
the  first  president  of  this  organization,  and  as  an
educator  for  women  it  has  no  rival  in  the  island;  for
successes,  and  failures,  too,  are  teaching  the  women
that  only  when  great  causes  are  incarnated  in  politics
and  parties  do  they  command  the  public  mind  and
crystallize  into  those  better  laws  that  bring  a  sec-
tion of  the  "organized  millennium"  equally  to  each
and  to  all.
