The transition from monarchy to aristocracy in England was brought about at the price of civil war. In many countries democracy has been born in revolution, and the birth pains have been hard and bitter. But in England in the nineteenth century democracy was allowed to come into being by permission of the aristocracy, and has not yet reached its full stature. It is true that violence, bloodshed, loss of life, and destruction of property marked the passage of the great Reform Bill; that more than once riots and defiance of law and order have been the expression of industrial discontent; but on the whole the average Englishman is content to wait for the redress of wrongs by Parliamentary action. Women have quite recently defied the law, refused to pay taxes, and made use of "militant methods" in their agitation for enfranchisement. But the women's plea has been that, as they are voteless, these methods have been necessary to call attention to their demands. Democratic advance has often been hindered and delayed by government, and by a national disinclination from rapid political change; but as the character of government has changed with the changed character of the electorate and the House of Commons, so resistance to democracy has always been abandoned when the advance was widely supported, and further delay seemed dangerous to the public order.
The House of Lords is thus seen to yield to the popular representatives in the House of Commons, and the government, dependent on the House of Commons, to listen to the demand of women for enfranchisement.
While the House of Commons completes its assertion of political supremacy, and insists on the absolute responsibility of the chosen representatives of the electorate, the agitation for the enfranchisement of women is the reminder that democracy has yet to widen its borders. Progress to democracy in the last one hundred years is visible not only in the enlarged number of enfranchised citizens, but in the general admission that every extension of the franchise has been to the public good; not only in the fact that men of all classes and trades now have their representatives in Parliament, but in the very wide acknowledgment that women without votes cannot get that attention by members of the House of Commons that is given to male electors. That the majority of electors have expressed a decided opinion that the power of the House of Lords should be curtailed, as the power of the monarchy has been curtailed, and that the decisions of the House of Commons are only to be corrected by the House of Commons, is evidence that under our obviously imperfect Parliamentary system the will of the electors does get registered on the Statute Book.