The failure of the Government and their followers to deal liberally with this question has been an interesting revelation of the incompleteness of self-styled Liberalism, and of the power of the party machine to subdue independent thinking to the convenience of Ministers with stereotyped minds. The majority of members of the Liberal party, in the Cabinet and elsewhere, have acknowledged the justice of the demand, even though its sudden violence has taken them by surprise. A minority, which unhappily includes Mr. Asquith, have displayed a Toryism, in matters of sex, as complete as that of Castlereagh. It has been particularly unfortunate for the credit of the Liberal party that its leader at such a critical moment should be a man of little imagination. It is the large imagination, ever ranging beyond the bounds of the practicable and the expedient, and detecting in the obscurity of apparent chaos the currents of new social forces, which distinguishes the greatest statesmen from those who are merely { 354} great. Peel had it, though in him it was often blind and groping. Disraeli had it, though spoilt by his mean and tawdry ideals. Gladstone had it, in full measure, and so, with less practical gifts, had Campbell-Bannerman. The mantle of leadership descended in 1908 upon the shoulders of a man who had all the qualities of a great leader except the greatest of all; and Mr. Asquith's inability to see the rightness of the women's movement has brought his party into great difficulty and greater discredit. In spite of his own public promise to adopt the opinion of the House of Commons, even if it be contrary to his own, a perverted sense of loyalty has caused many of his followers to find in his feelings a reason for the violation of their own express and public pledges. This dullness of vision in Ministers has been severely blamed. But it is not for the want of imagination which disables them from understanding the problem that they are to be condemned. The historian who wastes his indignation on such natural incapacities will have little to spare for the graver political vices. The blameworthiness of the Liberal party and the Government lies in their mismanagement of the disorder which was produced by their refusal to redress grievances. The writer has nothing to say in defence of the recent actions of the militant Suffragists. The earliest breaches of the law produced no substantial injury to anybody but the women themselves. Those of the last twelve months have in some cases been as wicked as they have in all cases been foolish. But however arrogant, reckless, and unscrupulous the militant movement may now have become, it was in origin as disinterested and as remorseless in its self-sacrifice as any political movement in history, and its corruption is due no more to the native ill-disposition of the women than to the folly of the Government and its supporters.[365]