“The news is being flashed far and wide,
and before our earth has revolved on her axis every civilized community
within the reach of the electric wires will have received the tidings that civic freedom has been granted …”
— Kate Sheppard
Even he had to give in: he had lost. But wait… he was a politician… Here was a opportunity…
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He had fought, blocked, and delayed the women’s right to vote in New Zealand. Only to reverse himself and claim he was trying to help, when the bill was passed finally.
Kate knew he was a hypocrite. She understood the political process. She knew that New Zealand was the first nation to “give the women” the right to vote in 1893. So, by letter, announcing to the world she encouraged her predecessor fellow civic activists in America including Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan Anthony to continue the fight. She had seen the future in 1869 because in the relatively new territory of Wyoming, farmers had given their women the right to vote partly as a reaction to outrageous behavior of brazen and politically connected cattlemen lynching an independent innocent single woman farmer.
Social progress thru politics is on the edge of chaos/order. Two steps forward in the future, one step back to the future. One Vote against, two Votes for.
Richard Seddon, though a member of the Liberal Party, opposed women’s suffrage, and expected it to be again blocked in the upper house. Despite Seddon’s opposition, Members of Parliament assembled sufficient strength in the House of Representatives to pass the bill. When it arrived in the Legislative Council, two previously hostile members, moved to anger at Seddon’s “underhand” behaviour in getting one member to change his vote, voted in favour of the bill. Hence the bill was passed by 20 to 18, and with the Royal Assent [Queen Victoria] it was signed into law on 19 September 1893.
