suffrage. [Footnote: In the city of Berne, Switzerland, in 1852, a proxy
vote was given to independent women who paid a commercial tax, but they
made no effort to use it until 1885, when contending political factions
compelled them to do so in a measure. Norway's women have a local school
vote. Both these cases of exception serve to prove the rule that I am
trying to set forth.]

Autocratic Russia and its Asiatic colonies have more woman suffrage than
England. Finland, a constitutional monarchy, was ceded to the Emperor of
Russia in 1809. Women there have all except the parliamentary suffrage.
The Governor-General of the Senate is nominated by the Emperor, and is
chief of the military force. The National Assembly is convoked by the
Emperor whenever he sees fit. The duties of that Assembly are to consider
laws proposed by the Emperor and elaborated by the Committee of Affairs
and four members nominated by the Emperor, who sit in St. Petersburg. The
Emperor has the veto power over any act of theirs. That National Assembly
consists of representatives of the nobility, the clergy, the burghers, and
the peasantry, the consent of all of whom must be obtained to any measure
that makes a change in the constitution or imposes taxes. But the royal
veto can set aside any decision.

Iceland, a dependency of Denmark, has municipal woman suffrage, and women
are eligible to municipal office. It has its own legislature, which
governs jointly with the King, the executive power being in the hands of
the King alone.

In the great extensions of suffrage in England in 1848, an amendment for
the extension of suffrage to women was introduced in Parliament by Mr.
Disraeli. Lord Northcote, Lord John Manners, and other conservatives,
upheld it; but the liberal leaders opposed it, Gladstone and John Bright