saw, I conquered: that is, my arguments did; for no thinking, fairminded man or woman can hold out for five minutes against the arguments for woman suffrage unless, indeed, they seek to deny the right of self-government, and in these days of storm and stress one has no time to waste in arguing with such people. The arguments for woman suffrage are also the arguments for women entering Parliament, and thus I killed two birds with one stone-I broke down the prejudice against woman suffrage and against women members of Parliament. My audiences numbered from 500 to 1500 people, according to the capacity of the hall. Two or three times the atmosphere was perceptibly chilly as I took the platform, though there was never any outward expression of hostility. However, before the close of these meetings I can emphatically say that I had the majority of the audiences with me on the question of a woman going into Parliament. They may not have agreed with my political views; they did agree that it is necessary for women to enter Parliament in order to voice the needs of women and children, and my meetings always broke up with the most enthusiastic demonstrations of good will. Frequently my friends were rather fearful as to how I should fare at the hands of those electors who attend election meetings for the express purpose of giving the candidate a bad time. They came, but they treated me as men at all worthy of the name will always treat a woman-with the utmost courtesy. Of course I was invariably asked the question, 'Are you in favour of a tax on bachelors?' As I am an unmarried woman, this question was considered the joke of the evening; but when I replied that I should be exceedingly sorry to accept any proposal that would be likely to encourage some men to get married,' the questioner, having an uncomfortable feeling that he might be included amongst the undesirables, generally concluded it was safer to get back to the domain of practical politics. Addressing crowded, orderly, good-humoured, enthusiastic audiences is a delight to a public speaker, and I can truthfully say that I thoroughly enjoyed my campaign. There were eighteen candidates in the field, and, while unsuccessful, my record of 51,497 votes, when 85,387 were sufficient to secure election, is most gratifying. I polled more heavily than one candidate who has been Premier of Victoria, and than another who had been for twenty-six years a member of the State Legislature, defeating the one by 24,327, the other by 32,436 votes-51,000 odd votes, in spite of the opposition of the powerful daily papers, and the prejudice that a pioneer always has to encounter, is nothing less than a triumph for the cause that I represent, the cause of women and children.

That many women not pledged supporters of the Labour party voted for some, if not all, of the Labour candidates, is strongly deprecated by the other rival parties. It would have been strange had they done otherwise, considering that it is primarily due to the Labour

party that woman suffrage is such a live question in Australia. There have up to the present been three political parties here-Free-traders, Protectionists, Labour-we have no strongly defined Conservative and Liberal parties. The Free-traders and Protectionists have been so wedded to their respective fiscal theories that they have deemed everything except the tariff of minor importance. Bent on securing material prosperity, either by means of high tariff, or revenue tariff, or no tariff, they forgot to be just to the women of Australia. The Labour party in each State, whether Protectionist or Free-trade, placed woman suffrage first; it fought hard for it, in and out of Parliament; consequently, owing nothing to the other political parties, we are not likely to forget the party through which woman suffrage has been made a question of practical politics throughout Australia, instead of remaining, as in other countries, the four suffrage States in America excepted, a purely academic question. I do not believe that woman suffrage will ever become a vital question in other countries until it is made a fighting plank of the Labour party's platform. Recent political history teaches us that every real reform affecting human liberties and human rights has come as the result of agitation by the people's party, and the Labour party is essentially the people's party. These reforms have only been advocated by one of the orthodox political parties after popular enthusiasm has been aroused by the friends of the people. Social, and industrial, and political reforms are only won through the enthusiasm that bitter suffering creates. Most men and women who are tolerably well circumstanced are content to glide along the surface of life. It is those to whom hard work brings little but anxiety and suffering, or those in whom sympathy and imagination are well developed, who strive to bring about a better, a juster social order. Many supporters of woman suffrage are found amongst English Liberals and Conservatives, but as parties they ignore the principle; the last Trades Union Congress defeated a woman suffrage proposition by the narrow margin of seven votes, and that because there was a property qualification advocated instead of 'plain' womanhood. So it seems as if our experience will be the experience of the women of England. They will look in vain to the orthodox parties to fight their battles for them. The Labour party will come forward and present a united front in favour of their enfranchisement; then it will dawn upon either a Conservative or a Liberal Government that it will be a popular political expedient to declare for woman suffrage, and the women of Great Britain will find themselves the political equals of their sisters in this country.

The enfranchisement of the women of Australia has already given an impetus to the woman suffrage movement in other countries. Last year a suffrage amendment was submitted to the voters in the State of New Hampshire, U.S.A., when it secured a larger measure of support than has previously been accorded to a similar amendment in

an Eastern State. Only last week the news was cabled from England that a woman suffrage deputation from the Women's Liberal Federation had been received by Sir Henry Campbell Bannerman and Mr. John Morley, who, while they did not commit the party to the reform, expressed themselves in favour of it. Similar action has previously been taken by women's political societies in England, similar expressions of approval have been voiced by leading members of the House of Commons, but never has it been considered worth while cabling such news to Australia, which would have been of great interest to the woman suffrage party here. But now that we have got the suffrage, it is held to be important to let us know that the question is also being placed before English statesmen. In the gain or loss of one race all the rest have equal claim,' and we rejoice to know that our great suffrage gain is helping other women in their struggle for liberty. Our Australia is a baby nation as yet, but she begins life as no other nation has begun it, she begins with equal rights for men and women.

VIDA GOLDSTEIN.

Melbourne, February 1904.

1904

THE CAPTURE of LHASA IN 1710

THE capture of Lhasa by the Eleuths at the beginning of the eighteenth century has been quite overlooked in the recent voluminous literature on the Tibet question. Perhaps the explanation is that it belongs to the least carefully studied period of Asiatic history. The incident deserves to be rescued from oblivion at a time when, after the lapse of nearly two hundred years, the same task now lies before the soldiers of the Indian Government as was successfully accomplished by the hordes of Tse Wang Rabdan. This chieftain, whose name will be unfamiliar to the general reader, was one of the greatest rulers that Central Asia ever produced, defying with no inconsiderable success Russia on one side and the famous Chinese Emperor Kanghi on the other. It is not a little curious that our principal authority on the subject of the campaign in Tibet that we are about to describe should be a Russian traveller, Unkoffsky, who visited the Eleuth capital not long after the event, and of whose narrative in Russian there is a copy in the British Museum library.

The century which closed with the Eleuth invasion in 1710 was the most important in the history of Tibet, for it witnessed the disappearance of the old reigning dynasty, the establishment of the power of the Dalai Lama in its place, the expulsion of the military faction, and the arrival of the first Chinese garrison. In earlier times Tibet had been ruled by a line of princes who had waged war and made peace on equal terms with the Emperors of China, and the last king was reigning during at least the first twenty years of the seventeenth century. Father Andrada, the missionary who visited Tibet about that time, speaks of the king's leanings towards Christianity, and perhaps this was the final cause of the downfall of his dynasty. Until the year 1625 the Buddhist priests had been content with their priestly duties. They had kept to their monasteries and prayer-wheels, and although the transmigration of the eternal spirit of Buddha through a child was always the essential feature in the recognition and proclamation of the head of the Tibetan Church, the name of the Dalai Lama had not been heard of until the first Manchu Emperor, Chuntche, conferred it on the High Priest of Potola in or about the year 1650. But for some time previous to that event the priests had been

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striving to obtain the control of the civil government, and the compliments and presents of the Manchu ruler, still insecurely seated on the throne of Peking, were the recognition of their success. They had come out of their monasteries and entered the political arena. Assuming the Yellow Cap as their distinctive mark in contrast to the Red Cap of the military party, which then enjoyed the ascendency, they entered upon a struggle for power which covered the first fifty years of the seventeenth century, for it commenced in the life of the last of the kings. The Yellow Caps enjoyed the sympathy and support of the Chinese, but it is not easy to fix precisely the value of their aid, for China herself was passing through the throes of the last Tartar conquest. On the other hand the Red Caps, too confident in their strength, did not seek assistance in any direction, and when at length the priests, pouring out of the lamaseries in thousands, bore down on them, they ended the struggle by sheer weight of numbers, and the surviving Red Caps had no alternative but to flee into the Himalayan State of Bhutan, where they still enjoy the supremacy that they lost in Tibet. The Jongpin who visited Colonel Younghusband's camp the other day would in all probability be the descendant of one of these Tibetan soldiers who were expelled over 250 years ago by the Lamas. This event happened in or a little before 1649, and the Chinese Emperor's edict conferring on the High Priest of Potola the title of Dalai Lama-meaning Ocean Lama, because his learning was supposed to be equally vast-was the formal recognition of the triumph of the Yellow Caps.

The Lamas, having expelled the regular rulers of the country, had to provide for a new government. A civilian official with the title of the Tipa was given charge of the civil and military administration in the name of the Dalai Lama. The first Tipa, of whom Duhalde wrote :- This Tipa wore the dress of a lama without having to be subject to the heavy obligations of the order '-was the man who had chiefly aided the priests in getting rid of their military rivals. His son in due course succeeded to his authority, and, being a man of great ambition, he was not content with even the slight and nominal control of the Dalai Lama. An opportunity was not long in presenting itself. The first Dalai Lama died in 1682, and the Tipa then took steps to prevent the discovery of his successor. In other words, he suppressed the office of Dalai Lama, but while acting thus arbitrarily he carefully concealed the truth of the case from the Emperor Kanghi, the new ruler of China. The Tipa imposed so skilfully on the Chinese ruler that he received as a reward for his loyal and useful services to the Dalai Lama the title of Prince of Tibet Tibet Wang-at the hands of Kanghi. The fraud was not discovered for sixteen years. In 1698 the facts became known at Peking, and the indignation and astonishment of the Emperor on discovering that he had been imposed upon found relief in a series of admirably composed letters and edicts