"You've proved your complaint.

We'll have him burnt to death, after lunch, in the market place.

I presume you've brought a lunch-basket ?" "Oh no!" said the horrified propagandists: "We don't want such a penalty as _that_..." "Very good" said the Chief, "then we'll behead him..." "No! No!" "Crucify him ?"--"No! No!"-- "Peg him down over a Driver Ants' nest ?" "No! No!" "Then, if you don't want _any_ rational punishment, he shall go free." And free he went.
In the same way the Chancellor of the Exchequer of those days was so hard to please over Suffrage measures that none brought forward was democratic enough, far-reaching and overwhelming enough to secure his adhesion.

He was therefore forced to torpedo the Conciliation Bill, to snatch away the half-loaf that was better than no bread at all.

He spoke and voted against these tentative measures of feminine enfranchisement, with tongue in cheek, no doubt, and hand linked in that of Lulu Grandcourt whose opposition to any vote being given to woman and whole attitude towards the sex was so bitter that he had to be reminded by Lord Aloysius Brinsley (who like his brother Robert was a convinced Suffragist) that after all he, Lulu Grandcourt, had deigned to be born of a woman, had even--maybe--been spanked by one.
The Speaker had hinted on the occasion of the second reading of the Concilition Bill and at a later raising of the same question that there might arise all sorts of obstacles to wreck the Woman's Franchise measure in Committee; obstacles that apparently need not be taken into account as dangerous to any measure affecting male interests.