[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPEOTATOR. "] Srn,—In your remarks in
this week's Spectator on the results of the Birmingham School-Board election, you seem to me to under- estimate the significance of the numbers who voted. 63 per cent. does not at first sight seem a very large proportion. But it must be borne in mind, in contrasting School-Board with Parliamentary elections, that the potential voters in the former case include a very large proportion of women, whose voting propensity has not yet been cultivated by practice. The proportion of those on the register incapacitated by infirmity, illness, absence from home, or other causes, could scarcely be set down as less than one-sixth, which would reduce the voluntary abstentions to from one-fifth to one-sixth, or say 15 to 20 per cent., surely showing an unusual amount of interest in the result. In the case of the Liverpool School Board, with which you contrast it, the same mode of deal- ing with the 42 per cent. actual voters would leave the voluntary abstentions at 40 per cent. at the least, or more than double the number in the case of Birmingham.
Firmly persuaded that the principles of the Birmingham League are the principles of civil and religious liberty with which the Liberal party has so long been associated (and from which it is with great pain and regret that I see the Spectator dissociating itself), I am anxious that the significance of this great victory should not be underrated, but that those who all over the country are earnestly fighting in the cause of the so-called " Secularist" candidates against the Clerical party, should be encouraged there- by to relinquish nothing of the great principle involved in the struggle.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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