Asquith, in the House, had shocked many people by opposing the franchise for women on the grounds that woman was not the female of the human species but a distinct and inferior species of her own, and disqualified from voting in the same way that a rabbit was disqualified. When it was reported there were angry letters and much protest in the press, together with several satirical cartoons about the lapine origins of various public figures. Someone commented that Asquith's 'rabbit theory' made it difficult to vote Liberal and then look the women of one's household in the face.