Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 3.djvu/937

846 of parliament gave every local vote to every rate-payer. The Health of Towns act of 1848 had a clause almost identical with the one he was moving. He was therefore asking the House not only to make the bill in harmony with the general legislation of the country, but to allow it to be in harmony with its latest expressed convictions as shown in the act of 1848. There were in England 78 non-corporate towns which were not parliamentary boroughs, with populations varying from 20,000 to 6,000. In these every rate-payer voted. There was little if any difference between their government and that of municipal towns. Who could assign a reason why women should vote in one and not in the other? Every parochial vote was in the hands of the whole body of rate-payers. Women held the most important parochial offices. The sister of the member for Stockport had acted as overseer. Miss Burdett Coutts had been urged to take the office of guardian. Had she been a large rate-payer in a municipal town, what an absurdity to shut her out from the vote! He then showed how the process of disfranchisement was going on, and quoted Darlington and Southport. The latter town was incorporated in 1867. In 18€6, 2,085 persons were qualified to vote for commissioners; 588 of these were women. From the moment of incorporation these votes were extinguished without a reason being assigned, though they had exercised them from time immemorial. Such would be the case with any town incorporated in the future. He appealed to the metropolitan members, and showed them that unless his clauses were carried, when they came to establish corporations throughout the metropolis, as some of them desired, all the female rate-payers would be struck off the roll; that over a population of 3,000,000 this exclusion would prevail. He stated that where women had the vote they exercised it to an equal degree with the men. Mr. Lings, the comptroller for the city of Manchester, affirms that according to his experience the number of men and women who vote in local affairs bears a just proportion to the number of each on the register. He showed that as the bill was a largely enfranchising measure, his clause was in strict harmony with it, but that while the bill sought to increase the representation of those who were already considerably represented, the clause which he wished to add would give representation to those who within municipal towns were totally deprived of it. He concluded by saying that questions had come to him, since these amendments had been on the paper, from women in different parts of the country, and from those who by their social and intellectual positions might be regarded as representatives of their sex, asking why there should always be this tender regard for the representation and therefore the protection of men, and this apparent disregard for the interest of women; and he appealed to the House, by its decision, to show that as regards these local franchises it had a common regard for the whole body of rate-payers.

Mr. Jacob Bright's motion, which he supported with all the tact, earnestness and judgment of which he afterwards gave such repeated proofs in bringing forward his Women's Disabilities bill, was seconded by Mr. Rylands. Mr. Bruce (the home secretary)