Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 3.djvu/946

Rh political power. Writs, returning members to serve in the House of Commons, signed by women as electors or returning officers, are now in existence, and the validity of such returns has never been disputed. Women who were heirs to peerages and other dignities exercised judicial jurisdiction and enjoyed other privileges appertaining to such offices and lordships without disability of sex. The highest political function known to the constitution may be exercised by a woman. The principle that women may have political power is coëval with the British constitution. On the other hand the practice of women taking part in voting at popular elections is equally ancient in date, and has been restored and extended by the action of the present parliament. Your memorialists therefore submit that to bring the existing principle and practice into harmony by removing the disability which prevents women who vote in local elections from voting in the election of members of parliament, would be a step in the natural process of development by which institutions, while retaining the strength and authority derived from the traditions of the past, and preserving the continuity of the national life, continually undergo such modifications as are needed in order to adapt them to the exigencies of the age and the changed conditions of modern life.

They also submit that the old laws regulating the qualifications of electors do not limit the franchise to male persons; that the laws under which women exercised the parochial franchise were couched in the same general terms as those regulating the parliamentary suffrage, and that while the latter were not expressly limited to men, the former were not expressly extended to women. There is, therefore, a strong presumption that the exclusion of women from the parliamentary suffrage was an infringement on their ancient constitutional rights, rendered possible in a barbarous age by the comparative weakness and smallness of the number of persons affected by it, and continued until the exclusion had become customary. The franchise of women in local elections has been from time to time under judicial consideration, and their right to take part in such elections has been repeatedly confirmed by the judges. During the arguments in these cases, the question of their right to vote in the election of members of parliament was frequently mooted and conflicting opinions thereon [sic]incidently expressed by various judges, but the matter was never judicially decided, and no authoritative judgment was ever given against the right until the year 1868, after the passing of two modern acts of parliament in 1832 and 1867, the former of which for the first time in English history, in terms, limited the franchise created by it to every "male person," and the latter to every "man" qualified under its provisions. Your memorialists submit that had the question of the right of women to vote in the election of members of parliament been raised in the law courts under the old statutes which contain no reference to sex, and before the passing of the limiting acts of 1832 and 1867, that the precedents which had determined the right in their favor in the construction of the law as to local government must have been held to apply to the case of qualified freeholders or others who claimed the right as regards parliamentary government.