Page:The Enfranchisement of Women, the law of the land.pdf/12

12 and in gremio, the very essence and substance of the whole suffrage rights of the British people. Yet it is clear, meo judicio, that the Court of Common Pleas has been illegally clothed with an exclusive jurisdiction, which the House of Commons has just as unconstitutionally abdicated. The citizens of America have seen good reason to repent having set the Supreme (Law) Court of the United States paramount over the constitution.

I repeat my thesis. By the laws of England, women are entitled to be registered as parliamentary electors; and the decision—the single judgment of the Court of Common Pleas, which it has no opportunity to review, and from which no appeal is competent—is bad law. Is there any presumption in saying this of the judgments of a court which pronounces the same opinion of its own decisions, and which are just as commonly condemned by Courts of Appeal? After all, the fetish worship of horse-hairwigs by the exoteric public is not very accountable. You or I, are we not as able to understand and as interpret our own mother-tongue e'er a judge on the bench? Ignorantia juris, neminem excusat. The statutes of the realm are addressed to the subjects of the realm, and assume that they can read and understand them. Those especially which refer to the universal public rights of the poorest and most ignorant, as well as the highest and most cultured, ought to be so plain that " he who runs may read." There is no witchcraft in jurisprudence—even that of England. No citizen need approach it as if it were a Delphic oracle to be interpreted only by its priests. The construction of English sentences uttered by one's own representatives—ought that to be "past all under standing?" It is the concrete will of the men who meet us at the polling booth, and ask us for "our most sweet voices." Why should it be caviare'' to the million?" Do not believe it. Judge for yourselves. I shall endeavour to make the matter clear to the simple; and I shall ask my brother lawyers to allow me to take them along with us in the following examination of the point at issue.

The basis of the existing electoral system is the Reform Act of 1832. That is, so to speak, the wicket through which, citizens must pass until they reach the parliamentary register. The franchises, which for the first time it creates, are dispensed