Page:The Enfranchisement of Women, the law of the land.pdf/15

15 proceed to the election." Women were "suitors as well as other." The 8th Henry VI., c. 7, declares the knights "shall be chosen in every county by people (therein), whereof every one of them shall have free land or tenement to the value of 40l." Women were "people, and had free land." The 10th of Henry VI., c. 2, uses the term "chooser" for elector. The 7th and 8th William III., c. 25, describes the electors as "the freeholders," directs that "the name of each freeholder shall be set down;" that "no person" shall vote as trustee unless in possession; nor "any person" underage. The 18th G. II., c. 18, continues the term "person" for elector. The 19th G. II., c. 28, referring more particularly to borough elections, still confines the description of voters to the same indefinite and purely generic title. The 3rd G. III., c. 15, prohibits "any person" from voting unless he has taken up his freedom for twelve months. The 11th G. III., c. 55; 22nd G. III., c. 31; 44th G. III., c. 60; and the 11th G. IV., and 1st Will. IV., c. 74, relating to New Shoreham, Cricklade, Aylesbury, and East Retford, confer the suffrage on "every freeholder being above the age of twenty-one years." Women are persons, people, and certainly are comprehended in the category of "every freeholder." Need I add, what is familiar to every lawyer, that the masculine pronoun "him," "his," "he," used in our statutes, extends indifferently to the other sex.

I have carefully passed before the review of the reader every statute that deals with the question at issue, and it is perfectly obvious that there is not one word in any of our Acts of Parliament that even remotely hints at the creation of any distinction or privilege of sex, as attaching to the exercise of the elective franchise. I do not believe it will be denied by any lawyer, that if any of the statutes I have enumerated had been the first to confer the right to vote, it would have been as competent to any woman who was a freeholder, a suitor, a "resiant," a burgage tenant, an "inhabitant," a "substantial house-holder," to poll in the year ensuing its enactment, as for any male person whatever. I do not understand, indeed, that this is seriously disputed. Certainly there is no attempt in the rationes decidendi of the Court of Common Pleas to support the judgment by any appeal to the phraseology of any enfranchising statute. Let me here state categorically the points at issue.