Page:The Enfranchisement of Women, the law of the land.pdf/20

20 "that in all acts words importing the masculine gender shall be deemed and taken to include females, unless the contrary as to gender is expressly provided." With that provision full in view, adopting its very provisions in its own clauses, the statute of 1867 enacts that "every man shall &hellip; be entitled to be registered as a voter &hellip; and to vote for a member &hellip; to serve in Parliament &hellip; who is &hellip; of full age and not subject to any legal incapacity." Before the Bill was passed into a law, the Hon. G. Denman, himself at present a Judge of the Common Pleas, gave notice of a question on the subject to the Government, which he afterwards put thus: "He desired to know why, instead of the words 'male person' in the Act of 1832, the word 'man' had been substituted in the present Bill. In the fifth clause of the Bill he found that after saying that every &apos;man&apos; should be entitled to be registered, it proceeded to say or a 'male person' who has passed any senior middle-class examination. If the Court of Queen's Bench had to decide to-morrow on the construction of these clauses, they would be constrained to hold that they conferred the suffrage on female persons as well as males." That question was not answered by the Government or its law officers, and Justice Denman recorded his vote to the effect of his opinion. I hardly know how to approach the casuistry by which a conclusion so inevitable has been evaded.

Does "man" import the masculine gender Then it must be "deemed and taken to include females." Does it not import the masculine gender Then it does not exclude females. But the Act does not stop here. It leaves no room for the judge made law of Westminster Hall—"No loop nor peg to hang a doubt on." It permits no casuistic exception through which forensic ingenuity may carp its sinuous way. It provides that the word "man" shall include females, "unless the contrary as to gender is expressly provided." It will not do that the contrary may be implied. The clause is not to be explained away by a quirk suggesting that something else may be inferred. The contrary must be expressed, and the expression must be provided—that is, a provision directly pro re nata must be embodied in a clause, to permit sophistry to shirk an order of interpretation plain and "palpable as a mountain."

This were enough, but it is by no means all. Why was the