Page:The Enfranchisement of Women, the law of the land.pdf/26

26 same ingenious jurisconsult has discovered that "the word 'expressly' does not necessarily mean 'expressly excluded by words.'" "The word 'expressly' often means no more than 'plainly,' clearly,' and the like." Well, a nod is as good as a wink to a blind horse. Pray, how can an idea be "plainly" or "clearly" expressed, but by expressing it? Does Parliament here mean that it winks or nods "male," and that such "natural language" will have all the effect of the shake of Lord Burleigh's head in the "Critic?" "Express" is used in contradistinction to "implied." The clause directs that expression not "plainly" and "clearly" alone, but by a distinct provision is to be given to any deviation from the governing definition. To give expression to an act is to utter it in words. The very object of Romilly's Act is to ordain that wherever the word "man" is used, it shall mean "woman;" and in the very teeth of the one sole object of that Act, it pleases the Court of Common Pleas to insist on ruling that "man" shall not import "woman"—and to hold that "clearly" and "plainly" it does not, although the very sum of the interpreting Act is authoritatively to statute that it shall. I have heard of a coach and six being driven through an Act of Parliament, but have never before seen that feat of charioteering so thoroughly performed as here.

The authority of the Scotch Courts has been taken as a prop for this judgment, but with little reason. Before the Act of 1832 the Scottish franchises had no relation to the English. Acts and rights in the sister kingdom become obsolete and extinguished a non utendo; and there was in the sister kingdom no room for the contention that the Common Law right and the statutes originally imparted the franchise to the lieges irrespective of sex. In fact, before the Reform Act, it could not be said that there was an elective franchise for the people of Scotland of either the one sex or the other.

It has been seen that a distinction had been carefully drawn by the courts of law and the writers of legal institutes between exemption from the discharge of public official duties, and exclusion from the privileges attached to legal rights. By tacit consent or custom, and those usages which naturally refine the habits of civilised society, the deference which manhood and good manners extend to the fair sex, instinctively