Page:The Enfranchisement of Women, the law of the land.pdf/27

27 prevailed in reference to the exercise of duties attached to the possession of civil or public rights. It was to be expected, that women themselves would not be forward to exercise functions, offering no social advantages or pecuniary profits,which would bring them into conflict with the strife of faction, or the struggles of party. Common sense suggests that men would not press wives or spinsters into the service of irksome or unseemly duties, and that their own sex would extend a like discretionary forbearance. Sheriff, overseer, constable, sexton, marshal, chamberlain—these were offices which it was unlikely females of position would have any ambition to fill or the community to force upon them; and, therefore,it is not surprising that the records are almost silent on the subject. Yet when of their own motion or by their own desire they chose to step beyond the ordinary offices of their sex, and to discharge duties attaching to certain rights, no objection prevailed to exclude them from acting as returning officer at parliamentary elections, as the constable of their hundred,or the high sheriff of their county. It became their privilege also to do that by deputy or by proxy which the other sex were compelled to discharge in person; and yet the courtesy which good manners bestowed and the refinement of the sex accepted as a privilege and exemption, it is now attempted to torture into exclusion and disfranchisement.

It has especially to be noted that the sole original use of parliaments was to levy money for the Crown. Their germ is to be found in a summons by the sovereign to the wealthiest freeholders and burgesses to be examined as to their means, and to be admonished to pay. To this all contributed without any distinction of sex. The feme sole had to disburse her quota—the famina vestita viro, by her husband for her. Hence it is, that if a female freeholder marries,her husband is entitled to be registered for her freehold,as "in right of his wife." On her death it is lost, or if the demise be to her own separate use, the husband cannot qualify. But who ever heard in law of an absurdity so glaring as that of one person deriving a right from another who has no right? How could a wife impart to her husband the qualification she herself does not possess? So entirely is the franchise vested in the wife, that whenever she dies, the husband's title ipso facto ceases. Could he ever have