I send you a paper with the account of Mr. Chorlton's argument in Mrs. Kyllmann's claim. "Here all the commotion about the 'intentions of Parliament' is out of place. She claims under the Act 8 Hen. VI., which declares that people who have every one freehold to the value of forty shillings annually shall vote. This law has never been repealed, and it is the law under which men vote to this day." To Mrs. Pennington : It is true that the Act of 1832 conferred the new franchise on 'male persons,' and thus introduced the element of sex as a condition of the suffrage, for the first time into English legislation; but carefully avoids the word 'male' in respect of any existing franchise, so that the claims of a woman under the Statute 8 Hen. VI. is not touched by the Act of 1832. And it was very well put by Mr. Sidney Smith that the use of the word 'male' in the latter Act affords a presumption in favour of the capacity of women to vote. The framers of that Act must have thought that the use of the words 'every person of full age and not subject to any legal incapacity,' would have included women, and as they wished to exclude them they inserted the word 'male,' a word hitherto utterly unknown in all legislation on the franchise. I need hardly say that this statutory disability has not been removed by the Acts of 1850 and 1867, so that the case rests on constitutional capacity. It should not be forgotten that all the complicated machinery of registration in polling booths is an addition to the ancient form of election by nomination at public assembly, and that this ancient form continues to the present day, and has been maintained in uninterrupted succession at every election from the time of the first Parliament until now. "Women always have attended and taken part at these elections, and I suppose no one will dispute the proposition. But if a candidate were carried at a nomination by a show of hands, consisting of a majority of women, and no poll were afterwards taken, that candidate would be legally returned, though the majority of male persons present might happen to be against him. Of course it is highly improbable, not to say impossible, that such a contingency could actually occur. I merely use it as an illustration of what I meant by the proposition that the constitutional right of women to vote is antecedent to the existence of, and irrespective of, any grants from the House of Commons. "Should the answer in the higher courts go against us -I believe it will be that the force of habit and prejudice will have biassed the minds of the judges—and it will be with a sense of the deepest humiliation that I shall recognize the new order of going to Parliament to beg as a boon that which will have been unjustly withheld as a constitutional right. We must spare no effort to avert such a calamity." To Miss Taunton : : "Nov. 3rd, 1868. "I earnestly hope that we shall not need a petition. The legal arguments, to show that women have already the right to vote, grows stronger the more they are "I send you a paper with the account of Mr. Chorlton's argument in Mrs. Kyllmann's claim. "Here all the commotion about the intentions of Parliament' is out of place. She claims under the Act 8 Hen. VI., which declares that people who have every one freehold to the value of forty shillings annually shall vote. This law has never been repealed, and it is the law under which men vote to this day." To Mrs. Pennington: "It is true that the Act of 1832 conferred the new franchise on male persons,' and thus introduced the element of sex as a condition of the suffrage, for the first time into English legislation; but carefully avoids the word 'male' in respect of any existing franchise, so that the claims of a woman under the Statute 8 Hen. VI. is not touched by the Act of 1832. And it was very well put by Mr. Sidney Smith that the use of the word male' in the latter Act affords a presumption in favour of the capacity of women to vote. The framers of that Act must have thought that the use of the words 'every person of full age and not subject to any legal incapacity,' would have included women, and as they wished to exclude them they inserted the word 'male,' a word hitherto utterly unknown in all legislation on the franchise. I need hardly say that this statutory disability has not been removed by the Acts of 1850 and 1867, so that the case rests on constitutional capacity. It should not be forgotten that all the complicated machinery of registration in polling booths is an addition to the ancient form of election by nomination at public assembly, and that this ancient form continues to the present day, and has been maintained in uninterrupted succession at every election from the time of the first Parliament until now. "Women always have attended and taken part at these elections, and I suppose no one will dispute the proposition. But if a candidate were carried at a nomination by a show of hands, consisting of a majority of women, and no poll were afterwards taken, that candidate would be legally returned, though the majority of male persons present might happen to be against him. Of course it is highly improbable, not to say impossible, that such a contingency could actually occur. I merely use it as an illustration of what I meant by the proposition that the constitutional right of women to vote is antecedent to the existence of, and irrespective of, any grants from the House of Commons. "Should the answer in the higher courts go against us -I believe it will be that the force of habit and prejudice will have biassed the minds of the judges-and it will be with a sense of the deepest humiliation that I shall recognize the new order of going to Parliament to beg as a boon that which will have been unjustly withheld as a constitutional right. We must spare no effort to avert such a calamity." To Miss Taunton:- แ "Nov. 3rd, 1868. "I earnestly hope that we shall not need a petition. The legal arguments, to show that women have already the right to vote, grows stronger the more they are looked into. I am convinced that if the judges decide against us, on our appeal cases, it will be by straining the law. "If men could show as good a case in any question affecting their rights, there would be no doubt about the decision, but the dominant sex seems afflicted with absolute inability to do justice between men and women. I have no faith in the impartiality of the tribunal to which we are compelled to submit, though the strongest possible conviction that we have both justice and law on our side. But I do think that one Judge, if not more, may give it in our favour. "I have been, and am still busily engaged in looking up the legal arguments, in conjunction with our counsel, and it seems to me impossible to find a flaw in them." § 17. The Appeal to the Courts. The extracts just quoted indicate the expectant attitude of mind with which the Manchester Society, on Octo. ber 30th, 1868, held its first annual meeting. By a bold stroke this was held at the Town Hall, in the Mayor's parlour. Across the vista of meetings held in the Mayor of Manchester's parlour year after year for thirty years, one hardly realizes how bold a stroke it seemed at the time. "I tremble, for it is a bold venture to come out into the Town Hall, and I fear lest we should not get fifty people there," Miss Becker wrote to one of the speakers, two or three days before the meeting. On the evening of the day itself, she was able to write to Miss Holland: "The room was crowded, a fearful jam |