neglected as the parliamentary franchise. Parishioners
voted for overseers of the poor and for other local boards; and
women were never legally disqualified from voting in these
elections. The lowest period in the condition of women appears to
have been reached at the end of the last century, though they were
not then indifferent to politics. "You cannot," says Miss
Edgeworth's Lady Davenant, "satisfy yourself with the common
namby-pamby phrase, 'Ladies have nothing to do with politics.' * *
* Female influence must exist on political subjects as well as on
all others; but this influence should always be domestic not
public; the customs of society have so ruled it." This sentence
exactly represented ordinary English feeling. It was never
considered derogatory to an English lady to take an active part in
elections, provided she did so for some member of her family; but
of direct responsibility she had none.

In the ferment of opinion which preceded the great Reform bill,
woman's claim to participate in it was never heard. The new
franchises which were then for the first time created applied
exclusively to _male_ persons, but in the old franchises continuing
in force, the word "person" alone is strictly used. Mr. Sidney
Smith said:

In reserving and keeping alive the qualifications in existence
before those itself created, this statute falls back exactly to
the accustomed phraseology of the earlier acts. Whenever it
confers a new right it restricts it to every male person.
Whenever it perpetuates existing franchises, it continues them
to every person, leaving the word "male" out on system.

This may have been little more than an oversight, or it may have
been that respect for precedent which used to be an inherent
quality in English statesmen. But it is curious that the first
petition ever, to our knowledge, presented for women's suffrage to
the House of Commons should date from this same year. It was
presented on August 3, 1832, and is the worthy predecessor of many
thousands in later times. Hansard thus describes it:

Mr. Hunt said he had a petition to present which might be a
subject of mirth to some honorable gentlemen, but which was one
deserving of consideration. It came from a lady of rank and
fortune, Mary Smith of Stanmore, in the county of York. The
petition stated that she paid taxes, and therefore did not see
why she should not have a share in t