In the case of Rex v. Chardstock, where “the parish was obstinate in not having another Overseer than a woman,” Justice Powell had testily declared that a woman cannot be Overseer of the Poor, that there can be no custom of the parish to appoint her, because it is an Office[[16]] created by Act of Parliament. To the petitioner’s election he replied that there was not to be a woman Overseer, an obiter dictum reversed in the King’s Bench in 1788 in Rex v. Stubbs. “Can a woman be Overseer of the poor?” the only qualification necessary by the Statute[[17]] (43 Eliza.), is that the Overseer be “a substantial householder.” A woman can be “a substantial householder, and therefore she is eligible.” Justice Ashurst referred to the other offices that women had held, as quoted above. “This office has no reference to sex. The only question is whether there be anything in the nature of the office that should make a woman incompetent, and we think there is not” (Durnford and East’s “Term Reports”).

[16]. Yet before the said creation of the Statute (43 Eliz.; even in 7 Eliz.) there were Overseers of the poor in Westminster, (see p. 148 Athenæum, No. 3458, February 3rd., 1894).

[17]. Ibid.

Yet before the time that male rivals contested the election with a woman, women had exercised the office without objection. “In the township of Gorton, parish of Manchester, 1748, Widow Waterhouse was overseer of the poor. In 1775 Sarah Schofield played the flute in the chapel choir. In 1826 Mary Grimston appointed sexton. In 1829 the vestry sent for Ruth Walker to come and break stones” (Notes and Queries, 5th series, vol. iv., p. 269). In the Parish Register, Totteridge, Middlesex, March 2nd, 1802, entry—burial. Mrs. Elizabeth King, widow, for 46 years Clerk of this Parish, in her 91st year. Note.—As long as she was able she attended, and with great strength and pleasure to her hearers, read prayers. (p. 493.) Mrs. Anne Bass of Ayleston, Leicestershire an excellent churchwarden for many years. (Notes and Queries, 5th series, vol. iv., 269, 493.)

The opening of the nineteenth century was signalised by the cessation of the Napoleonic wars; and the Peace brought wider opportunities of leisure, learning, and literature to both sexes. Yet so powerful had become the force of Custom in confusing men’s ideas of Justice, that even James Mill, the pupil of Jeremy Bentham, in his masterly article on “Government” for the Supplement to the “Cyclopædia Britannica” (afterwards republished in pamphlet form, 1825) could allow it to blind his eyes to the logical results of his own reasoning. In page 494 he says, “That one human being will desire to render the person and property of another subservient to his pleasures, notwithstanding the pain or loss of pleasure which it may occasion to that other individual, is the foundation of government. The desire of the object implies the desire of the power necessary to accomplish the object. The desire, therefore, of that power which is necessary to render the persons and properties of other human beings subservient to our pleasures, is a grand governing law of human nature.” Yet the writer of this searching analysis of the cause and need of government says elsewhere (p. 300), “One thing is pretty clear, that all those individuals whose interests are indisputably included in those of other individuals, may be struck off from political rights without inconvenience. In this light may be viewed all children up to a certain age, whose interests are involved in those of their parents. In this light, also, women may be regarded, the interest of almost all of whom is involved in either that of their fathers or that of their husbands.” Yet even at that early date a man, inspired by a woman, rose up to protest against this sweeping assertion. William Thompson, in 1825, published a little book, dedicated to Mrs. Wheeler, that puts the whole question in a broad modern light, “The Appeal of one Half of the Human Race, Women, against the Pretensions of the other Half, Men, to retain them in Political, and thence in Civil and Domestic Slavery. In reply to a paragraph of Mr. Mill’s celebrated article on Government.” This interesting book was the first voice of a nineteenth century man against the degradation of women. He points out that Mill has not nearly reached the level of his master, Bentham, in his conception. He asks, what is to become of those not included in the “nearly all”? what of those that are? “Why are women’s interests included in those of men? Mr. Mill’s article seeks to evade the equal claims of the other half of the human race to similar protection against the abuse of the same power, against the application of the general principle of security to women.” “In order to include women in the proscription of children, a fiction must be manufactured, as none of the good reasons applicable to children would be found to apply to women, and this romance of an identity of interest is the ingenious, say rather, the vulgar, the audacious fiction devised” (p. 15). “From this examination it results that the pretext set up to exclude women from political rights, namely, the inclination of men to use power over them beneficently; would, if admitted, sweep away the grand argument itself for the political rights of men.” “We shall investigate the philosophical pretext of the ‘article’ for the degradation of one half of the adult portion of the human race in the following order:—(1) Does the identity of interest between men and women, in point of fact, exist? (2) If it do exist, is it a sufficient cause, or any reason at all, why either of the parties, with interests thus identified, should therefore be deprived of political rights? (3) Is there in the nature of things any security for equality of enjoyments proportional to exertion and capabilities, but by means of equal civil rights? or any security for equal civil but by means of equal political rights? In regard to the first, there are three great classes of women. First, all women without fathers or husbands; second, adult daughters in their father’s establishment; third, wives. The first class have no men to identify their interests with; they are therefore the class, sometimes scornfully called, the unprotected. Adult daughters can acquire legal rights as against their fathers, but on marriage they forfeit their freedom, and are again thrown back into the class of children or idiots.” “Involving of interests must mean that one enjoys as much as the other, is this true as between husband and wife?” “The very assumption of despotic power by the husbands over wives is in itself a demonstration, that in the opinion of husbands, a contrariety, and not an involving of interests, exists between them and their wives. Domestic despotism corrupts man’s moral frame.” “If it is more difficult for women to labour, why should men further increase the difficulty by protecting themselves? In justice to the stronger excluding party, as well as to the weaker, all such powers of excluding ought to be withheld” (p. 149).

Many must have read, but few assimilated Mr. Thompson’s able and generous arguments.

Meanwhile, in regard to the Representation of the People’s Acts, the parliamentary franchises had been revised and cobbled, but in none was any but the general term used. The Act 7 and 8 William III. describes electors as “freeholders,” or “persons”; 18 George II., c. xviii., 19 George II., c. xxviii., use the same general terms. That of 3 George III. limits the franchise “to persons who had taken up their freedom for 12 months.”

Those of 11 George III., c. lv.; 22 George III., c. xxxi.; 44 George III., c. lx.; 11 George IV., and 1 William IV., c. lxxiv., confer the suffrage on “every Freeholder being above the age of 21 years, or on inhabitant householders of same age.” There is no term ever used, that might not include a woman. But just at the time when the tide of civilisation and education was beginning to rise again, just after “The Appeal of Women” had appeared, by W. Thompson and Mrs. Wheeler (1825), all historical precedent was reversed. Concentrated social opinion became boldly expressed in law.

In the Reform Bill of 1832, the word “male” was interpolated before “persons” in the Charters of the newly created Boroughs. Never before, and never since has the phrase “male persons” appeared in any Statute of the Realm. By this Act, therefore, women were legally disfranchised for the first time in the history of the English Constitution. The privilege of abstention was converted into the penalty of exclusion. Curiously enough, the framers seemed to have had dim notions of this, as in all reference to older Charters the term “person” only appeared, and the interpolating adjective “male” is suppressed. Therefore in Boroughs holding by older Charters women were not necessarily excluded, except by the reflex action of the 1832 Statute. (See 2 William IV., c. xlv., s. 24, 25, 31, 32, and 33.)

In strange contrast to the spirit of this Act were the Bills passed in 1833 and 1834, which gave freedom, at the nation’s expense, to all Colonial slaves.