Again in 1848, in supporting a motion of Mr. Joseph Hume in the
House of Commons to the effect that the elective franchise should
be extended to all householders, Mr. Cobden said:

A gentleman asked me to support universal suffrage on the ground
of principle, and I said to him, if it is a principle that a man
should have a vote because he pays taxes, why should not a widow
who pays taxes and is liable to serve as church-warden and
overseer, have a vote for members of parliament? The gentleman
replied that he agreed with me.

In 1853, Mr. W. J. Fox, member for Oldham, in acknowledging the
presentation to him by the ladies of Oldham of a signet-ring
bearing the inscription, "Education, the birthright of all," spoke
strongly in favor of women having a definite share in political
life:

If women have nothing to do with politics, honest men ought to
have nothing to do with politics. They keep us pure, simple,
just, earnest, in our exertions in politics and public life. They
have to do with it, because while the portion of man may be by
the rougher labors of the head and hands to work out many of the
great results of life, the peculiar function of woman is to
spread grace and softness, truth, beauty, benignity over all. Nor
is woman confined to this. In fact I wish that her direct as well
as indirect influence were still larger than it is in the sphere
of politics. Why, we trust a woman with the sceptre of the realm,
consider her adequate to make peers in the State and bishops in
the Church; surely she must be adequate to send her
representatives to the lower House. I know the time may not have
come for mooting a question of this sort; but I know the time
will come, and that woman will be something more than a mere
adjective to man in political matters. She will become a
substantive also. And why not?

Other speakers and writers brought forward the same point. Jeremy
Bentham declared he could find no reasons for the exclusion of
women, though he laid no stress on the matter; Herbert Spencer in
"Social Statics" (1851), Mr. Thomas Hare in his book on
"Representation," and Mr. Mill in "Representative Government," all
discussed it. In 1843 Mrs. Hugo Reid published an excellent volume,
"A Plea for Woman," in which she maintained that "There is no good
ground for the assumption that the possession and exercise of