he country, he would
not have brought it in as an amendment to a bill; but that his
object was to remove an innovation--to resist one of the most
remarkable invasions of long-established rights which the
legislation of this or any other country could show. The bill
before the house was an amendment of the Municipal Corporation
act of 1835. That act was the only act in regard to local
expenditure and local government which established this
disability. Before and since, all acts of parliament gave every
local vote to every rate-payer. The Health of Towns act of 1848
had a clause almost identical with the one he was moving. He was
therefore asking the House not only to make the bill in harmony
with the general legislation of the country, but to allow it to
be in harmony with its latest expressed convictions as shown in
the act of 1848. There were in England 78 non-corporate towns
which were not parliamentary boroughs, with populations varying
from 20,000 to 6,000. In these every rate-payer voted. There was
little if any difference between their government and that of
municipal towns. Who could assign a reason why women should vote
in one and not in the other? Every parochial vote was in the
hands of the whole body of rate-payers. Women held the most
important parochial offices. The sister of the member for
Stockport had acted as overseer. Miss Burdett Coutts had been
urged to take the office of guardian. Had she been a large
rate-payer in a municipal town, what an absurdity to shut her out
from the vote! He then showed how the process of disfranchisement
was going on, and quoted Darlington and Southport. The latter
town was incorporated in 1867. In 1866, 2,085 persons were
qualified to vote for commissioners; 588 of these were women.
From the moment of incorporation these votes were extinguished
without a reason being assigned, though they had exercised them
from time immemorial. Such would be the case with any town
incorporated in the future. He appealed to the metropolitan
members, and showed them that unless his clauses were carried,
when they came to establish corporations throughout the
metropolis, as some of them desired, all the female rate-payers
would be struck off the roll; that over a population of 3,000,000
this exclusion would p