1819 Sept. 19

Parl. Reform Bill or Defence ag Ed. Review

§.2. Electors Who

Females?

Historical cause

3

But the power here in question is not that same vast integral power but this fraction of a controlling power. Whence it has happened that of this power no part has ever been in female hands – why the historical cause of the exclusion has had no exception is sufficiently obvious /obvious enough/

In the feudal times in the times of the Henry and the Edwards here and there an instance may have been seen an instance in which in the absence of her husband, the castle of a Baron or a Knight has been defended by his wife But of a female clothed in iron armour and ranking[?] herself with the embattled Knights not so much as a single example it is believed would be to be found

Accordingly neither in the days of Henry 3 d and his son Edward I when, for the purpose of agreeing to a tax the Knights of a County /Shire/ were summoned to meet the King, nor on any subsequent occasion could it have entered into the thoughts of any assembly of men to think of charging with any such commission a person of the female sex: to send into an Assembly which at any rate could not fail to be composed chiefly and almost exclusively of males, the timidity and bashfulness of the weaker sex in the person either of speaker, wife or widow.

In the case of the representative of a town, though military service was not so prominently in view, still the business was of a sort for which it was not natural that a person of the female sex should be selected, where a supposed tolerably qualified agent of the male sex were to be had.