ABSTRACT
As the constitutional law of Great Britain formerly stood women were not incapacitated, by reason of sex, from voting in Parliamentary elections. As that law now stands women are rendered incapable of exercising the franchise, and strange to tell, their exclusion from this most important right and duty of citizenship is due to this present century. Restriction of political liberty is the last result which might have been anticipated from an English Reform Bill, especially in a century when constitutional principles of Government are extending with unprecedented rapidity. Yet the great Reform Bill of 1832 deliberately and for the first time in our history, excluded women from the general extension of political rights by using the term 'Male Persons' in all the new franchises created by that Act instead of people.
