The Sun.
London, England, 1868-09-15 00:00:00

THE CLAIMS OF WOMEN.

On Monday morning the female suffrage question was
argued at great length before the revising barrister (Mr.
Hosack) at Manchester.
On the name of Mary Abbott—the first on the list—
being called,

Mr. Cobbett said he appeared for two or three persons
nominally, but in fact for between 5,000 and 6,000 women
who had sent in claims to be put upon the register, and
who were legally qualified, but who had been omitted from
the list by the overseers because they believed them to
be disqualified. He argued that neither by common law
nor by Act of Parliament were women disqualified, and
that they were in fact qualified under the Reform Act of
1867, interpreted by Lord Romilly's Act. He discussed
the various arguments pro and con at great length, and
quoted the Lyme Regis case, in which there were three
women (two widows and one spinster) on the roll of bur-
gesses as voters. Before the passing of the Act of Henry VI.
it was clear that the whole of the inhabitants of a county or
borough had a right to vote, and the only qualification for
the knight or burgess to be elected was—he wished it were
so now—that he should be discreet. In 1826 Lord Russell
—no mean authority—made a speech in which he stated
that universal suffrage must have prevailed in England
before the Act of Henry VI.; and Lord Eldon, in the
Privy Council, had said that all people in England had a
right to vote for members of Parliament.

The Revising Barrister: What I want, Mr. Cobbett, is
a proof that women did vote for members of Parliament.
Mr. Cobbett : Your want and mine, sir, are precisely
the same. As to the Act of 1832, people from the time of
Henry VI. down to then, were constantly being disfran-
chised, both by the Crown and the House of Commons.
In the third volume of " Luder's Report," page 116, he
referred his Honour to the Windsor case, with respect to
which Parliament passed a resolution stating that " all
the inhabitants of Windsor had a right to vote for mem-
hers of Parliament," and if he could show that women
there voted, as no doubt they did, that fact would prove his
case—that women had a right to vote at elections if pro-
perly and legally qualified. They were entitled to vote on
all local questions now, and were compelled to hold paro-
chial and other offices : and that being so, why not for
members of Parliament? The learned gentleman then went
on to quote several other cases, and concluded by urging
that if there were no legal incapacity as to women voting,
there was no common-law incapacity. He argued that
there was not now a legal incapaeity existing, since, in the
Act of 1867, the enfranchised persons were " every man,"
and if there was any incapacity before it was now done
away with by the Act of 1867 and Lord Romilly's. If the
word man was used as distinguished from the word woman,
surely it imported the masculine gender, and then Lord
Romilly's Act dealt with it. If it meant mankind, why
then it meant both man and woman, and both had then a
right to vote under the Act.
Mr. H. Robinson, on the other side, argued that neither
under the Act of 1867 nor any other Act had there been
power or a right given to women to vote. Mr. Cobbett, he
considered, had totally failed to make out the case in favour
of his clients. Wherever women were included in Acts of
Parliament in contradistinction to men, they were specially
mentioned ; and he cited in proof the late Act referring to
the agricultural gang system, where men were specially
mentioned in a special clause.
The revising barrister said the question involved was so
important that he would give his decision in the morning.

A review and sham fight took place in Heaton
Park on Saturday afternoon, awl it is said to have been one
of the finest military spectacles which have been witnessed
since the establishment of the volunteer force. Major Gene-
ral Sir John Garvock was the reviewing officer, and nearly
7,000 regular troops and volunteers took part in the move-
ments.

Much sympathy is felt for the Bishop of Limerick,
Dr. Graves, whose eldest son has just died from the effects
of sunstroke, in the 27th year of his age. The deceased be-
longed to the India Civil Service, but in consequence of im-
paired health came home on leave of absence. A few days
since he went to CaLir foi a game at cricket, and became ill
on the field, and never rallied.
The area of land under cultivation in the Aus-
tralasian colonies, according to the last returns, is 2,500,000
acres, and the live stock consists of 600,000 horses, 4,000,000
cattle, i 8,500,000 sheep, and 400,000 pigs, giving a total of
more than 43,000,000 head of stock.

THE QUEEN AND DR. NORMAN MACLEOD.—Her
Majesty has kindly permitted Dr. Norman Macleod to
write a description of Scottish scenery for the illustrated
edition of " Our Life in the Highlands," which is soon to
appear.

PARTY SPIRIT. —When I was young I was
r customed to hear pronounced with abhorrence, almost
with execration, the names of men who are now hailed by
their former foes as champions of grand principles, and as
worthy of the highest public trusts. This lesson of early
experience, which later years have corroborated, will never
be forgotten.—Dr. Channing.

A Derry paper hints that the meditated visit of
the Lord-Lieutenant to Donegal, before returning to Dublin
Castle, is to be turned to electioneering purposes. A
requisition is now in course of signature calling upon Lord
Francis Conyngham to come forward as a candidate for
that county in the Liberal interest ; and the journal
referred to conceives that, only for the threatened opposi-
tionto Viscount Hamilton, the visit would not have been
undertaken.

Sir Edward Leclimere, a well-known High Church-
man and Conservative member for Tewkesbury, has pro-
posed to settle the Irish Church dispute "by ceding the
precedence of the Irish Establishment, by removing the
Irish bishops from the House of Lords, and by placing the
legal and social position of the archbishopsand bishops of the
Roman Catholic Church on an equal footing with that of the
Anglican hierarchy in Ireland."
A letter from Berlin, in the North-Eastern Cor-
.tvondenee, says : -11 Lord Stanley has written from
Lucerne to Lord Loftus, din ctiug him to congratulate
the Prussian Government on the measures of disarma-
ment adopted here. The English Ambassador, before
leaving for Dresden, had a long conversation with 31. do
Thiele, in which he declared that England could not but
render homage to the dignified and significant attitude of
the Government of King William, and that she would sup-
port with all her influence this pacific policy of Prussia."

We have to announce the death of Sir William
:,eggs George Hoste, the second baronet. He was torn in
1818 ; was a Roar Admiral of the Navy, a Groom in-
Waiting, and naval Aide-de-Camp to the Queen. He
served in Burnish and China from 1852 to 1837, and was
married in 1858 to Caroline Dorothea, daughter of Mr.
C. P. Brune. He is succeeded by his son, William Henry
Charles, who was born in 1860. The first baronet was a
naval officer, who particularly distinguished himself in gain-
ing a victory over the combined French and Italian fleets at
the head of four frigates off the Island of Lessa in 1811, and
the baronetcy was conferred in 1814, on the recommendation
of the Earl of Liverpool, who was then Prime Minister.

GENERAL • ORDINATIONS. - The Archbishop of
Canterbury will hold a general ordination on Sunday next,
snd on the same day ordinations will be held by the
Bishop of Durham, at Auckland Castle ; the Bishop of
Ely, at St. Paul's Church, Bedford ; the Bishop of St.
Davids, at the parish church of Abergwili ; the Bishop of
Oxford, at Cuddesden ; the 'Bishop of Lincoln, in his
;Itthedral ; the Bishop of Ripon, in his cathedral ; the
Bishop of Carlisle, in his cathedral ; and by the Bishop
of Hereford, in his cathedral. Bishop Trower, acting for
the Bishop of Lichfield, will hold an ordination in Lich-
field Cathedral on St. Matti, W'S Day, Monday, September
21 ; and the Bishop of London, at the Chapel Royal,
Whitehall, on Sunday, December 20.
On Sunday, the 13th inst., the remains of the
late Madame Muslims., wife of his Excellency Musurus
Pasha, were removed from their temporary resting place
in Kensal-green Cemetery, and were placed in a " chapel:e
ardente," specially constructed, on board the steamer
Parana, for conveyance to Constantinople, where a hand-
some mausoleum has been erected for their final reception.
It was originally intended to convey the body overland ;
but, owing to the difficulty of having a " chapelle
ardente " erected on board of one of the steamers of the
Messageries Imp4riales, that idea was abandoned. The
removal of the body was undertaken by Messrs. W.
Garstin and Co., of Welbeck-street, and all the arrange-
ments were carried out to the /*ire eatisfaptiou of the
igtuotcd partici%