Women and the Parliamentary Franchise in Great Britain

Abstract

The nineteenth century was a period of considerable change in Great Britain. The concern of this chapter is with the parliamentary franchise, particularly female suffrage, but other developments cannot be ignored entirely, if only because they frequently underlie and help to explain changes in electoral law. At the start of the century, for example, the prevailing political system was one in which land represented the most important form of property and wealth, giving its owners not only social importance but the right to participate in government to the exclusion of those not so endowed. However, the political theories of the nineteenth century, when translated into action, slowly began to produce change. Liberalism, it is true, remained tied to property, but it did, at least, advocate the widening of the community of the propertied to admit to the body politic some hitherto excluded persons. Democracy, on the other hand, was a more radical creed. Locating sovereignty in the will of the whole people, it emphasised the rights of the individual as such rather than the rights conferred on him by, and dependent upon, his propertied status.¹